Hi Everyone,

Randal and I are safe, dry, and waiting out the bad weather in Illutuk Bay, Calauit Island, Busuanga. This is a very protected cove and one of the best typhoon anchorages in the Philippines. We are not in the direct path of the typhoon but are getting strong winds and rain. The seas outside the bay have to calm before we will leave so we may be here another week. There is not a cell phone tower with SMART, (our phone service) so we can just communicate with a very slow email which is transmitted through Brunei. Email goes through our single sideband radio which bounces off the atmosphere. Sun spots can block it and radio traffic can make it very slow. We are about 500 ft from shore where there are some small native homes. There are other similar homes dotted around the bay as well so we aren’t marooned out here alone. Small bancas go by and we wave and they wave. There is a wildlife preserve here and as soon as the weather is good enough we will go for a tour. While on Romblon Island we met a Brit, Tony Parkinson who helped establish the preserve when Marcos was president of the Philippines. It was originally a way to save threatened species. Tony is a very interesting man who can tell you about David Attenborough, Joy Adamson, Diane Fossey because he knew them. While on Romblon our guide took us to meet Tony and see the spectacular view from his home.

Our new, huge, wonderful anchor is doing a super job and we are making a giant doodle on the chart plotter as it captures the boat’s swings around on it. If I ever get to have wifi again, I’ll try to send a photo.

We are surrounded by the preserve lands and small mountains (blocking the wind) and, other than the wind, it is very quite. Randal and I have watched the last game of the 04 and 07 World Series that I have on DVD. We run the genset to generate power but use it sparingly though I have done laundry and will bake bread this morning. If we just had some fresh fruit and veggies it would be just grand!

This is definitely a lesson in weather. You do what it says! The sun is coming out!!!

Ru

We are on Romblon Island and in Romblon town. Romblon is known for its marble and we will go on a tour this morning to see some of the quarry/factories. Romblon hasn’t become a tourist destination yet and it’s very nice and the biggest place we have been since Subic. Weather has been lovely. We were invaded by young children Sunday morning just as we were in China. They stayed for cookies, Mountain Dew and to get flag bandanas. Sweet cute polite kids. In the afternoon boat friends Chris and Mylin drove us up to their lovely mountain home overlooking the bay and their sailboat. On our first day out from Puerto Galera we saw wonderful magical dolphins, me for the first time.
Got to go. Not sure when I can email again.
Ru

June 10, 2008

We left Sabang and took the one road that really leads anywhere; the ridge road back to Puerto Galera from Sabang. Many people take bancas to get between places along the coast and “driving” to Coco Beach we found out why. We turned off the ridge into the woods onto a bumpy dirt road. We stopped at a sign nailed onto a palm tree indicating Coco Beach was down a dirt path into the woods. Dante parked our red minitruck and we all got out. With Dante as our leader we started down the path into the woods towards Coco Beach.

Hi All,

Our equipment test went fine. We did a different kind of dive today, no tests, just float along with the underwater current. The tricky part was to follow our leader Jamie and not bang into any of the coral formations. But Jamie was a good leader and I trusted him. He had a job watching both Randal and me since we are still learning to stay at a specific level. Everyone is supposed to just follow the leader but he kept having to come back to get Randal or me to make sure where we were. I hadn’t cleaned my mask’s original film off well enough so my visibility wasn’t as good as it could have been. The current was moving us fast enough that you couldn’t really look long enough at anything so that was a bit disappointing. But all the gear worked well. After that we had to pack up all of the gear and get it back to DoraMac. Randal hired a small banca. There are no roads through Sabang so no way, by vehicle, to get the gear back to the one road out of town. The banca man, not much bigger than I am, carried most of the stuff onto the boat. Then he carried Randal piggyback onto the boat so Randal wouldn’t have to walk through the water in his socks and sandals. There was a ladder from the boat into the shallow water and he carried Randal to the point where he could step onto the ladder without walking through the water. It almost worked and looked very funny.

