All posts by Ruth

Tamaraw Falls Puerto Galera Adventure Continued

July 16, 2008 Ruth

July 16th Wednesday, 3 pm
Hi Everyone,

I hope to email this some time today or tomorrow morning. Just depends when it actually gets finished. Randal’s computer is still out of commission so we share, 75/25 because he does lots of boat work on the computer. He is off doing boat chores at a super marine hardware store. We have a very thorough boat cleaner here so I am supposedly supervising. We chat, I type, we have a cold drink and chat, I email some more and check on the All-Star game, Go J.D. Drew!! Sox, keep it up!

I’m back tracking to our Puerto Galera adventure with Carol.
Tamaraw Falls (Tam’ a raw the raw at the end rhymes with cow)

The very first page of our Philippine Rough Guide is the title page. The backside of that page is a full page photo of Tamaraw Falls. “The mother of all cascades here is the mighty Tamara Falls, 30 minutes by jeepney outside Puerto Galera and not far off the road to Calapan. Here cool mountain water plummets over a precipice and into a natural pool and a manmade swimming pool.”
My 3 favorite things about Tamaraw Falls: 1. Watching Carol climb everywhere all over the falls to take photos of Randal and me. 2. Tamaraw Falls is named for the small, native and endangered water buffalo.

3. I finally had my photo taken on a water buffalo!

I never said they were real! It was a lovely spot. If we hadn’t had other fun things planned we would have gotten into the water ourselves. There is a natural pool and a man made pool. But after several photos we climbed back up to the road, got back into the car and continued onto our journey. We had 2 more stops. Ponderosa Golf Resort and White Beach!

Malaysia, Philippines

Island Cruising

July 14, 2008 Ruth

Hi Everyone,

I might have fixed my Outlook, so this is from me. It will take a bit to catch up and finish our Puerto Galera adventures with Carol. But here are a few photos of our stops along the way between Illultuk Bay where we waited out Typhoon Frank and Kota Kinabalu. I still want to send photos of Romblon and Puerto Princessa because we spent longer than an evening in both places and liked both. I will also do a separate email about Illultuk Bay and all of its stories. If you want to know what the area around the Sutera Marina, Golf and Country Club looks like, picture West Palm Beach. That’s what Carol suggested from the photos of the marina she saw on the web. Much different from the small islands with just fishing huts. But I really enjoyed our time at those beautiful spots; so cool, quiet and remote. www.suteraharbourclub.com is the marina’s web site.

So here are some random photos of our island anchorages. I have made them small so they will send

Not sure if you can see the black specks in the water. They are the floats from the pearl farms. Row after row after row!

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. -.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.- Just rows like that parallel to each other with breaks along the way so you could make a tricky turn to work your way through the rows. You could go the length of them but not cross the lines between the points. The breaks saved us from going maybe miles our of our way following the length of the row. One day we did have to go way around, that was our first encounter with them. “Dumaran Passage needs care, but is feasible in good light.” That was the best that was written about the passage through the pearl farms there. Other guides and especially word of mouth were less kind! I’ll look at pearls differently from now on, that’s for sure.

This is what a squall looks like. You can see them coming and prepare. You can change course a bit and miss them. It takes about 10 minutes to close everything up (if you rush) and 3 minutes for the squall to go by. Actually we passed this squall off to our starboard so didn’t have to deal with it.

This was the weather we were lucky enough to have most of the time. Flat seas and sun. We usually ran about 6.5 knots. Our last week before getting to KK, we had wind in our face and rolling seas and averaged about 5 knots!

This is our North Verde Island anchorage. Just a few fish farms and huts and us. It is the first place that “smelled” like New Bedford and my idea of how the sea should smell.

Some other fishermen who waved and smiled for my camera.

Same island looking at the back of the bay.

Sunset! One of my favorite anchorages!!!

Philippines

Tara Island

July 14, 2008 Ruth

July 14th: 7:30pm Kota Kinabalu

Hi Everyone,

We stopped at Tara Island shortly after we had left Romblon. It was one of my favorites. It inspired me to paint! I have to admit that most of our stops are running together in my mind. They were all pretty similar to me so I am sure they are impossible for you to distinguish. But the images are pretty so I am send on some photos. I am send the emails I can do quickly. The remainder of the Puerto Galera Adventure, Romblon, Illultuk Bay:Safari Park, Coron Town and Puerto Princessa were multi-day stops so it will take me longer to write about them. In the meantime, more island photos.

