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    Sailing With Senta: Playtime in the Philippines
    Sailing With Senta: Playtime in the Philippines
    Sailing With Senta: Playtime in the Philippines
    Ebook144 pages1 hour

    Sailing With Senta: Playtime in the Philippines

    By Faith Van Rooyen

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    About this ebook

    In February 2005, after three months of preparation in Kota Kinabalu in Northern Borneo, Senta set sail to cross the Balabac Straits and explore parts of the Philippines.
    In the blustery North east seasonal wind Senta fought her way up the east coast of Palawan Island, sailing in day light through waters too dangerous to negotiate by night Each tough day of sailing was followed by an anxious late afternoon searching for a protected anchorage on a lee shore. At the northern tip of Palawan Faith and Pierre decided to sail round the top and back down the west coast to Kota Kinabalu.
    The four month circumnavigation of Palawan took them to beautiful places where the met interesting people. Not so pleasant was sheltering from a passing typhoon.
    After a break to visit family and friends in South Africa and Germany Senta and her crew prepared to sail to Pulau in the South Pacific. This plan was thwarted by bad weather and tired crew and replaced by visits to more islands in the southern Philippines.

    Colour photographs and charts help tell the story.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherFaith Van Rooyen
    Release dateApr 10, 2014
    ISBN9781310217531
    Sailing With Senta: Playtime in the Philippines
    Author

    Faith Van Rooyen

    Born 1938. Educated at Yeoville Convent, Johannesburg High School for Girls and Witwatersrand University, all in South Africa. Worked for more rhan 35 years in the computer software industry, designing and writing and implementing systems for business on mainframes and personal computers. Retired in 1995 to fulfil a life-time dream of cruising with her husband Pierrre on their forty foot Armel sailing boat, Senta.

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      Book preview

      Sailing With Senta - Faith Van Rooyen

      Sailing with Senta - Playtime in the Philippines

      By Faith Van Rooyen

      Copyright 2013 Faith Van Rooyen

      Smashwords Edition, License Notes

      This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

      Table of Contents

      Other books in this series

      Acknowledgements

      Chapter One Kota Kinabalu to Puerto Princessa

      Chapter Two Puerto Princessa

      Chapter Three Typhoon Coming

      Chapter Four To the Northern Tip of Palawan

      Chapter Five Over the Top and Back Again

      Chapter Six Time Out

      Chapter Seven Lets Sail to Pulau

      Chapter Eight More Philippines Islands

      Chapter Nine Philippines Anchorages

      Appendices

      Glossary

      Other Books in the Series

      Sailing With Senta - Eastward Ho!

      Sailing With Senta - Across Coral Seas

      Sailing With Senta - Africa Calls

      Sailing With Senta - Tropical Dream

      Sailing With Senta - Borneo Here We Come

      Sailing With Senta - Playtime in the Philippines

      Sailing With Senta - Small Boat Voyaging

      Acknowledgements

      Many thanks to

      Judith Ryder, long time friend in Wakkerstroom, South Africa, who has spent a decade managing our affairs while we sailed among Indian Ocean islands.

      All the new friends we made along the way who helped us find out how wonderful the cruising life style can be.

      For Pierre, Brett and Ingrid.

      -------------------- ooo --------------------

      Chapter One Kota Kinabalu to Puerto Princesa

      During 2004 Pierre and I had sailed Senta from Langkawi Island on the west coast of Malaysia, down the Malacca Straits, around Singapore and into the South China Sea. A leisurely cruise up the north coast of Borneo brought us to Kota Kinabalu, the capital of the Malaysian State of Sabah.

      There we celebrated Christmas and the start of 2005 with friends at the Sutera Harbour Marina.

      Sutera Harbour Marina, Kota Kinabalu.

      We prepared Senta for a three-month cruise during which we planned to sail to Palawan, the southern-most island of the Philippines, and up its east coast. This would be directly into the then prevailing northeast monsoon. Our main destination was Puerto Princesa and the beautiful island-filled bays to the north.

      Palawan and the attendant island of Balabac off its southern end is three hundred miles long and Balabac is one hundred and twenty miles from Kota Kinabalu, so this adventure would consist of nearly nine hundred miles of sailing, mainly in day hops.

      Proposed cruising area in Borneo and Philippines.

      We left our motorbike in the care of the shop that sold it to us and everything was ready except for the eternal infernal barnacles on Senta’s bottom. Although the water in Sutera Harbour is crystal clear we had not wanted to dive there. We had seen a banded krait sea-snake and hundreds of box jellyfish, both species deadly to humans.

      Our first step on Friday 3rd February, after a happy send off from friends at Sutera Harbour, was at Sapangar Bay fifteen miles away. The beat there, under reefed main and working jib into a twenty knot north-east wind and short sharp seas was an indication of things to come.

      Senta’s track from Kota Kinabalu to the northern tip of Borneo.

      Sapangar Bay is well sheltered from the wind and swell. But a massive building project on the weather shore poured dust down on us until the sun set and the workers went home for the weekend. We sent a text message via cell-phone to Déjà Vu saying that we had done enough beating into twenty knot winds and breathing dust. We were going to turn around and sail to Singapore instead. Glyn’s one word reply, ‘Vasbyt!’, reminded us that as South Africans we should be made of sterner stuff and our original plan was back on the table.

      Next day we swam under Senta to clean her. There was only good news. Excellent visibility, no box jellyfish or snakes, no waves or swell and very few barnacles. We washed the building dust off our newly painted decks and planned our next few days of passage making.

      The following morning we left on the twenty mile leg to Usukan Bay in no wind. Motoring and fridge cooling happened until a moderate northerly wind arrived and gave us an enjoyable sail to anchor at Usukan by mid afternoon. Not a very beautiful place but a good calm protected anchorage, no building dust or mosquitoes. We were now thirty miles closer to the northern tip of Borneo, still another sixty to go.

      We declared another lay-day for some chores and maintenance. The switch on the main distribution board for the anchor light had stopped working. We ‘sort of’ fixed it but it was still very stiff, so we swapped it with the switch for the steaming light, which we seldom use.

      The engine would not go into reverse. Inspection of the Morse controls to the gear lever in the cockpit showed no problem and a study of the sail-drive workshop manual left us none the wiser. We eventually got the reverse gear to work by running the engine and manipulating the controls at the sail drive itself. Something must have got stuck and then unstuck itself – a scientific diagnosis!

      Our last job for the day was to determine the latitude and longitude errors on our current chart by establishing our position from hand held compass bearings and then comparing this position with that given by the GPS. We do this for each new chart when coastal cruising as some of the errors can be significant. And it is not only paper charts that have errors. The electronic charts for the Philippines were seven tenths of a mile out. Our paper charts error was only two tenths of a mile.

      Mount Kinabalu seen from Usukan Bay.

      An early morning start, motoring past Usukan Island, gave us a wonderful view of Mount Kinabalu. This shy secretive mountain is shrouded in clouds from 0900 each day so can be seen only by early birds.

      Friends ready to climb Mount Kinabalu.

      L to R Colin of Déjà Vu, Jeannie of Meridian Passage, guide, Mervin of Meridian Passage.

      Those energetic enough to climb Mount Kinabalu leave the base

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