Azzans Adventures

Back to Balabac
We left our nice anchorage early with the hope of getting the predicted forecast of Easterly wind, again, not to be. It was closer to a northerly so we had a long day of motoring, a little uncomfortable with the half meter swell on our beam and no real wind to help. In all a good crossing and we arrived at Balabac town at 1530. Once inside the bay we noticed the swell was working all through the bay, so a quick trip ashore to reload our Smart Buddy sim that we still had from our last trip. We had time to find some fresh vegies and fruit, a Red Horse beer and some garlic peanuts and back out to the boat and a 5 mile run up to our other anchorage at Canderaman Island. This is where we were when the anchor winch failed. This place has to be one of our favourite places, the locals don't worry you, the water is so clean, no jellies here, nice beach walks, cool water for swimming, safe in a northerly good holding and close by to Balabac town if you need supplies, always hard to make the call to leave. As we have plans further afield we had to go, again the forecast was for easterly winds and this time it was on the money, 10 to 15 knots so there we were with tracks in hand and a beam reach and the tide with us, ye ha!!, is was a really nice day, also no seas as we were in the lee of a whole group of islands Mantangule, Bugsuk and Pandanan, there is a good passage through this island group all the way north to Rio Tuba. We had planned to stop off at one of these islands but with such nice wind we keep going to within 10 mile of Rio Tuba before she swung back to the north so the last leg was a motor sail. Again it is so relaxing having tracks to follow. We hadn't been this route before, but were given tracks from Tweed, so very much appreciated. We had also been into Rio Tuba on our last trip to Palawan so it was like, this is so easy, don't even look at the depth sounder, anchor over there, where we were last time.