The town of Tibanban next to Sigaboy island is a pleasant surprise for us.
In Tibanban in the golf of Davao……we are spontaneously surrounded by a huge group of kids,…
As soon as we arrive on the beach with our dinghy children appear from everywhere, interested and curious, but still most of them too shy to try out their school English. Since our Visaya is still 0 we are grateful that Roy and his wife Rannen Lin join them, both speaking English very well.
We agree to come by later and explore the town first. One street behind the beach everything is full with little shops, a market, money changers, gas station, and the people are enormously friendly to foreigners. The town seems a bit bigger than Babak on Samal, but probably a lot less visited by tourists/white people. Continue reading Against the wind from Davao to Sorong→
Arriving in Davao we are still a bit concerned. In 2015 the Abu Sayyaf had kidnapped 4 people from the marina resulting in the execution of 2 Canadians. “It was a nightmare I will never forget” another sailor tells us. But today it is safe. It does look like it. The entrance to the marina is different from what we have seen so far..
Cruising in Micronesia is NOT as easy and nice as we had expected. Although the people in Kosrae are enormously friendly we are extremely pissed to wait for 10 days to get our cruising permit extended (by the Pohnpei immigration officials). Of course by then the better weather windows have passed. We wait another 3 days for what we hope to be an acceptable window promising winds of 12 knots of trade winds and leave for Lamotrek, more than 1000 miles further West.
But after the first 20 hours of sailing the wind is completely gone, so the engine has to do the work. More than 2 days of running the engine later we decide to stop in Pohnpei to get more Diesel and to wait for a better window.
Together with the Foxy Lady we experience the process of checking in/out of Pohnpei
The first day we spend with the check in process, the officials all want to see us but some of them take quite a while to show up. Good coincidence however that the Foxy lady ties up to us for check out and we all spend the time waiting chatting, having coffee, cake and beer and sharing the experiences of the past few weeks. Continue reading From Kosrae to the Philippines via Pohnpei, Lamotrek, Elato and Yap→
