Hello everyone!!

I'm trying out new technology introduced by Andre, one of our crew with us for the next few months.  Steve (Graeme's friend) visited us in the New year with his friend Keith and his son Phil - who bought out as a gift - this lap-top computer I am now typing on (whilst at sea!)  The theory is I can spend lots of time 'off-line' and then 'down-load' straight onto email - which will save time, money (internet cost) and means I can send you more detailed emails with our up-to-date news!! 

Well, as usual, ours plans were changed again, and a sequence of events means that instead of being in Malaysia by now - we are still in Phuket!  First, delays trying to sort out the forestay and catching up on other maintenance - then  getting 'stuck' for 8days on a tiny fishing village island 'careened' against their jetty.  Because of delays sorting out delivery of the forestay from the UK we left it a bit late to go onto the jetty during 'spring' tides (this the highest high tide period in the month, which we need because our boat draws 2.2m under the water line) so when we struggled to get in, we planned to sort out our 'leak' quickly so we could leave the same day before the water got lower every day.  Cut a very long story short - after several attempts to get out early in the morning, and the following day, we finally gave up and decided to wait for the spring tides - due in a weeks time!  So, our crew had already been with us two weeks and still not gone anywhere!!! 

This being our last trip in the area we wanted to make sure we visited those places we've always missed before, so we've seen really wonderful sights, interesting caves and hongs (lagoons) and really amazing scenery.  It is very difficult to explain the giant limestone formations that look completely out of place erupting from the sea with sheer steep cliffs 1200 feet tall and bright splashes of colour dripping down the face - oranges, yellows, greens and white (as though someone with a graffiti problem has stood at the top and chucked down tins of paint).  The most amazing feature of these cliffs are the cactus and trees (that look like someone has spent hours cultivating them into impressive bonsai shapes) that 'cling' onto the sheer limestone face, with every shade of green featured in the kaleidoscope of species.  The bird-life is incredible, sea eagles, kites, kingfishers, hornbills and many unidentified species from tiny birds with very loud songs to sounds similar to a clown with hys

The crew got busy yesterday repairing the sailing dinghy (her mast broke quite a long time ago) so that we all had a new 'toy' to play with - and after much sawing and grinding we re-launched 'baby khulula' and Andre and Karl took turns learning to sail her alongside the giant limestone formations.

During the last few days we've found some new caves and hongs - one cave we visited had a hugh cavern entrance from the sea and several different rooms that could only be accessed by 'climbing' over a giant frozen waterfall formation - complete with frozen cascading 'pools' glittering in the torch light.  Andre - new nickname 'spider man' clambered down into the next room following the 'steps' formed by flowing water some hundreds of years ago, and then climbed back out into a further cavern out of sight by the less adventurous of us shining our torches to show the way.  As we all clambered back into the light Khulula was perfectly framed by the cavern entrance and made a wonderful photograph for Glen, who was the only one to remember his camera.

The next expedition only saw the brave Andre and Graeme attempt since it could only be accessed by swimming from the dinghy and carefully clambering over the oyster invested rocks to gain entrance to the cavern which lead upwards out of sight (and of course, they had to see how far it would go). Whilst Karl, Glen and I bobbed around in the dinghy peering upwards, the spidermen disapeared and climbed until they came out at the top of the island and joked about taking off their clothes and filling them with rocks tossing them over the side to scare the rest of us (Graeme talked Andre out of that one because he said I would probably not appreciate the joke!)

The 'hongs' we found in Chong Lat had been 'dammed' mysteriously, and this made access more difficult - we could only peer over the edge and decided these crude dams were pretty old and probably built to form an enclosed lagoon for farming fish.

Now we are heading south we'll start to see other people and boats and we'll be leaving behind a little bit of paradise which felt exclusively ours for a short time - still needs must - the ice has all melted, the alcohol drank, no more bacon or ham and even the soft drinks are running low.  So, I'll sign off for now and keep you updated with our travels to Singapore next time we hit an internet café!