My interpretation of Tara Island. There were kids playing, dogs playing, men in bancas, women and babies scavenging from the surf. There was no wifi, cell phone service or the obnoxious blaring kareoke (which I still can’t spell.) It was just charming.

Surly the gods live behind those clouds!

When you see how the clouds, lightning, stars, and sea appear in such vast space it’s easy to understand why all of the early myths explaining creation and nature were imagined.

Malaysia

Hello from Kota Kinabalu

July 13, 2008 Ruth

Hi Everyone,

July 13, Sunday 2:17 pm

Randal and I arrived in KK yesterday afternoon about 3:30pm. Our last 4 or 5 days of cruising have been pretty rolling and our speed averaged maybe 5.2 knots. 55 mile days took almost 10 hours! Even though you mostly sit, it’s tiring especially when we are underway just past 6 am each day to get to our anchorages in enough light to see if there are any reefs we need to avoid. Some anchorages were nearly as rolling as the trip itself and some were perfect, with no one there but us. Randal could shower on the swim platform and not embarrrass himself or anyone else. That was Teluk Lung where we put the dingh down and explored and snorkeled and had a wonderful dinner of salmon patties and fried pototoes!

Now we are Kota Kinabalu where you can’t hang your laundry out to dry on the boat and there are pages of rules about everything. It is lovely and means to stay that way, hence the rules. Everyone is friendly and helpful. A kind Irishman named Brian led Randal and me to the free shuttle bus and then showed us the local mall. We were there yesterday to get money and today after we made the required visit to immigration. Immigration was very helpful and informal.

Now back at the boat, Randal’s computer seems to have crashed and the main saloon AC won’t work. Our other electronics, bow thruster, anchor light and flood lights seem to be on the fritz. Just part of cruising apparently.

The wifi here is free but seems slow at times. I will try to do photos when I can. Who could believe I would miss the Subic Bay wifi??!!!

Today we took a taxi from the yacht club to Immigration. Our driver going out was an elderly Chinese man. Our driver coming back was an elderly Muslim man. That apparently is KK. And both drove on the left side of the street with the steering wheel on the right side of the car.

So we have gone from anchorages where we were the only noise and light for miles to being in an upscale, modern, city.

Oh, and thank goodness the Sox are doing well. Last I knew they were 4 games out! Go Sox!!

Uncategorized

Hello from Puerto Princessa

July 4, 2008 Ruth

Hi Everyone,

Happy 4th of July. 7:15 am

We are anchored at Puerto Princessa midway down the east side of Palawan Island. We have officially checked out of the Philippines and will be on our way to Kota Kinabalu in Malayasia. It will take several cruising days and anchorages. We have learned much about anchorages and anchoring and pearl farming! We had to zig zag our way through hundreds and hundreds of rows of pearl farms on our way through the Dumaran Strait. Long story that will be easier to understand when I can ever send photos.

The Yacht Club here is very small and very friendly. Met two other cruising couples who have just come from Indonesia where we are heading. They gave us helpful information.

Today we will finish gathering supplies and are hoping to purchase cell phones that will allow us to use them with our computers to have wifi in Malaysia and Indonesia. That would be great. Apparently loading the program onto the computer is a nightmare. We’ll see.

We stopped at several anchorages on our way to PP; places that no one goes other then the yachtie we just met. Just us, a few fishermen in bancas, some small huts on shore and all the stars in the universe. Except for Orion’s Belt that can’t be seen in this latatude. At least I can’t find it. It would be over our house in Roanoke some point every night.

Puerto Princessa has about 120,000 people! There are coffee shops, book stores, a large supermarket with no recognizeable cookies. Very big, but our trike driver takes us where we need to go. Very helpful too.

Actually my only concern is for my Red Sox. Carol keeps me posted daily and perhaps gettin Sox scores from a New Yorker is not so good. But no gloating from her; the Yanks are doing worse. One day she followed the Sox and the Rays for me so I would really know what was happening. Not sure what we will do without our daily text chats! We will have phones again; new sim cards in Malayasia will mean a new phone number. Technology is great!

So that’s it. Hope I can send this if I am still connected.

From Puerto Princessa

Ruth Johnson on DoraMac

Philippines

Coron

June 27, 2008 Ruth

Hi Everyone,

5:49 pm Thursday June 27

We were safe and snug in Illultuk Bay, Calauit Island Busuanga. Only problem was that we ran out of fruit and veggies but had plenty of everything else. I made bread and brownies! Our last two nights we had dinner with Carol and Brian who are cruisers from New Zealand. They had fruit and veggies so we contributed the meat and wine and brownies. They came Monday and we all toured the Safari Park together. It was great company and we had fed some animals. When we get to somewhere that has wifi and we have lots of time, maybe I can send some photos finally.

