The Adventures of Captain Ray Penson
Sailing Yacht Truce
The sail from Biak to the Ninigo Islands looked, on paper, to be a perfect sail. The seasonal winds were predicted to be favourable with a current behind us of 0.6 knots. I was really looking forward to an easy trip of about six or seven days. The distance was just less than 500 miles. The reality turned out to be much different, an exhausting mammoth effort to reach the Ninigo Islands after sixteen days and over a thousand miles of sailing.
Once again, I have maintenance jobs mounting up. This light weather sailing with frequent squalls is taking its toll on the gear, sails and running rigging. Biak is a good place to do this, the anchorage for the most part is fairly calm and only transient squalls upset the equilibrium.
The plan now is to sail via the Basilan Strait, past Zamboanga and into the Celebes sea and then down to Biak in Indonesia where I can do a final reprovision before heading to Papua New Guinea. This route will give us a far better wind angle and cut the corner saving us a hard slog and many miles. When I informed my cruising friends of my intentions they all threw up their hands in horror and reeled off numerous stories of piracy and kidnapping around southern Mindanao.
Six hundred miles and across the Sulu Sea twice to end up where I started. An unusual trip. I departed from Puerto Princesa headed towards Bonbonon on Negros Island, a trip of about 270 miles. This was to be my stepping stone for sailing east through the Philippines and then down the East coast of Mindanao to Davao where I intended to check out of the country.
Over the last few months I have been noticing a slight trace of diesel around the top of the injector pump where the fuel lines come out and up to the injectors. I had that nagging feeling that something was not right. Engine problems don’t heal themselves, they only get worse.
The next step of the journey is sailing from Kudat in Malaysia to Puerto Princesa on the island of Palawan in the Philippines. This will be my first visit to the Philippines and I am very much looking forward to it. The departure from Kudat was promising, for a while we had a tail wind until it disappeared mid morning and the sea went glassy, leaving us bobbing around going backwards slowly. The engine had to go on, otherwise we wouldn’t make any progress and the tide would take us back to Kudat.
The waiting at Labuan has been so stressful, If the anchorage had been safe and secure I would be in a completely different state of mind. Anyway, eager to remove myself from this place I bought a few last-minute fresh food items and without regret sailed out from Labuan. Both Truce and I happy to be back in clean waters and heading northwards up the coast.
The Marina at Miri was good despite poor facilities, management obviously don’t care about customers. Toilets shitty (literally) and showers rudimentary and dirty. On the positive side there were no busybodies patrolling the docks and trying to enforce nonsensical rules. The tranquility and lack of bureaucracy was welcome. To be secure alongside a dock was good with easy access to the shore and the town.
The sky to the south was becoming darker and at ten in the evening we were hit with a violent squall, it was ferocious. Even as I watched it coming there was no real indication that it would be super strong. Unfortunately, I was unable to furl in the yankee fully before the wind hit, the sail clew flogged like a demented demon
checked the chart carefully for any off lying danger off the cape and thought I could safely round it half a mile off in safety. As I approached the cape a favorable current was carrying us along nicely. I noticed what I though was a tide rip ahead, but it looked out of place with the surrounding water. Through the binoculars I saw a low brown object in the water. For a moment I thought it was a whale, but there was no movement, the water was rushing past and over it. A rock awash!
The Adventures of Captain Ray Penson 