Photo: The beautiful island of Palawan, Philippines

We would dearly have liked to stay in the Philippines but we could find no safe place to leave Sänna. We needed to return to the UK to see my father and to travel to Germany to see our very good friend Peter, both suffering from cancer. Most of the Philippines lie in the world's most prolific hurricane belt and there are very few safe havens to leave a sailing yacht. So we made the decision to sail back down to Kota Kinabalu in Borneo to leave Sänna below the hurricane belt and fix up all the problems when we return. Some of the work could be done in our absence by my mate Neil and the infamous Mr Wong, the loveable Chinese mechanic. Mr Wong is 72 and fondles Racor diesel filters like they are women's breasts. And he doesn't know he's doing it...

I returned to Kota Kinabalu in early September with spare parts galore and the work schedule went amazingly well. Everything is now fixed, working and tested. I'm uneasy and suspicious....

I'm now waiting for Marie to come and join me. She's flying to KK in a few days and we will make yet another new plan. We're thinking of returning north to the Philippines. If we can make Subic Bay near Manila then we can wait for the monsoon change and then head for Hong Kong and maybe Japan. This would put us in a good position to pick up the westerly winds to cross the Pacific eastwards to the west coast of America. This is a good plan.

But this would mean giving up Australia and New Zealand.....
________________________________________________________________________________
Please visit our SV Sänna website for more details of our circumnavigation voyage from the UK. Also at www.facebook.com/SV.Sanna. Like our Facebook page if you'd like to receive more news about our sail adventure. You can contact us here.