Swimming with Whale Sharks
28 June 2013 | Cebu Philippines
Jamie
Cebu island Tan-wanna Whale Sharks
We had heard a lot about a village on the South o Cebu that had Whale Sharks that are always around and was good for a visit with the yacht. We found a nice spot just west of the attraction, anchor azzan and were in the water before 9am Wow what a great experience, very controlled and a bit commercial but so accessible to all who wish to view these gentle giants. The fisherman started feeding the small shrimp to try and keep them out of their nets and it has now evolved into a good tourist business for them, a little bit controversy about it, guess time will tell, we thought it was great as the sharks were right a home with the process. We checked out the chart and thought we had found a good anchorage 10 mile up the coast but again the swell was too much and we would av been on a lee shore. Again it's now 1500 where do we go. We had planned to go to Bohol island next which was a 20mile run from where we were, also it is also across the main shipping channel, best option for us. The west coast of Bohol doesn't have any real shallow areas for anchoring plus we had no info from any cruising guides other than the capital Tagbilaran harbour which is reef strewn. The weather was still flat calm so we motored across without any problems, the fisherman here have FADs everywhere but are very visible being marked with big white floats. We had crossed the shipping lane by about 1900 and were in the lee of Pangloa island about 5 mile off shore, so we decided to Lay a Hull, basically this means we had no sails up and just drifted wherever the current or wind wanted to take us. Over the first 2 hrs we went NE then the tide changed and we went SW , then a storm front cam over and blew us north, at about 3am we started to get alarm warnings from shipping and found we were only 1 mile from th shipping lane so we started motored 2 mile NE and sat the rest of the night out in that area. In all we had done about 5 mile in a sort of circle, an it was a really comfortable night, although Jamie was only half asleep most of the time.