We left Tagauyan Bay, a good south wind shelter, and some ten Bankas and a dozen large trawlers at 5 am once the first trawlers started to move.

We left on strong breeze with a a forecast for the same for the rest of the day.

The weather was due to deteriorate over the coming week so there was a need to get this final part of the crossing completed today, 90 nautical miles or 160 km.

During the passage, the wind built to gusts that were well over 40 knots on a steady gale force of 35 knot wind. By 10 am we were reefed down so that the main was now the size of a small trisail and the genoa a storm jib. We were now running abeam Panay point and coming off water depth of 1500m to the shallows. We still had six hours to go to Santa Anna Bay, the seas had built to 4m and were steepened by the running counter current. There were triplets every couple of minutes which were larger than the others and were breaking.

This was our first serious exposure to bad weather and we were in a channel that was closing ahead of us to the shallows at IloIlo.


My concern now was the viability of Santa Anna Bay entrance. All I saw in my mind was surf as the water depth shallowed to 20m...our only back up was to heave to in the channel and wait it out. Viviane tried to radio ahead the 20 nm to the shipping near our entrance to get an update on the sea state but we did not have the radio range....

It took another 2 hours before we were only 15 nm or 30 km from our proposed entrance before Viviane got the radio contact with a vessel near our entrance. The report was for 2 metre waves and by now our waves were smaller and breaking far less often. We continued and at the end it was non evident as we sailed quietly into our safely sheltered anchorage.

But we could not leave for another 10 days until the weather calmed down.