James takes on the world!

I arrived last night in a town called Coron on Busuanga Island north of Palawan, Philippines after a 4 day sail around the picturesque islands, and it was one of the most incredible 4 days of my life.

On the boat was the skipper called Jim from Canada, another Jim also from Canada and a Czech girl called Patrika and of course myself, also nicknamed Jim for the trip. We of course thought that it would be appropriate to call ourselves The Three Jims.

We set sail from El Nido and did a couple of short hops to some of the little islands and anchored overnight in a beautiful bay which was home to a small fishing community.

The following day we sailed on the South China Sea for around 30 miles at a steady 7 knots, what the skipper described as “brochure sailing”.

We then anchored on a tiny little island and went ashore to buy some supplies. The community living on the island has no road and they are completely cut off from mainland Philippines apart from a small boat which goes to Palawan once a week and also a radio communication system. As a tourist it would not be possible to reach this island unless you had your own boat like we did. We were immediately greeted by lots of children who, as you can imagine, were in complete shock to see westerners walking around their small village. We chatted to one of the locals who said that they only get around a half dozen visitors a year from those with their own boat. We seemed to be causing a big stir in the community as everyone wanted to say hello to us and follow us wherever we went. The children made fun of our westerner noses which they seemed to find hilarious as according to them they are a lot pointier than a Filipino nose. I took a couple of pictures of them and they almost caused a riot in order to get a peek at themselves on the camera preview screen.

After an hour or so we got the dinghy back to the boat where we were waived off by all of the villagers who had congregated on the beach.

We had another great day of downwind sailing with the spinnaker up (a first for me) and the boat was flying along as we surfed down the big waves.

We dropped anchor in a small protected bay called Coral Bay on the island of Popotan. Within this bay was a stunning 5* resort which according the to the guide book was ‘yacht friendly’ we went ashore and what followed was a great evening where we were encouraged (as if we needed any encouragement) to help ourselves to as much crab, lobster, chicken, pork, fish, vegetables and salad as we wanted from the evening buffet table. We took a little stroll around the resort which was filled with around a dozen Nipa huts all with their own decking area and hammock overlooking the beautiful bay. We drank our way through plenty of red wine, vodka, beer and rum and then Jim II decided he would serenade the bar with a guitar he found, much to the amusement of all of the couples hoping for a quiet, romantic stay.

We went back to the boat and we were greeted with the most incredible mirror like water surrounding the boat which was so still that you could actually watch the stars just by looking in the water. We of course had to take a night swim which was so special as every time you moved your hand or foot there were bright florescent blue sparks everywhere around you from all of the phosphorescence in the water. I floated on the millpond like water and watched the stars whilst glowing blue all around. It was definitely an evening to remember.

In the morning we snorkeled on the coral reef which was beside our anchorage. The water was so clear and the coral was stunning. We saw so many varieties of fish which included Clown Fish (a.k.a Nemo Fish), Parrot Fish, Bat Fish which were around 1ft tall and hundreds more that I couldn’t recognise. The fish would come right up to your face and stare at you as if you were some kind of alien species.

The following 2 days were very laid back as we only had to do half the distance of the previous 2 days. We snorkeled on many old WWII wrecks which were also teeming with life before eventually arriving here in Coron.

This morning me and Jim II hired motorbikes and went on a 30km drive around the island which was mainly made up of dirt roads which made it very hard to stay on the bike.

After finishing this post I am going to go to the nearby Makinit Hot Springs to get rid of all of the dust which I got covered in on the bike.

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