Out of Puerto, Finally!!!
We have been in Puerto Princesa so long we nearly grew barnacles to the sea floor. Eight months was really too long, even though Puerto is a nice place and the yacht club is very friendly. Oren went to work in Israel and visit his family for three and a half months, and came back just in time for a wonderful Christmas buffet prepared by Cissy at the club.
The Armenian ambassador even found time to visit…..
After recovering from working 12 hours a day in Israel, Oren decided we really needed a new dinghy, and we were lucky to be given plans for a Spindrift 10 foot sailing dinghy.We worked really hard making it, and we are really proud of the result. It is actually a real boat, not just a cupboard on its side! One advantage of constructing things in the Philippines is that plywood is cheap. We had a good place to work too, as John and Cissy kindly let us use the yacht club facilities. Rocky, who probably works harder than anyone at keeping the club on its feet, gave us tips on how to do tricky bits of fibreglass and was generally very helpful. His lovely little daughter, whose nickname is Mouse, is going to be a top model one of these days!
By the way,sorry for all the fiberglass sandings in your laundry, guys! Orens father kindly brought us an old sail and we managed to sail really well in El Nido.
At the start of February Orens brother Uri and his father came out to visit us. After a quick tour of north Luzon they arrived in Puerto, and then travelled up to El Nido while we sailed round and met them there. We had a good time sailing round Bacuit bay, visiting all the beautiful islands. We found a free mooring at the entrance of the lagoon on Miniloc and stayed the night. It was a good place to stay, because apart from being very pretty it was also protected on nearly all sides, and when a strong wind and a squall blew up overnight we were glad of that.After restocking with pork chops, chicken legs and plenty of beer we went down to Pinasail island, and found a reasonable anchoring spot on Lagen island, just opposite the cathedral cave. We sailed our new dinghy over to the cave, and found it was high enough to enter with the mast! There isn’t much to see there though, its just a little cave. We didn’t feel safe staying overnight, so we set off back to Corong Corong, which is the anchorage south of El Nido, and had a great sail with the Amihan wind blowing through the islands and scaring us to death with sudden gusts, then whipping round to come from a different angle altogether. Good practice after so long at anchor.
A few days later we set sail for Coron with our temporary crew. The wind was against us all the way, and the best thing we can say is that it wasn’t too strong, so we managed to motor all the way, something we wouldn’t usually do, but with visitors you can’t really sit at sea for weeks waiting for wind and tacking. We did manage to find anchorages each night, and only touched one reef when a strong current pushed us onto it as we were leaving an anchorage. Uri jumped into the water and guided us out, and we didn’t have any damage apart from scratches on the keel, which is used to it.
Coron is nice, as a town nicer than El Nido and a bit cheaper. Water is available on the jetty for 5 pesos a jerry can and there is a good market. The mud crabs are particularly good, and I cooked four big ones for dinner one night. I did them in a garlic sauce in the oven after boiling them and cleaning them, and they were wonderful. This was the first time Uri and Orens father had eaten crabs, and I am sure they will be the best crabs they taste for a long time!
Coron anchorage is off Coron town, but Coron town isn’t actually on Coron. Confused? You won’t be, after the next episode of … no, but really, Coron island is across the bay. Why? I guess that the local tribe, which owns Coron island, doesn’t want anyone traipsing about all over it without paying, so they moved the town to Busuanga. To visit Coron island you have to pay, and it really adds up, since you have to pay for each beach, lagoon and whatever. One of the locals told us the government is cracking down on this now, because it is actually unlawful, but since this is the Philippines, good luck with that. We took a bangka tour and visited one of the lakes, which are brackish and have a few little fish, the skeleton wreck, which is the shallowest of the many wrecks in the bay and can be reached snorkelling, several reefs and a nice island where we ate lunch. The wrecks are all WWII Japanese cargo ships which were all sunk on the same day in a bombing raid. We haven’t dived to any of the deep ones, but there doesn’t seem really to be much left, and even the fish aren’t spectacular since there is so much fishing here. The reefs also are mostly dead, probably because of dynamite fishing in the past. The one place which was very nice was the fjord, which is about in the middle of the top end of Coron island. The limestone walls are really nice, and there is a temperature difference in the water- about a meter down it is warm, and the top layer is quite cold. We ended the day in the Seven Islands area, which is a bit better than the rest of the reefs because it is protected by armed guards! Really, 24 hours a day!
Now we are sitting in Coron bay, Uri and Orens father have taken the ferry to Manila and may be home by now. We have seen Celuan, whom we know from Puerto- they are staying round Coron for the next few months, and Arnak, whose track we used entering Coron. We are thinking about going round to Conception, from there to Busuanga and out to Apo reef, but we will probably think about it for a while, if I know us.
By the way, sorry to all those people who follow the blog and haven;t had an update for so long, especially Robert, whoever you are! It’s just a bit depressing to write an update and say you are in the same place, not doing anything new! Anyway, we should have updates more regularly for the next few months, at least.