SOMETHING NEW

Moored Position 13'30.332 N  120'57.224 E
Puerto Galera, Mindoro

It seems I have been a bit remiss in my postings as it's over a month since the last update of our adventures. As you may notice we have been on the move north and are now securely moored in Puerto Galera at the northern end of the island of Mindoro here in the Philippines.





MOORING FIELD AND LOCAL BANKA'S

 To back up a bit we were last in Coron the island of Busuanga some 90 miles to the south of our present location. We greatly enjoyed the area visiting several different anchorages and once again managed to get in warm clear water to enjoying snorkling the lovely coral reefs. We also managed to get stuck in the Busuanga area for longer than anticipated, this was caused by several different reasons mainly waiting for mail and a proper weather window. Weather was the biggest factor as our next intented stop was straight into the northeast monsoon. As we looked at various forecasts our window of opportunity looked good over the time frame of the last days in February and first of March. Our original plan was a late afternoon departure from an anchorage on the northwest corner of Busuanga and then a overnight run to the Paluan anchorage. This plan was cancelled after talking to another yachtie who had just experienced a tramatic armed robbery in that anchorage. On to plan B. A straight overnight passage from the Puerto del Sol anchorage to Puerto Galera.

We departed early on 27 February for our intended 135 mile passage. We knew starting that it would be mainly a motor and hoped for light headwinds. The first 100 miles were as predicted and a full moon made the late night watches more enjoyable. The last 35 miles were not so fun!! Once rounding the top of Mindoro island we were forced to beat into a 20 to 25 knot headwind with short choppy 4 foot seas. We made progress tacking back and forth close in along the shore where the seas were a bit smaller. Finally at 4 pm after 14 hours of bashing to make the last 35 miles we entered Puerto Galera.

The Puerto Galera yacht club had a transient mooring available and we were assisted on to it by their service boat. Next a glass of wine for Kathy and a tot of rum for me before a restfull night secured to a mooring ball.

BUSUANGA PHOTOS

Anchored Coron Town

Another day here in Coron Town, Busuanga island. There was early morning laundry, running the little Honda generator and making some water. Next was a dinghy trip to town, more provisioning, a trip to the post office to mail a letter, a visit to the computer repair guy as we were having a problem copying some music, more petrol for the dinghy. BUSY BUSY BUSY!!!

Here are a selection of photos taken here in Coron or at the Al Faro resort.

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LOOKS TO BE A STERILE SPOT TO HAVE WORK DONE

 

THE STEEP WALK TO AL FARO

AN OLD ALBATROSS

MEXICAN TRAIN

JIMMY AL FARO'S PROPRIETOR

KATHY DOING A HAIRCUT FOR ONE OF THE AL FARO GIRLS WITH

NANITA JIMMY'S WIFE WATCHING

              THE SCORBOARD WITH TEAMS FOR THE BOCCI BALL TOURNAMENT

THE GAMES BEGIN

 

OFFICAL JIMMY AT WORK

CELEBRATING THE LAST SUNSET OF 2012

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SAFARI

Anchored 11° 59.7 N 120° 11.6 E
Coron, Busuanga Is.

Today finds us back in the anchorage in Coron. It was time to restock the cupboards and take care of some internet projects such as taxes and a blog update with photos. Here I am able to add the photos but it is terribly slow. So it's writing using our Sailmail provider and then once on the blog go back and add the photos through the edit process.

We have just returned from a week of cruising around several different anchorages of the Calamain group of islands. We even managed to enjoy a short safari while visiting Illulluk Bay and Calauit island. There we anchored at 12° 16.16 N 119° 53. 08 E. In the late 1970's the Philippine and Kenyon governments came to an agreement and three species of African animals were imported to what is now the Calauit Safari park. Originally there were fifteen each of Zebra, Giraffe and Eland antelope. All three species have thrived and each now numbers about thirty even though the original group has died off. The park is also home to some 700 of the small Calamain deer along with crocodiles, snakes, porcupines, monkeys and other indigenous animals. Some of the smaller animals such as the monkeys, porcupines and Palawan bearcats are kept in enclosures for viewing, though only for a month at a time and then released back in to the wild as a new group are brought in to the view areas.