We started off back to DoraMac. Our first stop was at Coco Beach Resort to donate some of our “already read” books. We had met a very interesting Dutch man who has helped develop the resort’s coconut product line so that local families can earn a living making and packaging the products. I’ll write more about him when I continue the story of our adventures with Carol. Then we continued to DoraMac with one short stop for fuel to put into the banca’s small engine. When we got to DoraMac I was even more impressed with our banca driver who perfectly maneuvered his banca to the foot of our swim platform. He again carried most of the gear off his banca onto our boat. Randal paid him 300 pesos, 50 more than the 250 we had agreed on. It was totally worth it. (About $7.00)

As soon as we had gotten some of the gear settled, Randal put his back on and went under DoraMac to clean the prop. It took about 20 minutes since most of the gunk had been scrapped off in Subic. It was a bit disconcerting to have Randal down under the boat alone but I could see his bubble floating up to the surface. We had tied a line under the boat near the prop so he could pull himself to the surface if need be. But we had learned the basics and he was fine. And even though we had never learned to dive under objects which does take more training, the boat is not a large area, so okay.

Hanging to dry behind the cockpit.

Two tanks to use and 2 for spares

Now we just have to find someplace to store it all. That might be harder than the underwater mask removal!

Puerto Galera with Carol # 1

Randal is in the galley making us our first pineapple shake. I just tried it and you can almost imagine rum in it: it tastes just like one of those wonderful bar drinks with the little umbrella and cherries hanging from it. Yum! One day I’ll be brave enough to make us avocado shakes.

We just had the best weekend visit with our friend Carol Carino. She came to visit and she took us on a tour of Puerto Galera! We visited Escarceo Point Lighthouse, Coco Beach Resort, Tamaraw Falls, Calapan, Ponderosa Golf Course, White Beach and had a special breakfast and tour of The Moorings, a hotel and resort just up the hill from the Puerto Galera Yacht Club. Carol had stayed with us in Subic Bay when we were tied to the pier, but was afraid that the boat motion here would make her seasick. So she stayed at The Moorings and asked them to provide her with a car and driver. The “car” was a converted mini pickup truck with two benches set up in back. It was bright red inside and out, cute and actually quite comfortable. And we covered some really bumpy, hilly terrain. Between us, Carol and I took hundreds of photos. My favorite is the one where I made friends with a water buffalo! Carol took lots of photos of that and some video too. The pictures from the top of the old Escarceo Point Lighthouse are neat too. And then there are the ones from the VM restaurant in White Beach where Carol and I had really great Halo Halos. We saw beautiful scenery, ate too much food, and had an altogether wonderful time that was way too short.

Carol came Saturday late morning. Her driver, Michael, took her from Makati to Batangas where she caught a morning banca ferry to Puerto Galera.

After she checked into The Moorings and got settled she had her driver take her to Muelle Pier. Earlier in the morning Randal had gone to Sabang to pay for our Scuba outfits and was on the pier in the Rock N’Roll Café at the computer. He stayed there, but Carol took the service boat to DoraMac to bring us some vitamins. She had been kind enough to bring us a gift of Caltrate for me and Cardio vitamins for both of us. Carol wants us to stay healthy! About 11 she and I took the service boat back to the pier and we made our plan for the day. In trying to plan for Carol’s visit I had read about the Escarceo Lighthouse just outside of Sabang. Amazingly in our prior trips I hadn’t walked there. It is slightly uphill and about a mile out of Sabang the opposite direction from Puerto Galera. Carol’s driver Dante knew the area and took us there on our way to lunch in Sabang. The landscape and 360 view was lovely.

See my pictures;

Then it was back to Sabang and lunch at Portofino.

After lunch we went off on another adventure, to Coco Beach Island Resort. Coco Beach is between Sabang and Puerto Galera so was on our way home. It was supposed to be a nice place to swim so we thought we would check it out for another day. It was much more interesting than a simple resort. More like a socially responsible resort that was trying to maintain the environment and offering good work to local families. I’ll tell you about it next email.

Ruth Johnson

DoraMac