Having got ourselves to the bottom end of Panay island, and given ourselves a well earned day off, our next hop was north east along the straight, which separates Panay island from Negros.
As usual it was blowing about 35 kts. Athough we had only30 miles to go, and had the tide with us, the sea was short, steep and choppy, so motor sailing was the only option if we wanted to get there in daylight. On our first attempt the engine stopped circulating cooling water, which is one of its tricks, and we returned to the bay to sort ourselves out.
The following day we set off again in the dark of early morning. The wind often gets up with the sun, so we reckoned on a couple of peaceful hours chugging north before battle commenced. We were hardly out of the bay and settled down, avoiding a large fishing boat on the way, when bang, we were plunged into darkness!
A scramble for torches followed, not before we grabbed the helm, as Freddie the auto pilot was also out of action! Giles went down below, and turned on a light switch to see if everything had blown, a terrifying loud bang ensued as a bulb exploded. It seemed an eternity before he said 'yes I am alright', I was busy steering and couldn't see.
The whole boat stank with the smell of electrical burning and melted plastic, and once Giles got to the main breaker he found the whole unit had melted and exploded. The metal working parts were scattered around the cabin floor. He turned off all other electric breakers, and we heaved a sigh of relief, we were not on fire, but what on earth had happened??
We continued motoring along until dawn arrived an hour later, and we could at least see what was going on. Luckily I had memorised the first part of the passage, and knew there were no nasty reefs to catch us, and we were making quite good headway motor sailing by now.
Once there was daylight, Giles went through the twenty switches on our instrument panel, and we realised that everything that had been turned on had blown. As it was dark this was all our navigation lights, our auto helm, the charger for the laptop, which runs my navigation program, and our B & G Network, GPS, depth sounder, wind and log, and we later found out that the fridge had blown up and the inverter, which wasn't even on.
The nearest place to get to was the island of Guemeras, which lies between Panay and Negros. Going into any bay without the echo sounder to give us depth, is undesirable, but the bay of Santa Ana, with the sun high in the sky, enabling us to see the reefs well, was very straightforward, even though we had no idea of the depth beneath us in the transparent water. We dropped anchor once we had rounded the headland and moved into shelter, thinking it looked shallow, so we didn't put out too much chain, meanwhile I set about making up a plumb line.
Giles set about playing with our electronics to see if anything could be salvaged, and together we worked out that we could use the daisy chain wiring system to bypass the GPS, and miraculously having done that we got the Depth back!
The echo sounder is almost the most important instrument that we have, and as we have a spare GPS probably the most important. So much for thinking it was shallow, we had anchored in 17 metres! After an afternoon fiddling with electrics a sortie ashore to find a meal found us in pitch black heading for a few shore lights, and what had looked like a resort in daylight. Unsure where to land, and finding the quay half collapsed, we went to another light where people appeared to be barbequing, and asked if we could land there. To cut a long story short, we ended up enjoying a delicious meal with a house-party of people who were away for a couple of nights 'bonding' from work, they all spoke brilliant English, as they worked in a call centre!!
Next day we felt better about heading on to the capital of Panay, Iloilo, and going up river, although it might have saved us the worry of the 2.6 metre entrance had we not known the depth! We motored upriver past the ferries and commercial boats, until we found the Coastguards, and asked them if we could tie up alongside. They were a bit perplexed, but proved charming, and we explained that we had an electrical problem, so they dug out their lovely electrician, who came to have a look at our melt down.
He explained that the switch had somehow crossed the contacts, which is why our big bang had happened. We had replaced said switch in Malaysia in 2012, when we had a black out, and Giles had a spare, as he had worried about the 'made in China' label on it!
We spent two days tied up alongside the Coastguards, trying to find various bits and pieces to enable us to become a well found yacht again, simple things like 12 volt light bulbs for the navigation lights, proved very hard to find, we were luckier with fuses, and highly relieved when we found in amongst the complexity of our brand new auto helm a little 4 amp fuse had blown, and once we had managed to replace it, it worked!
I was rather keen to go and do a bit of culture, so left Giles to his wiring and caught a bus out into the sticks, in fact several buses and the local communal jeep called a jeepney. I managed to get to five different churches, the most famous one is a world heritage sight at Miag-ao, built in beautiful mellow sandstone in the 18th C. Many of the churches are built of coral.
It took me most of the day, but I felt that I had to make the effort to get to the furthest flung, St. Joaquin, in honour of my son-in-law Joachim!
