Wednesday, August 29, 2012

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Friday, August 24, 2012

MotionX-GPS Track: Blue Hill To Southwest Harbor

Hello,
Morpheus uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone and is sharing with you the following track:
Name:Blue Hill To Southwest Harbor
Date:Aug 23, 2012 3:44 pm
Map:
(valid until Feb 20, 2013)
View on Map
Distance:13.8 miles
Elapsed Time:1:54:29
Avg Speed:7.2 mph
Max Speed:15.7 mph
Avg Pace:8' 16" per mile
Min Altitude:12 ft
Max Altitude:80 ft
Start Time:2012-08-23T19:44:57Z
Start Location:
Latitude:44º 11' 00" N
Longitude:68º 23' 19" W
End Location:
Latitude:44º 17' 08" N
Longitude:68º 18' 49" W

Southwest Harbor, Maine

Deb and I are visiting with Ted Madara and his family this weekend in Southwest Harbor. This is a spectacular location!!



Jim Gregory 

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Leg 2

Can u believe the spread after only 1.5 legs



Jim Gregory 

Atlantic Nationals Day 3

Fog just burning off. Some breeze but not much. 




Jim Gregory 

Nice job Pat!!

Well done!!  

Time to go to work now I guess??

I actually suspect you will enjoy that as well. 

-Dad

Jim Gregory 

I survived!

Only nine hours left till I'm in the air heading back to the states. I decided that i had to celebrate the fact that I've survived six weeks of solo travel without any major problems with a drink sixty four stories above Bangkok. Very bittersweet to be heading home right now, it's been so great over here that I don't really want to leave.

Patrick

And the picture looks familiar to anyone it's also the rooftop bar where they filmed parts of the hangover 2.

Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Hitching a ride

So I woke up yesterday to pouring rain, thunder and lightning so instead of just wasting a day in the rain I jumped on the bus back to Bangkok a bit early. Very interesting trip full of nearly missed busses and terrible dirt roads which were even worse in the rain. And because both cambodia's and Thailand's busses both don't run to the border itself, they stop about 10 kilometers from the border on the Cambodian side and then don't start again until you get 90km into Thailand, I had to hitchhike my way about 100km across the Cambodian/Thai border. Definitely a memorable experience but it would have been nicer if it wasn't still raining and thundering and we weren't in the back of a pickup!

Now I've got about 16 more hours to kill in Bangkok, not quite sure what I'm going to do but I'll figure something out!

Sent from my iPhone

Great day for sailing!!


Three race day today. 12 to 14 knots of wind, flat water, perfect!



Jim Gregory 

Monday, August 20, 2012

Nice Boat





Jim Gregory 

MotionX-GPS Track: Track 003

Hello,
Morpheus uses MotionX-GPS on the iPhone and is sharing with you the following track:
Swans Island to Blue Hill, Maine

Name:Track 003
Date:Aug 20, 2012 12:11 pm
Map:
(valid until Feb 16, 2013)
View on Map
Distance:25.9 miles
Elapsed Time:3:28:15
Avg Speed:7.5 mph
Max Speed:18.5 mph
Avg Pace:8' 02" per mile
Min Altitude:0 ft
Max Altitude:57 ft
Start Time:2012-08-20T16:11:30Z
Start Location:
Latitude:44º 10' 43" N
Longitude:68º 26' 02" W
End Location:
Latitude:44º 24' 05" N
Longitude:68º 33' 10" W

pmgregory shared an Instagram photo with you

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pmgregory just shared an Instagram photo with you:


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"Gulf of Siam. #OtresBeach #Cambodia #Threedaysleft"
(taken at Otres Beach)

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

Siem Reap, Angkor Wat and... Fish massages?

Siem Reap has recently jumped onto the international tourism radar with the "rediscovery" of the Angkor Wat temples and the fact that the country is finally recovering from the brutal Khmer Rouge regime of the 1970's. And with the steady flow of tourist dollars the city has undergone some major developments in the last few years, downtown is now jam-packed with bars serving 50 cent (or less) draught beers, street vendors selling banana pancakes and these little spicy pork sandwiches that were awesome, and one of the weirdest things I have experienced in southeast Asia, a fish massage. Basically, it is a large tank filled with these little fish that eat the dead skin off your feet. It's hard to describe how it feels, it's not painful but just knowing that 50 little fish are scraping at your feet takes a long time to get used to. Overall Siem Reap was a fun town but four days was plenty of time to see everything

