Rushing through the Philippines

After a deep sleep we woke to a lovely Sunday morning, but there wasn’t going to be any chance of customs being open, we hired a Trike, which is basically a motorbike with a sidecar welded on. The whole construction seemingly made of re-bar. It was a one hour ride into Peurto Princessa (PP) where we were very pleased to meet up with Ian and Marilyn from Songbird, who had set off the same time as us from Malaysia, but had been more daring and gone up the east side of Palawan, spitting in the faces of the pirates, and they were able to sail right into PP. We had lunch at the delightful PP Abalinco Yacht club, and then hit the Mall for some real bread, wine, drinks etc. Then an arduous 90 minute ride back to the boat in the trike, and at the harbour/jetty I was able to purchase 60 litres of diesel from the corner shop which would get us to our next port of El Nido, I hoped.

I’m going to be brief about the following days, we have been racing through the islands here hoping to get to Japan on time, and my illness didn’t help. I could write pages on each location we visited, but we need to come back and spend at least one whole season, or year here. It’s a great country. However, I have to get working on my passage plan for Japan, I don’t have a lot of internet, or time, so briefly… (Pics to follow)

From PP we shot up to Jibboom bay, partly because it was a convinient stop, but also because I loved the name, it was a very secluded, and the perfect getaway, if it wasn’t for the sand flies that wreaked havoc on our legs. The next morning we left and arrived in Corong Corong with is a bay next to El Nido, full of tourists and quite a crazy place. I was beginning to get the feeling that Filipinos like to party. We stayed 2 nights there to recuperate a little then off again to Puerto Galera overnight, the place is gorgeous, we anchored as the yacht club mooring buoys were all taken by there easter regatta. We had four nights there and loved the place, we restocked on fuel and food/drink, and checked into the country proper. We were now legal and hadn’t had to pay any ‘coffee money’ yet.

From there we sailed to Subic Bay, doing this 24 hour passage overnight. However the wind was so good to us, we arrived in the middle of the night, 2AM, so we anchored off the coast till daylight then went into the bay, hoping for a marina berth in one of the two marinas there. Both were full due to a big regatta taking place, but we picked up a free mooring outside the lighthouse bar/restaurant. A great place to provision with huge well stocked American style supermarkets. After one night there we slipped are mooring and headed north doing another overnighter to San Fernando La union, where we are now. We went to checkout of the country this afternoon, but found their is a holiday today and they are shut. So tomorrow morning we check out and head for Japan.

Paul Collister

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