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ILLULLUK BAY

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CALAMAIN DEER

BABY ZEBRA A WEEK OLD

GIRAFFE

ELAND ANTELOPE



PORCUPINES

WILD BOAR

PHILIPPINE SEA EAGLE

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MOVING ABOUT

Anchored Position 12°10.67 N 119°52.31 E
Gotub Anchorage, Busuanga Is.

As the new year 2013 has begun we are enjoying moving around here in the area of Busuanga Island. This area is referred to as the Calamian group and is made up of many island along with coral reefs.

After departing Coron on Boxing Day with the threat of tropical storm Quinta we spent the next week in the sheltered D'Pearl Bay. There we enjoyed the use of a mooring which had been installed by the Puerto del Sol resort and made an effort to visit both their restaurant and bar in repayment for the mooring use. In another part of the bay was the Al Faro resort run by a Swiss, Jimmy and his Philippine wife Nanita. They run a wonderful resort located high on a hill jutting out into the bay. The location provides spectacular sunsets. Here Kathy and I were fortunate to be the victors in an international bocci ball tournament. The field included both resort guests and yachties. Countries represented included Swiss, Norwegian, Australian, Botswanian and Kathy and I from the USA. I think perhaps our several years of Bocci ball on the beaches of Tenecatita, Mexico provided an advantage.

New years day found us off back to Coron town to reprovision. The refrigerator was bare and we needed other staples such as a propane refill, fresh fruit and veggies along with necessities such as beer and rum. January 4 th found us once again headed back to D'Pearl Bay. We found ourselves on the same mooring. Another benefit of the Al Faro resort is they have wi-fi and we could receive it on the boat. It is not speedy but does allow us to keep updated on weather, news and sports. Here in a country that gets lots of rainfall we are in the dry season and have had very little and our watermaker cannot really provide enough for laundry. Kathy was very happy to find a local woman to do some washing for her. It was done in a stream and came out very clean.

Another week quickly past watching the sunsets, enjoying the pool and more bocci ball at Al Faro. On 10 January we finally managed to pry ourselves away and headed off to visit some other places. First was Calumbuyan Is. just two miles due east of Puerto del Sol. We had been told that there was very good snorkeling on the surrounding coral reef and even moorings to use. Traveling to Calumbuyan involved a bit of what we call "the pearl farm cha cha" or dodging vast areas of floating buoys. There were eight mooring balls in the area but none that we thought would be satisfactory for overnight stay. The reef looked nice so we did secure to a mooring for several hours to have an underwater view. It was great to once again have clear warm water and lots of varieties of live coral. After our swim we headed off to Popototan Is., 11°59.53 N 119°51.32 E. here we were once again able to use a mooring ball provided by the Coral Bay resort. In Potototan we enjoyed visiting the resort and another nice snorkel in the warm water.

Yesterday the 12th of January we moved along again, this time going up the west coast of Busuanga Is. to our anchorage here. This once again is a very protected spot and would make a good typhoon refuge. We'll sit here today. This morning we did have some welcome light rain to wash the decks of salt and we're enjoying a quiet day with the most difficult chore being running the watermaker.

An interesting thing that we have noticed in our short time here in the Philippines is the lack of other cruising yachts. Yes we had a group of perhaps 25 yachts when in Puerto Princesa but since we have seen very few. As we are now in the part of the year that is least typhoon prone we have been a bit surprised
by the small number of other yachts we've shared anchorages with.

Weather permitting, meaning a sunny day more than anything, we will move along again tomorrow. I say that good sunshine is important due to the many coral reefs that abound in the area and without good light are difficult to see.

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A CHRISTMAS SURPRISE

Anchored position 12° 01.3 N 119° 58.9 E
D'Pearl Cove, Busuanga Is.

Our Christmas surprise came in the form of a weather change. Being here in the Philippines where tropical storms and typhoons occur on a regular basis we make sure to check the weather reports and forecasts several times every day. We had been watching an area of low pressure off to our westward in the same area where typhoon Bopha had formed. The weather check Christmas morning had the low moving in our direction but with winds in only the 30 knot range. In the tropics things can change rapidly, Christmas evening the low had now turned in to tropical storm Quinta. We were now looking at the possibility of quiet a bit more wind and that Quinta could further develop in to a Typhoon. The good news was that the system was still a good distance away giving us the opportunity to check forecasts the next morning and then make a decision on either staying in Coron or moving to a more secure location.