Sihanoukville, Cambodia

My journey is slowly coming to a close. I fly back to the US so early on the 24th that it'll essentially still be the 23rd. Meaning that with travel back to bangkok I really only have two free days left. So I decided to do what Gregory's do best and head to the water. After spending a couple days in Siem reap (detailed post coming soon) clambering over ancient ruins, almost shooting ak47's at an active Cambodian army base, and sampling some of their awesome nightlife, I thought that a last couple of days on the beach would be just what I needed. So I jumped on yet another night bus and high tailed it down to the Cambodian coastal town of sihanoukville. My original plan was to go out to Koh Rong, an almost deserted tropical island that sounded like paradise but I missed the last boat out for the day so I'm now on Otres beach and got lucky and found a little hotel that seems to put a pretty big focus on kiteboarding! So I'm doing the second thing Gregory's are good at; waiting for the wind to fill in.

Sunday, August 19, 2012

Blueberries for Jim!

When in Maine, you just have to do the Blueberries. So, after 2 days of Blueberry pancakes, 1 day of Blueberries and cream, I made Blueberry muffins with the rest.

Saturday, August 18, 2012

pmgregory shared an Instagram photo with you

Hi there,

pmgregory just shared an Instagram photo with you:


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(taken at Angkor Wat, Cambodia)

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

Picture of the day

It's hard to complain when you have a place like this all to yourself!!



Jim Gregory 

Maine,,,

Deb here.

What can I say? It's beautiful when you can see it and warm when it's not raining. When both coincide, it's spectacular!

Actually, it's great. Lots of whales and dolphin. Last night we were visited by a moma and her itty bitty baby. The baby's fin was nothing more than an apostrophe next to her! So tiny!

We are currently anchored in our own private cove. If you ever need to relax, come to Maine, but bring everything with you. No Internet and cell coverage is sporadic at best.

Deb

Friday, August 17, 2012

Still here in Maine

We dropped our three guest crew members off in Camden on Tuesday. The boat is very quiet for now, but my Mother join us in about ten days so we won't be lonely for long. 

We are slowly making our way East to Blue Hill to visit with friends sailing on the Atlantic Nationals and then plan to move on to Southwest Harbor to visit with fellow Mutiny crew member Ted Madera for a stay or two. 

Yesterday, was almost a total write off as it poured rain from start to finish. 

That is until I discovered a six-pack of Stowaway IPA in the local market (in cans!). This is a product of Baxter Brewery in Maine. I've never seen it before, but recommend it highly!!



Jim Gregory 

Welcome to Cambodia.

Finally made it to Siem Reap, Cambodia after another day long travel marathon. First the night bus to Bangkok, arriving at 5:30am and then almost directly onto the 7am van service to the Cambodian border. The border was a little sketchy with the van dropping us off at a "immigration office" which was basically the back room of a restaurant/convenience store where we were all sold tourist visas at basically double what they probably should have been. Then we were all shuttled to the border where lo and behold there was an extremely obvious "visa on arrival" building. Oh well, you live and you learn. But I'm here now, safe, happy and hopefully a little bit wiser.

pmgregory shared an Instagram photo with you

Hi there,

pmgregory just shared an Instagram photo with you:


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"Cambodia, only one more week left"
(taken at Siem Reap, Cambodia)

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Happy Birthday Chris!!

Happy Birthday Christopher!!  24 years old today. Wow. 

Congratulations. You mom and I are missing you today!  

Will try to call you, but AT&T must be losing the battle with Verizon here in Maine. Not much coverage for days now!!

Have a great day!!

Jim Gregory 

Trekking in Chiang Mai

We signed up for a two day, one night trek through the hills around chiang Mai a couple days ago. Parts were very touristic and formulaic but others were great. The food we were given and the hikes we went on were great, we slept right next to the river and had a nice campfire at night where the guides let us try their local rice whiskey and cheroots which are big cigars wrapped in a banana leaf instead of a tobacco leaf. But the downside was that bamboo rafting felt like a Disneyland ride and the elephant ride was a pretty big letdown (the elephants looked miserable and when one of them started to lag behind they looped a rope with a metal hook on it around his ear so that if he was too slow the rope would get tight and push the hook into the back of his ear). So overall it wasn't spectacular like the trek I did in Indonesia but for $35 I guess you get what you pay for.

