MOVING

Anchored Position 12°16.245 N 122°37.546 E
Sibuyon Island, Philippines

We have finally made our departure from Puerto Galera enroute to the boat yard and lots of projects in Port Carmen on the island of Cebu.
We departed early on Thursday, getting underway in very little light but enough along with our electronic charting tracks to make our way clear of any reef areas. Our destination was the island of Maestro de Campo a distance of approximately 70 nautical miles. As we are now in the extremely light wind season here we knew the trip would be made under power from the faithful "Miss Perky" our 64 HP Perkins engine. She is old, has lots of hours on her, leaks oil but just keeps running along. Another reason for mostly relying on "Miss Perky" was for most of what should be 7 to 10 daily hops through various islands and anchorages is our course going southeast and the current winds being mainly from that direction. The dreaded noserly.

Our first day thirteen and a half hours of motor sailing arriving in the anchorage 12°54.272 N 121°42.486 E just prior to dark. We dropped anchor in 72 feet with just a scope of 3 to 1 but felt OK due to the calm predicted conditions.

Day two found us leaving before our intended time as we were awake and figured we may as well just get going. Another motoring day to the island of Romblon. Here the anchorage was even deeper 90 to 100 feet but the local Romblon yacht club has installed some moorings and we were able to get a free one for the night.

Today, day three, was another early start. It seems we get up with the sun at 0500 hours, so after some coffee you may as well get moving and then relax in the afternoon when anchored. Our first four hours we hummed along at almost 6 knots over a smooth glass like surface. We then could see a disturbance on the waters surface and within 5 minutes our speed dropped to the low 4 knot range and we had 18 to 20 knots of wind on the nose. Thankfully there was only a few miles to our intended anchorage but the question was would we truly be able to anchor in the charted thirty feet of water and how much protection would the small point of land at the end of Sibuyun Is. really offer. On arrival we were happy! The anchorage, 12°16.245 N 122°37.546 E, depth was indeed as shallow as we had been told, the point of land offered plenty of protection and the wind speed dropped to about 10 knots.

A positive as we have been moving along has been the connectivity of our newly acquired "smart phone" allowing us to receive internet weather along with mail and Kathy's Facebook. It seems if there is a cell tower in sight we're able to connect, that is until I tried to write this blog edition and include google earth photos of our anchorages but hey Kathy's Facebook is working.

Tomorrow we continue on, for now it's time for my ration of rum.

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