After a great night’s sleep under a cool, starry night, we were awake early yesterday morning to sing Happy Birthday to our two little men who turned five; a little sad in that we were supposed to celebrate William’s 5th birthday with him last year, but the pandemic put pay to those plans and now the twins have turned five and we still haven’t seen our loved ones. Regardless, the twins had a fabulous time at their party and we had enough to keep us busy and distracted from the loneliness that creeps in from time to time. It was wonderful to be part of the celebrations, though, albeit via video call, as they opened all their presents to gasps of surprise and delight.

After the birthday festivities, since it was watermaker day, on went the generator and the watermaker, which included a test of the generator with the new lithium battery configuration. The alternators were tested on Tuesday ahead of the afternoon thunderstorms and we’re happy to report that everything is operating as expected after some time was spent troubleshooting a configuration setting that needed to be changed on the Victron Multiplus. Additionally, Roy tested the balancing of the batteries using the solar controller and installed the new starter battery for the starboard engine, while Elaine worked on our provisioning list, although she took a break to chat to her sister in Ireland and we also dinghied ashore around mid-morning to enjoy a coffee and scrumptious baked delights at My Beach Resort before taking a lovely stroll along the beach.

Today Elaine continued her paperwork efforts getting medical records up to date, submitting medical claims and getting some filing done, while Roy spent some time in the water cleaning Paw Paw’s bottom and then went on a reconnaissance of the area, finding another car rental service and somewhere to dispose of our garbage.

A second chat was enjoyed with Elaine’s sister in Ireland and we had a good chuckle after receiving a video of the grandsons, who’d sneaked their walkie-talkies into their bedrooms, and were chatting to each other instead of going to sleep, being a school night; it was too cute, though, to listen to their unguarded conversation, demonstrating just how caring William is as a big brother.

After a day of suffocating heat and no wind under overcast skies, it was a relief when the sun eventually sank behind the mountains of Phuket Island and a cool breeze, associated with the surrounding thunderstorms, developed, making our evening barbecue in the cockpit very pleasant indeed!