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