"Our Boat" a Phuket Travel Page by Tina-Perth

We bought this boat in October 2004. She is a fabulous boat and we are very happy with our purchase. We looked at so many boats in Perth and around Asia, but this is the one that stole our hearts.

We spent almost 7 weeks on her at Christmas. We started out on 17th December when we actually 'moved in'. We lived aboard through the tsunami and were on her until 29th January.

It was an epic task to clean the boat out and restock it - just like moving house, only you had to move the previous tenants out first! Our highly overpaid boat girl gave us many bad experiences including leaving the boat in a terrible state. It took us a week to clean up the mess and move everything out.

We travelled around Phuket and surrounding islands - when she wasn't back at the marina getting something fixed. Boaties will know what I'm talking about!

We thoroughly enjoyed our time and were lucky to have made it through those weeks. The anchor windlass actually broke on our last day out!

The main reason for our current visit here is the refit. It has been in progress since the beginning of February 2005 and has many weeks yet until completion.

OK, update: The refit has now been going on for 15 months and is still not finished. The ex-pats that have businesses in Phuket are abysmally bad. The Thai people are far more reliable and honest than the ex-pats we've dealt with who've overcharged us, charged us for work not done, stolen items from the boat, the electrician even bought and tried to fit non-marine wire which would have caused us to pull the whole boat apart to undo and rewire. They're amateurs that obviously couldn't make it in their country of origin. They just have so much work available to them, that they don't care, moving onto the next client each time. We've met very many disgruntled boat owners at the Boat Lagoon Marina.

The section you can see in this photo is where the saloon used to be. The Galley will now be here instead.

I'll try to get some more pictures from Steve to show you the progression from this point.

She's back in the water, but still not finished. Here she's being towed around to the new marina next door after being put into the water.

The engines are now running, but there's still more work to be done, can you believe it??? Only 3 years of work, come the 2nd of February.