January23rd, 2010 We finally managed to leave Candaraman Island on 17th January and we had a lovely smooth trip in between several islands until we reached the west coast of Palawan and for the first few miles we had quite nice sailing and then the wind got up to 15-20 knots, right on the nose and it was not pleasant sailing at all.

Kelaerin & Marida turned back and went back down to the bottom of Palawan but Sowelu, Vulcan and us carried on to Muslog Point where we were sheltered from the wind but we had quite a roll coming in so consequently did not get much sleep.

We were up and away the next morning just before seven and motor sailed the 16 miles to Tagbita Bay where we knew we had good shelter The winds were pretty variable and at times we had gusts of 30 knots on the nose - not nice but we were nicely anchored in there by 10.35am.

Kelaerin & Marida arrived in there later in the afternoon All in all there were nine boats of us in there and two had been sheltering there for nine days However two boats left the next morning and ended up having a terrible trip further up the coast.

We were glad we stayed the extra day as, as the day went on we had bullets of 25 -30 knots coming down the gulley The first day we arrived in the bay we had several locals come out in their dugouts asking for hats, tee shirts etc.

but we all said no until you bring us bananas tomorrow As you can guess it did not happen and apparently there was no fruit or veges that you could buy at the local village either, so we think they must just live on coconuts and fish.

All boats were virtually out of fruit and vege, although we were all right for vegetablesAll the boats left and we were up and away at 5.20am on 20th in the hope of making Quezon - 64 miles north but that was not going to be possible to arrive in daylight hours so the five of us went into Eran Bay (42 miles) and spent the night in between a reef and the land and had a comfortable night.

We were away again at 6.20 the following morning, Thursday, and made the 31 miles to Quezon and had a lovely trip up to there even though we were motor sailing, although we did manage to sail with no motor for 20 minutes!! Getting into Quezon was a bit scary as C Maps are out and at times the water is very shallow with reefs all around.

We had a couple of scary moments and we actually scraped the bottom on a bommie, fortunately we kept moving and it was only a small one Had the anchor down in only 2.2m of water by 12.15pm and we were a mile from the shore! Fortunately the tides are small with only a 600mm range so we never actually touched the bottom but we would not have been far off it.

Did catch another Spanish mackerel en route which Dave smoked yesterday morningAllan had advised us on the sched that morning that we were not to get off our boats as Customs, Immigration, Quarantine and a Travel Agent were driving the 3 hrs from Puerto Princessa to check us in and there was nothing he could do to change their minds.

Arnak & Koru were two other boats that arrived in the anchorage ahead of us, along with the two other rally boats who had arrived the day before so they were also forced to check in with us and they kindly said that they would share in the cost of the 7000 pesos ($NZ220) for the transport over which we other 7 appreciated.

We were told that they would arrive between 12 and 1 pm but eventually arrived at Koru (a catamaran) at 2.45pm and asked that they check us in, in two stages so we were in the first lot with Sowelu, Vulcan and First Light..