Thursday 5 November – back out to sea

We have had quite an adventure since I last wrote the blog. We went to see my nephew Lovat in Hong Kong and what an amazing trip we had. Lovat picked us up from the airport, with an amazing drive to their home in a fishing village called Sai Kung in the New Territories, such a special place with a thriving ex pat community of young families. So good to see the family in their home, the kids have grown up so much, little David is now a real chatterbox. It amazed Rowan and I that the mountains all around are covered in dense green forest (jungle really) and everyone lives in tall skyscrapers. Where they live is fairly compact living but no Skyscrapers, with lovely wild mountains right behind them full of walking trails. We climbed up behind their home one day with the kids, a great effort for little legs! It’s a short walk into town with the kids riding bikes and scooters, to a lovely harbour front, with restaurants selling the most incredible array of fish life. Lovat got us to experience a Dim Sum breakfast with a side of chicken feet! A real delicacy which Lovat assured us we were showing respect for their food. One foot was more than enough for us! Full of collagen apparently, so hopefully did us wrinklies some good!

We decided to explore a bit of China on their fast trains. We went to Guangzhou just over an hour away on the train. What I had not appreciated is that Hong Kong is still considered a Specialist Administrative Region so we still had to go through immigration. No tourists about, we were very grateful when a French guy helped us fill out the baffling visa form. It all went very well but we were glad we had left a few hours early as it took a while to get though the border checks. We caught a taxi in Guangzhou to our hotel, the driver had a bit of attitude ducking and diving around other cars, Rowan was just getting a bit tetchy with him, when the inevitable happened, he scraped the smart car next to us, right in front of a policeman! We had to pay and walk the rest of the way to the hotel, which was luckily only a km away. Our hotel was incredibly smart, we had an enormous room with huge windows looking over the Pearl river. It was amazing at night with all the fancy riverside buildings lit up and at 9pm each night there was a laser light show, which was wonderful to watch from the aircon luxury of our bed! We were on the historical Shamian Island a territory that was divided between France and the UK by the Qing government in the 19th century (1859–1943). It was an important foreign trading hub and was the scene of the Opium wars. There were loads of European colonial buildings in various states of decay with quiet pedestrian avenues lined with huge shady trees. Bizarrely it has become a wedding photo destination for the locals, we could not believe how many bridal couples were out getting photographed. We did a lot of walking around markets and waterways which was fascinating, endless streets selling the scariest looking items that are apparently for Chinese medicine, we never saw any rhino horns thank goodness but big bags of seahorses which was sad. We walked miles around a park full of waterways, our overwhelming impression was how immaculately clean it all was with no rubbish anywhere, but plenty of surveillance cameras. Another bizarre thing was all the girls out in old style clothing with a modern twist, all photographing each other or with photographers following them, all for TikTok or some other social media. It was a real experience with no guide, but we both felt a slight sense of relief when we were safely back in Hong Kong. We were booked into a hotel on Hong Kong main island for the last two days to attend Monique’s (Lovat’s wife’s) launch of her new business venture selling a sparkling fruit infused honey bush tea, a non alcoholic replacement for wine, especially for venues. The launch was at the Hong Kong Food and Wine festival, a huge affair on the waterfront. It was seriously impressive their products looked and tasted stunning, I’m sure it is going to do well.

We returned to Phuket anxious to see how much of the work had been done, sadly not as much as Rowan had hoped, so better to be around to make sure things get done. The hardest part was getting our old solar panels off the roof that had been stuck down, shards of glass were everywhere as they were ripped off. Every night we are extremely grateful for our aircon in our hull, it is so unbelievably hot, the big storms every evening don’t seem to cool things down at all. I came down with a horrible cold that Rowan luckily escaped, we heard so much sneezing and coughing on our travels that it was not too surprising. Rowan gave the workers a deadline of Thursday morning and said anything not done, will be finished when we return next week to pick up our sails. We are desperate to get out of the marina, it is unbelievably hot, very remote, so not much to do nearby and the only people about are pretty obnoxious Russians on charter boats. We have also worked hard cleaning and repairing things in this heat, we literally drip sweat, the boat is like a sauna. We had a massive cleanup of our front lockers, which were wet and damp from the sails, it was good to unpack and see what we have down there – a brand new spare fold up dinghy and an electric outboard that we have not used in 5 years, good emergency back ups! Along with an enormous drogue. Loads and loads of ropes etc. A good sort out that was needed.

We went into town this morning to get provisions and Rowan’s usual trip to the chandlery, like an irresistible sweetie shop. We got back at lunch and the guys were finishing off getting the cabling done for the new solar panels. It was nearly 4pm when we dropped ropes and headed off into the sunset. Rowan found a nice quiet sounding place about 15 miles away. With no sails we had no option but to motor, not that there was any wind for sailing. We are getting a new main sail made and our jib is having its UV strip replaced. We finally got to our anchorage just after 6pm, so just before dark, lovely sand for anchoring and loads of space. We were exhausted but happy to be in a lovely spot with only 3 other boats around. We decided to go to bed early just after 9pm when a monster storm hit with the most terrifying lightening we have ever seen striking all around us. I was upstairs with the first bolt which caused me to yell out in panic. I think it was so dramatic as the light bounces off the water, I can’t believe that we were not struck. These are Dry Season storms that whip up with fury but are short lived thankfully. The worst of it lasted only about 10 minutes, after which the aircon buzz drowned out the noise of the rolling thunder and we fell fast asleep.