CATCHING UP

Anchor Position 11 59.7 N 120 11.7 E
Coron, Busuanga Is.

Our last entry was as we were awaiting the arrival of typhoon Bopha. Thankfully Bopha turned out to be a non event, at least weather wise, for us in Puerto Princesa. When Bopha made landfall on the island on Mindanao it lost most of it's power and once re-entering the Sulu sea to our east did not regenerate that lost power. In our anchorage we saw only winds to 28 knots.

What the threat of Bopha did cause was for us to make preparations for a major event. We actually moved to one of the Abonico yacht club moorings as in our anchored position we wanted to let out more scope on our anchor rode but due to other boats in the area it was not really possible. Next both headsail's were removed folded and stored. We wrapped a line around the main sail to further secure it under it's cover. All canvas shades were taken down. The outboard motor was taken off the dinghy along with the dinghy cover. To keep the dinghy from flying around it was filled with water. Everything that could not be put below was tied down, we were ready. Next was to sit and watch the various weather reports on the internet and wait. The arrival of Bopha was during the daylight hours of 5 December. We felt fortunate to have missed Bopha's full fury.

The result of the passing typhoon was to allow us to make our way further north to our present location approximately 160 miles northeast of Puerto Princesa without the wind on the nose. After passing the system caused first southwest and then variable winds along the coast of Palawan. The 6th of December was spent getting the boat ready to move again along with some last minute provisioning especially of fresh things.

December 7th we had a nice sail to North Verde Is. and a very protected anchorage. The next day it was back to motoring as we made our way to an anchorage at 10 32.614 N and 120 00.354 E behind a small island that was not even shown on our electronic chart program. There were actually 5 islands in the area not shown. The next day another 50 mile passage under "Miss Perky" power. It was during this passage that our primary navigation computer failed. I fired up our small notebook computer but it only is loaded with a different navigation program that I am not totally familiar with. After spending the previous night at an island that did not even appear on the electronic software we were a bit concerned. We did have paper charts of the area but they were of a rather large scale, useful BUT!! Next was to get out our ten year old computer named "psycho" for all the psychedelic color on it's screen. The screen has been water damaged so we use a monitor. Having not been out of it's case for six months "psycho" was back in service. One slight problem was "psycho" had not been updated with the latest tracks that we were using. Hey the early explorers sailed here with no charts, we should be able to move about with limited ones, you just use the old eyeballs. That night was spent at Cabulauan Is. 11 23.061 N and 120 05.064 E. For our last days trip here to Coron I was able to load the tracks into the anchorage area and we had another pleasant motor boat trip.

Coron is a small town, though the largest on Busuanga Is., after a peaceful night at anchor our first priority was to locate someone to look at our primary computer. Did I mention that most things on it were not backed up!! We were given a shop name by someone from one of the local resorts and dropped the computer off to see what could be done. The technician, Mark, who I would guess was self taught immediately started work on it. He said that he could down load our info and save it and hopefully then re-format the disk. As it turns out the hard drive is corrupted. A new drive has been ordered from Manila and we've been told about two weeks.

For now we'll enjoy some of the things to do around Coron along with the usual boat stuff.

----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com