Tonight I head back to bangkok and then immediately head to Siem Reap in Cambodia to go wander through the ruins of Ankor Wat and who knows what else.

It's been exactly five weeks since I left the states and I only have one left till I return so I have to make it count. Its hard to believe that I have been gone for so long, it's gone by so fast

-Patrick

Sunday, August 12, 2012

Tales from down east

Cruising in Maine is great, but we seem to have hit a classic period of fog and drizzle. Pretty grey with lots of down time to play with video....
Jim Gregory 

Rawr!

Saturday, August 11, 2012

I'm never playing UNO again

So I got on the night bus to chiang mai last night and luckily immediately met two German girls because what was supposed to be a 13 hour train ride arriving at 11:00am turned into an 18 hour marathon arriving at four pm. When we all woke up and found that we had around seven hours left we tried to make the best of it and started playing the only game they had, Uno, over and over again. But after playing a game that was made for six year olds for two hours straight we had to raise the stakes and say that the person who won the most games had to buy the first beer tower when we finally got into the city. So that's where we're heading now!

Friday, August 10, 2012

Chiang Mai tonight

I take the night train to chiang Mai in northern Thailand tonight, it leaves at 10pm and gets in at 1 in the afternoon tomorrow. I've been on the move a lot lately, trying to pack as much as I can into these last two weeks before I leave but I'm planning on staying a while in or around northern thailand before moving east into Laos.

Patrick

Sent from my iPhone

Thursday, August 09, 2012

pmgregory shared an Instagram photo with you

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pmgregory just shared an Instagram photo with you:


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"Lampuuk, Indonesia. Beautiful now but it was one of the places that was hit hardest by the 2004 tsunami. Locals said that the wave was twice as high as that house."

Thanks,
The Instagram Team

A very mellow evening

Playing 5 Crowns.

This is how...

Ita deals with a stressful delivery in the fog....

We are in Maine!

At least I think we are...



Jim Gregory 

Krabi, Thailand

I just got back from spending a great couple of days on the beautiful Railey peninsula. Did some kayaking and swimming during the day and at night watched the locals put on some amazing fire shows, I have some amazing photos on my camera that I'll try to put up soon. Now I'm on my way up to northern Thailand to do some exploring through the less developed areas that are home to the Thai hill tribes. Hopefully see some amazing temples, and some elephants since I still haven't seen one here.

Sunday, August 05, 2012

Thought for the Day

"When I was 5 years old my mother always told me that happiness was the key
to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I
grew up. I wrote down 'happy'. They told me I didn't understand the
assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life." 

- John Lennon

Bankok at night

Photo from a week ago, taken on the bankok canal,

Landed in Malaysia

Put new batteries in spot so that should be working again finally. My plan is to explore Georgetown, Malaysia for a day or two before heading up to Thailand again. Right now I know very little about Georgetown except that it's supposed to be one of malaysia's food mecca's. And that sounds pretty great right now since northern Sumatra was essentially 90% muslim and its been Ramadan for as long as I've been there so all the food shops have been closed all day and only open at night. Being able to eat normally again is going to be great!

Sent from my iPhone

Thursday, August 02, 2012

Huge Shark Swipes Fish Off Girl's Fishing Line! Scary! Must Watch!

I love this one:



Jim Gregory 

The Great Salt Pond

Just fooling around with some video tonight...



Jim Gregory 

Kopi luwak

The most expensive coffee in the world is apparently produced locally right here in the Aceh province of northern Sumatra. One of the workers at the dive shop started trying to sell us a bag that looked like it weighed around a pound for $30. Definitely didn't buy a bag but we did get a pot of it. And if you can forget about the process it has to undergo for a minute, it's actually very good.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

About halfway done with my trip

I know I need to continue on and not get stuck here for much longer but it's pretty damn hard to leave this place. The diving has been outstanding, the people are friendly, the foods cheap and delicious. I must be crazy to leave. But I've got one more dive today and then tomorrow I'll rent a motorbike and tour the island since the dive shops closed on fridays and I need to decompress before getting on a plane anyways. And I'll probably fly to Malaysia on Saturday. Decisions, decisions...

Bristol Rhode Island

I am visiting Bristol, RI today. Home of the Herreshodf Museum, the Americas Cup Hall of Fame, and the oldest 4th of July celebration in the USA. Note the color of the main roads center divide!!!



Jim Gregory