Monday 6th April 2015
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| Sunset clouds over Grace Island |
We left Coron very
early in the morning, as planned, and had a lovely few hours cruising along on
satin seas, with just a gentle zephyr to help us glide. And then…it all changed and we spent the next
many many hours battling into big waves and wind going in just the wrong
direction.
Pete noticed that
the dinghy was getting a lot of water splashed into it and he wanted to bail it
out. I was very firm about this – he was
not even to THINK about leaning dangerously over the back of the boat with a
bailing bucket! But…he was not to be
deterred and he spent a long time working out a cunning plan…a de-topped beer
can, carefully taped onto the boat hook and…
he was able to
bail out the dinghy without any dangerous leaning!
12 degrees 11.143N
121 degrees 01.991E
Grace Island resort anchorage
7.2m depth
Sheltered
At about 5pm we
arrived at a very safe anchorage, right in the middle of Grace Island Resort,
which I had not expected at all – I thought we were going to a totally deserted
bay!
He was very concerned that we might anchor in the mouth of the bay, where big waves and big winds would cause us grief. “You are better to come and be hiding around the corner,” he said, leading the way.
We were very weary
but not too weary to drink a birthday toast to:
Angus Wakefield, very much enjoying his first year of
high school
Will Harmsen, who has just come 5th in the national swimming championships (200m butterfly)
Nicole Darcey, just back from a two-week Girls Gone Riding bike trip around Sri Lanka, raising money for local schools
Tuesday 7th April
11 degrees 56.757N
121 degrees 55.690E
Boracay anchorage
Depth 10.2m
Another long day
battling against the waves and the wind.
We had the headsail up most of the way but this only made it possible to
go in the…wrong direction…
Our intention had
been to stop halfway, at what looked like a sheltered anchorage… There were just
a few comments, to go with the co-ordinates: lots of coal dust from the mine…
Indeed! We could see great billowing eddies
of noxious dust surrounding the anchorage so, we gave it a miss. I could just imagine how very dirty 2XS would
be, how miserable we would be, how I would cough…
So we kept on tacking
and trying until eventually we gave up, took the sail down, revved the engines
up and just powered our way straight to Boracay.
We got here at
5.30pm, just in time to be able to see the reefs, the depths, the
shallows. Thank goodness! It would have all been very tiresome in the
dark…
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| Sail chutes in the sunset |
Boracay is, I
think, the most touristy place in the Philippines. It is very beautiful, with long white
beaches, and it is VERY busy. We are
anchored amongst a lot of other boats,
and there is a constant stream of activity going right past. I did my swim this morning and bobbed up at
the end of each lap under the boat to see yet another banka yacht, banana boat,
jetski, whizz past metres from 2XS.
Screams of joy rend the air as various rubber craft get towed through
the sea and what seems to the passengers to be dizzying speeds. It made for an interesting swim with lots of
wave action… I didn’t dare go away from 2XS at all; I would have been bonked on
the head within seconds!
Wednesday 8th April
Today we are hoping to find a safe place to take the dinghy in to land so we can have a closer look at this happy holiday island.
Michael on the JetSki is lovely. Pete is ingenious. You are awesome x
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