Apparently the norm.
27 July 2013 | Oceanview Marina
no clue, it's dark outside.
Apparently, it's the norm for sailors to come to the Philippines and take a young girl on as "crew". Most of these men(and other's we have seen in town) are in their 60-70 and have a young(late teens to early 30's) on board with them. I did a count yesterday of the boats with people on them here at the marina and over half have a Philippino women on board. One has a woman from Vietnam with him.
When I was in Ace Hardware last Friday getting the new battery charger, I had a conversation with one of the salesmen about us living on a boat and sailing here from the US. He asked me if I'd taken a Philippine woman for my wife. My answer was no, I'm still with my wife of 41 years. He seemed amazed that I hadn't gotten a new wife while I was here. It drives Tracy crazy seeing these young women hanging on these old farts both here at the marina and in town. From what I understand, after a couple of years with the man, they are eventually kicked off the boat and he finds a new lady to be with him. A form of long term prostitution.
The new charger is holding it's own on board. I have another electrician coming probably on Monday to look at all our systems to see if he can figure it out. I was introduced to him by another cruiser on a catamaran that(with another man) has a young lady with him also. Both men do. With luck we will get to the bottom of it once and for all.
We are now working on plans of what to do next since we are no longer going in the rally. We're asking other cruisers, many of whom have sailed these waters for years their suggestions as to where to go and how as some of the waters here are not safe for cruisers. Better safe than sorry.
When we arrived here 2.5 weeks ago, we were informed that we could have our chain regalvanized. They were putting together a bunch of the cruisers chain so the company could do it in a mass job. Our chain has very little zinc coating left on it that we tried even back in Fiji to get it done but no one did it there. "Just buy new chain" was what we were told. I've seen some of the chain that has already come back for other boats and it looks great. Apparently it takes a couple of weeks to get it into their schedule so we will see how it goes. One boat even sent in their anchor to have it redone. I"ll post a picture of what we get back.
The picture today is of "Grass Jelly". No clue what it's for but I'm relatively sure it main ingredient isn't "Grass"(marijuana). Available in all the stores.