On Fri, 05 Jun 2015 06:10:09 -0600, Paul Cassel
wrote:
On 6/4/2015 5:59 PM, wrote:
On Thu, 04 Jun 2015 05:57:14 -0600, Paul Cassel
wrote:
There is a lot to be said for a boat that can float in shallow water
:-)
A lot of the small islands on the west coast of Thailand aren't very
well charted. They are in the right place on the chart but the water
depth might have been surveyed 50 or 60 years ago and coral grows :-)
We were on the way back to Phuket, from Malaysia, and decided to stop
for the night. The N.E. monsoons were in full spate so we eased up on
the S.W. side of a small island and went aground on the coral. We had
run in between to big coral growths and were essentially in a "cradle"
and couldn't get out.
The story ended well as when the tide went out the water was shallow
enough that I could sort of chart the water and a small, local fishing
boat had come by and hauled the anchor out toward open water and
promised to come back at high tide. Twelve hours later we floated off
and winched ourselves out into deep water and the fishing boat came
back and led us to a better anchoring spot.
The moral of the story is "you probably can't go where the fishing
boats go :-)
--
I've run aground but only in mud or sand. Coral sounds scary.
I do want to be able to gunk hole it a bit and am willing to, at least
for the time, give up voyaging ability. Then too, we're currently living
in the desert so the whole idea is a 'tomorrow maybe' thing for when and
if we can either relocate or add a second presence on a coast. Our
sailing now, if we were to do it, would be restricted to lakes we could
walk around if determined to do so. Not my idea of water recreation.
As to the sea sick drug, I couldn't see that as something that she could
use and I know, that as an organic vegan, she'd not accept a drug
solution even if taking it daily was safe and effective.
Your wife might try eating ginger. It has a reputation for preventing
motion sickness. An English friend once suggested it to my wife and
(we live in Thailand) a Thai friend also suggested the same so it may
have an "international" reputation which might indicate that it really
does work.
I know a fellow who bought a smaller cat he uses mostly round the FL
Keys but he said he'd take it on a short open ocean trip like to the
Bahamas if he were weather confident. They seem to scud along fast
enough that even short term forecasts are all one needs because the
roughly 140 km trip only takes a few hours.
Quite a bit of difference from sloughing along at 5 kts.
I met a bloke named Aron Meder, a Hungarian who sailed around the
world in a 6 meter (19-1/2") boat, while he was in Phuket. Web Sites
at:
http://www.meder.hu/meder_en.htm
Yutube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h167pT8u_Cg
He reckoned that the main disadvantage of making long voyages in a
small boat was that they were slow and necessitated carrying more
supplies than a larger faster boat and there wasn't much room to carry
supplies.
While we didn't specifically discuss bad weather but he didn't seem
to see it as a major concern.
--
Cheers,
Bruce