Boxing Day arrived and Quinta was still on course to pay us a visit. With winds of 40 plus knots and higher gusts we decide to move to here in what seems to be called D'Pearl cove. The trip from Coron was made in calm seas and the 16 miles took about 3 hours. There are two resorts here one "Vista del Sol" has installed a number of moorings that are free to use. Your payment for the mooring is in the form of patronizing the resorts restaurant. Here we saw very little of Quinta, some rain and gusty wind but nothing more.

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UP AND RUNNING, SORT OF!!!

Anchored Position 11 59.7 N 120 11.7 E
Coron, Busuanga Island

Our broken computer is once again up and running with a new 500 GB hard drive. Rather than taking two weeks to get the hard drive it took only four days. Of course that was only the beginning! Mark, the local computer repair technician installed the drive and Windows XP but said that we could load the necessary drivers either from a disk that came with the computer or the internet. It turned out that we had no disk from when we had purchased the computer and trying to figure out the drivers and load then was near impossible. Back to Mark. This time he deleted the XP that he had installed and re-installed a version from a disk that had been given to us by our friend Phil in Thailand, thanks Phil. I explained the driver problem to him and he went through and installed all the necessary Toshiba drivers, except for sound, that was left for us.

The next day I began with the sound driver. I located it on the internet. The download only took TWO HOURS!!! We now had sound and it was time to then load our navigation program, radio email etc. The process was slow, thankfully I received help from an old friend, Dave on the sailing vessel Lightspeed, and finally managed. Anything such as Picasa or a security program that is necessary to load from the internet takes hours at the speed we receive here. Kathy now wanted to work on her Itunes music. Thankfully she had her whole library on her Ipod, now to get it also on the computer. As one would imagine this has not been a simple process and one in which she has spent the last three days trying to figure out. From what we understand Itunes only allows you to do this with music you have purchased, all the music we have has been loaded from disks which we still carry about. Kathy is now trying various solution from the internet but once again we are running in to two hour download times and then after installation told we also need something else. Any comment on a solution would be welcomed.

Being here in the land of typhoons we keep a daily weather check and are now watching a system though very disorganized at this time that is moving toward us. The weather gurus are not predicting a typhoon at this time but some weather models say we could have 30 plus knots of wind here as the low pressure system passes. There is a very sheltered anchorage about 15 miles away to which we may move tomorrow.
meanwhile we're just sort of hanging out and watching the little green bars move as the downloads continue.

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CORON

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

As the northeast monsoon has returned we are glad to be sitting here rather than beating our way in to the wind. The winds calm at night but return during the day. Currently we have 15 to 18 knots with some gusts in the 20's. We are anchored directly off town with about a one half mile dinghy ride to the "Sea Dive" restaurant where we secure our dinghy while ashore. There is a more wind protected anchorage in a cove nearby but it would greatly increase the travel distance to shore and with the winds blowing make for a wet ride. So unless the wind gets to uncomfortable we'll remain here.

As I said before Coron town is quite small, the main attraction to the area is the scuba diving especially wreck diving. There are at least ten Japanese warships and merchant ships sunk by American planes during WWII in the area. The wrecks vary in depth from shallow to deep, so something for all abilities. As the only diving I still do is cleaning the boat bottom, I'll leave the wrecks to others. As our only real exploration around town was to find someone to work on the computer we're not to sure about the quality of provisioning. There is an open market that we have yet to visit, though we did get some nice mangoes at a small fruit stand the other day. It would be a wet ride to shore today so perhaps manana.

For the past two years we have spent the Christmas season in either a Muslim or Buddhist country where there is not much of a holiday atmosphere. Now back in a mostly Christian country it's nice to once again see decoration and lighted trees. Before leaving Puerto Princesa we got to see the annual tree lighting that included a 45 minute fireworks show. Here in Coron we can see one of the lighted trees from our anchorage. We do carry some decorations aboard Kathy tries to buy a new ornament in the various countries where we have spent Christmas's past. Kathy has our mini tree and others about the saloon and we get a daily dose of Christmas music.

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OUR MINI TREE

 

ORNAMENTS FROM OUR TRAVELS

CORON TOWN

 

 

 

                   Our hard drive hookrd up to his computer and he's watching the readout

 

YOUR CHOICE MANGO FARM OR ISLAND

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