We will spend tomorrow in Coron.11′ 59″ 751 N 120′ 11″ 899 E are the coordinates.

For everyone who worried, sorry! Our friend Carol who lives in Manila had us covered!

Uncategorized

Fueling the boat

June 17, 2008 Ruth

Fueling the Boat

The price was right and the fuel dock was just down the river. So Monday Randal and I went to fill up. Hashim, one of the marina supervisors came with us. We got 1500 litres @ 1.88 ringits per litre (393.3 gallons @ $2.03 US per gallon = $804.49 ) Only Hong Kong, back in July 2007, was cheaper. The most we have ever paid at one time was in Subic Bay. We took on 1,321 gallons and paid a total of $3,579.91. The most we paid per gallon was in Makassar in August of 2008 where we paid $3.26 per gallon. Divide the amount of fuel we had bought prior to our Terengganu purchase over the time cruising so far and it equals about $182 US per month. Randal says that’s not really the way to do it, but it does give you an idea after I write that we just put $804 of diesel into the boat. I wouldn’t want anyone to think we do it very often. We burn about 1 and 2/3 gallons per hour. We also burn fuel when we run the genset at anchor to charge the batteries.

Maybe this spreadsheet will make things clearer.

There were other boats at the fuel dock so we pulled alongside and tied ourselves to one. Hashim is in the red hat. The fuel worker in the white hat came aboard DoraMac for a tour.

I don’t know his name, but he was 22 and not married. He said he needed to earn money first. Smart young man! He was polite and helpful too. Randal made a flag bandana hat for him.

The fuel intake has a red cover so there is no mistaking it with something else. You can see our bow line leading from DoraMac to the one we are tied to. I had to throw the line and hope I didn’t mess up because we really didn’t have time for a second try. There are no brakes on a boat.

We’re the boat on the left!!!!

I really had a hard time interpreting this photo, but the real green and brown fishing boat is the one on the right. The image of the boat on the left is all reflected from our boat. Even the blue and white fender on the left is a reflection. The green paint on DoraMac is reflecting back all of that color…pretty amazing to me.

The bank of the Terengannu River.

A fishing boat going by.

See all of the lights? They are used for night fishing to attract the fish to come to the surface. When we make night passages you can see the lights from miles away even. With our radar set for 3 miles, you don’t see the boats on the radar but you see their lights. Makes me nervous though I am getting better at trusting the radar. The bridge at the top of the photo is the one we ride over to get to town. On the other side of the bridge is the Crystal Mosque.

Philippines

Hello from romblon

June 16, 2008 Ruth

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

Philippines

Leaving Puerto Galera

June 12, 2008 Ruth

Hi Everyone,

Looks like we will be leaving Puerto Galera early tomorrow morning and heading to Marinduque , Romblon, Santa Fe,Mangarin Bay and onwards. Not sure when I will email again. I will text our friend Carol and ask her to email my sister Harriet who can let you know we are moving along. We will also try out our sailmail if we can’t find any wifi and we really need to email. I am way behind on writing up our Puerto Galera adventure and hope to do some today.

I will send out an email when we can receive email again. We will check one more time this evening, but after that it might be a bit.

Randal checked the weather and it predicts calm seas with tiny waves for the area we will cruise. Last November when we were here with Nick and Zaida we had bumpy seas back and forth from Marinduque to Puerto Galera so had to layover in Marinduque and skip our trip to Romblon. There were little stingy things in the water in Marinduque so we couldn’t even swim. Now with our new wetsuits, that won’t be a problem though I think we won’t have time in Marinduque since it is just an overnight anchorage between here and Romblon for us. Romblon is known for its marble work so that should be interesting.

Philippines

hello

June 10, 2008 Ruth

Hi Everyone,

I am sending this myself from the Rock nRoll Cafe. Tomorrow Randal and I go on a real dive and we’ll use our own equipment to test it out. No tasks to practice, just follow the dive leader and look at fish.

Today was frst day of school here. It was so cute. Kids looked so full of promise. Sad since there is not so much opportunity. They had uniforms and funky backpacks. The big ones held the hand of the little ones and everone looked happy! It was the end of the school day; so maybe that was why all the smiles.

Will work on sending more photos of our adventures with Carol.

Go Sox! Go Celtics!