We had a fascinating time in one of the outskirts of Iloilo, where we had gone looking for old Spanish houses, and in our quest for one of them ended up in an extraordinary oasis of decaying dilapidated grandeur, sadly beset by noisy roads whizzing by. We climbed up the grand steps to the front door, under a balcony that looked ready to shed its balustrade straight onto us, and walked into the hall, whereupon at the top of the staircase a Miss Faversham figure appeared with wild hair and transparent nightgown, asking what we wanted! Actually we were looking for Nelly Garden Mansion, which when we found it was equally fascinating. We insisted to the guards at the gate that they should call up and ask if we could look around, and the owner duly gave us a tour of the house.
This house was in perfect condition, and had only been built in 1900, but the use of local hardwoods, which had resisted termites, was fabulous. The décor was very Chinese, and the design spacious and airy. The man who had built it had hosted many parties, and counted lots of politicans amongst his guests, including the infamous Imelda Marcos.
Both these houses and the decaying colonial opulence of Jaro suburb gave us a real sense of an affluent past which is hard to detect in the present day Philippines.
We were rather sad to say farewell to our band of coastguard neighbours. They had not been out of harbour in three months, so we felt it unlikely that they would have many of the skills we might ever need in an emergency!
The coast to the north of Iloilo is dotted with islands and reefs, but having left early, we had gone 55 miles, and still had enough light to find our way into a beautiful anchorage dominated by Pan de Azucar or Sugar Loaf mountain, a steep even hill, which looks the same from every direction, and turned the most wonderful shades of pink and blue as the sun set.
As is often the way, when the sun was up next morning and the tide was low, we realised quite how many reefs we had avoided, we had neatly circuited one and tucked ourselves inshore of it. From here we moved on to the Gigantes islands, where the white sand spit could be a day trip for intrepid tourists. The remains of a concrete house stood on the spit and a few ramshackle huts provided shelter for the inhabitants. Although their English was non-existent we gathered that super typhoon Hayan last December had totally decimated their homes, and the ensuing surge had gone straight over everything that remained.
They were remarkably cheerful, and we were delighted that they should charge us a paltry amount for snorkelling over their coral patch.
One of the reasons for coming north was to get a better angle for crossing the top end of Negros Island and getting around the north end of Cebu Island, and hopefully get a good sail. We had had some decent sailing getting north, albeit hard on the wind, but once we had planned for wind, it decided to have a day off, and only gave us about 12 kts. We got to Malapascua Island in time to find some rather unlikely shelter.
On Leyte Island, the small town of Isabel was sobering in the extreme. This town is on the leeward side of the island where most of the damage from super Typhoon Hyan had hit Tacloban the capital. They had suffered enough, but without the surge and flooding that Tacloban got. The market still had no roof, but cheery people were using the building all the same, improvising with umbrellas and canvas, several houses looked beyond repair, while many others had new roofs or were in the process of constructing them. Two large cargo boats had sunk in the big harbour, and a huge crane was on its side, while a vast roofless warehouse at the harbour entrance part of a copper smelting process looked out of action.
The locals were astonished to see us when we walked ashore, but extremely friendly, and we spent as much money with them as we could manage, they are admirably resilient. Next morning when we were weighing anchor early, a small Bangka paddled out to see us with some necklaces to sell. I duly bought some, and he told us about the typhoon, which had flattened his house, and how he had had to crawl through the rubble to rescue his six month old baby.
It is thirty miles to cross the stretch of water that separates Leyte from Cebu, where we had arranged to leave Brother Wind for 10 days in Port Carmen at Zekes yard, while we went to Hong Kong. Port Carmen is as tricky an entrance as you could wish for, and having negotiated the initial approach, and been warned by friends in the yard how a lot of yachts end up drying out on the reef, we called up Zeke, who sent out one of his workers in a little Bangka to guide us in. We still didn't realise what we were coming to, - a very narrow inlet with stone walls, where mooring lines were strung right across the dock. These were carefully negotiated and we ended up squashed in between an American and French boat.
Apart from the dirt of being next to a boat which is being sanded down, and the dust from the nearby road, it appears to be a good facility, and the first yachts we have seen since those at anchor in Puerta Princessa 750 nm ago!
Zeke is a tonic of 'can do', an American sailor who sold his boat and set up the boat yard, and a very smart 'club house' on stilts. He has a lot of workers beavering away, and although reports say that they need supervising, it seems a good facility for some things, although reputedly getting any spares in the Philippines is a nightmare of variable import duties, and bribery.
We have a problem with our bilge pump, which is no longer automatic, and as water is leaking in fast from our engine shaft seal, we requires lots of pumping out. In some form or shape we need to dry out, and as the facilities are minimal, either a wall to lean against for a tide, or a cradle which we hope is strong enough, the latter seems a better option. The thought of racing against time to pull our shaft out and reset before the tide comes in again, sounds like too much of an adrenalin trip. Meanwhile, Zeke has promised that his chaps will come and run the bilge pump once or twice a day as required to make sure we are still afloat after our trip to Hong Kong!!