Two Hulls to Ko Yao Noi

My oldest friend, David, charters a boat every year with a group of friends and goes sailing, somewhere in the world. This year, one of the usual crew had to drop out, so he invited me to join them in Phuket, Thailand for a week in the sun.

I was in Hobart, so my first step was to fly to Melbourne, which is pretty much Tasmania’s gateway for most onward connections (at least until Hobart’s new international terminal gets properly launched). On landing, I spent five hours whiling away the time before my connecting flight, browsing through various cafes and bars until I found my favourite, Bar Pulpo, an outlet specialising in Spanish tapas.

As I was leaving the bar, Jetstar cancelled my onward flight. They announced that they would rebook us on an afternoon flight the following day, including an overnight hotel.

Jetstar frogmarched us out through immigration (I even had to fill in a landing card, despite the fact that I hadn’t gone anywhere yet), and then put us in a queue to arrange the rebooked tickets. The new flight was too late to get me to Phuket in the morning in time to get to the marina. On my phone, I had a look to see if Scoot could get me to Asia any faster. They could, and in a jiffy I had booked a flight to Singapore with onward connection to Phuket, leaving the same night.

At the front of the queue, I explained my situation to the charming but harassed Jetstar lady, who congratulated me on my onward flights and cheerfully refunded my fare, commenting on how nice it was to deal with somebody pleasant. Then she quietly came around to my side of the counter and surreptitiously pushed a handful of meal vouchers into my hand, while the other staff rolled their eyes and tutted.

Back at the Portuguese bar I brandished my vouchers and ordered a meat platter and some more Tempranillo.

After a pleasant meal, I ambled off to catch my flight. By four in the morning I was at Singapore’s Changi Airport, where one of the excellent hawker’s stalls on the mezzanine made me a very nice steamed chicken rice. I only had a few hours to kill before my connection to Thailand.

Phuket

Arriving in Phuket, I bumped into Ivana, one of the crew who I’d never met before but who mentioned that she’d been scouting the terminal for an hour and had located the best bar. Instantly recognising kindred souls, we chatted over a few litres of Chang beer until David and Mirjana appeared to decant us into a waiting car.

At Simpson Marina, we arranged some final details at the charter office. We had already paid for everything, but there was the matter of the security deposit, and for some reason they needed a physical credit card. As citizens of the digital world, most of our cards were on our phones. A few of us did have pieces of plastic, but either the limits were too low, they didn’t function overseas, or we didn’t know the PIN. Eventually we found a card that they could work with, and were shuttled down to the marina to see our new yacht.

She was Eos, a Lagoon 45, in what was apparently pretty decent condition for a charter boat. The final crew arrived, Andrew and Vananh with piles of shopping that were ferried to the boat by obliging staff in a golf cart.

Without much more ado, we motored out of the marina and dropped anchor off the nearby island of Naka Yai.

KO NAKA YAI / LITTLE Naka Island

It was already quite hot, and most of us had been travelling for some days from various corners of the world, and were keen for a swim. I was first in, diving off the stern into the crystal blue waters. Most of the crew didn’t know me very well yet, and they laughed when I surfaced and shouted ‘We need a mermaid line!’, and then ‘Throw me a line!’. What they couldn’t see was that there was a strong current dragging me off into the Andaman Sea, and there was no way I was strong enough to fight it back to the yacht. The boat dwindled behind me, and I shouted once more – including a number of well-chosen swear words – and then struck out for the nearby shore of the island. I climbed out onto some rocks, and waited until David lowered the dinghy and came and got me.

The northern part of the island is taken up by a resort called the Naka Island Luxury Connection, and – as it turned out – they are more than happy to welcome visiting yachties. We had an excellent meal with lots of cocktails as the sun went down, at which point we realised that our anchor light wasn’t working, even though we had turned it on when we left. The obliging staff took us in a golf cart back to our dinghy which was tethered to their jetty, and waited while we motored out, sorted out the light problem, and returned for another cocktail.

KO ROI

The three cabins aboard Eos were all doubles, and as the odd-man-out latecomer I was going to bunk down in the lounge, but instead I decided to sleep out forward, on the trampoline.

I had a really comfortable night under the stars, and then joined the crew for a pre-breakfast black coffee with a side-car of rakia, something that quickly became a custom aboard.

This part of the Andaman Sea is packed with impressive rocks and islets. We set off in a northerly direction, threading through them toward the island of Roi.

As well as the tender, the catamaran was equipped with two kayaks and two paddle-boards. On arrival at Ko Roi, we dropped anchor and deployed the entire fleet, paddling out to the beach.

We chatted to one of the local guides, who had brought tourists to the beach in his traditional ‘long tail’ boat. He mentioned that the bats put on a spectacular display at dusk, and we had an idea that we would have a barbecue on the beach and stay here overnight, but he pointed out that the strand is washed out at high tide.

Taking advantage of local knowledge, we upped anchor and headed to the next island.

Ko Yao Noi / BIG YAO ISLAND

Ko Yao Noi is quite extensive, about 10 square kilometres, and we stopped in a likely-looking bay to the north-east for the night. Shortly after our arrival, we noticed a squall on the horizon, approaching rapidly. As soon as it hit, it began pushing us onto the lee shore. Not happy with this turn of events, we raised anchor and followed the pack of local fishing boats who were all heading for shelter on the western side of the island.

Unfortunately, in the excitement, one of our davit lines came loose and dropped between the hulls and was sucked up by the port propeller. The tension blew the clutch off one of the winches, which was messy but cleared the jam and was preferable to the alternative.

After a short but intensely wet squall, we dropped anchor close to a jetty, discovering once everything had calmed down that Vananh and Andrew’s hatch had been open, and all their bedding was soaked.

Nevertheless, it was quiet and calm now, and Vananh cooked up a fabulous fish dinner. We had plentiful wine, and then had to talk David out of taking the tender to the jetty, just in case there was a bar at the other end of it.

I woke early after another comfortable night on the trampoline. Nobody else was up, so I launched a kayak to go and explore the island. I paddled around some limestone cliffs and caves with stalactites hanging into the sea, and then pulled the boat up onto a beach so that I could hike into the jungle behind.

I encountered a few people who lived in little shacks, or in hammocks under the trees. They were tending small patches of crops in clearings, and tapping rubber from the trees, but none seemed interested in talking to a strange foreigner.

After a good walk, I returned to the kayak and paddled around to the jetty. It serviced a small village and, apparently, some resorts elsewhere on the island, but I confirmed that David would have found no bars there last night.

By then, the rest of the crew had awoken, lifted the anchor, and had brought the catamaran to the jetty to pick me up. It was time to head south into the Andaman Sea.