No corona delusion in Palawan
17. March 2020, Tuesday
10° 24' 49" N, 119° 10' 24" E
For a few days, this currently crazy world stood still for us.
No internet, no news, no panic, no corona virus and no pirates.
Oh how nice it is to be out and about without the disturbing fact of reality.
Together with the German yacht Icicle we sailed towards the Phillippines, but arrived in Port Barton / Palawan alone.
Icecle had technical problems on the way and her skipper Olaf reasonably decided to turn around and sail back to Malaysia to fix them.
Before we had visited some bays together on Borneo before we started the course towards the Philippines with a stiff breeze.
60 KM off the coast until we sailed out of the endangered area. Then the first bay where we could sleep.
Everything was great.
In the second bay on Palawan we received a visit from one of the typical small plywood fishing boats ...
however, men on board armed with machine guns. "We are the phillipine Coast Guard and want to enter your yacht!"
Shit ... what now?
I explained to them that nobody comes on board our ship without any legitimation.
Fortunately this Coast Guard was able to identify itself and when we got closer we saw that this outrigger canoe was labeled with Coast Guard.
(In addition, everyone had a decent military haircut, which is rather rare among the pirates in this area;)
They came to measure our fever!
Corona madness here too!
But that was just the beginning.
The next morning we sailed on to Port Barton, not without ramming a coral block, to find out that nobody is currently entering or leaving the Philippines.
Bravo!
But now we're here ... and we can't get out either.
Clarification is also not possible ... .. the world goes crazy.
We see the whole thing positively:
As long as we cannot clarify from given circumstances, our / my visa will not expire.
The fact that there are hardly any tourists here because of Corona is another nice side effect.
panic buying have not yet broken out in this sleepy town, the people are really cool and so we make the best of this situation in the knowledge
that there are worse areas to sit out this panicked crisis.
No internet, no news, no panic, no corona virus and no pirates.
Oh how nice it is to be out and about without the disturbing fact of reality.
Together with the German yacht Icicle we sailed towards the Phillippines, but arrived in Port Barton / Palawan alone.
Icecle had technical problems on the way and her skipper Olaf reasonably decided to turn around and sail back to Malaysia to fix them.
Before we had visited some bays together on Borneo before we started the course towards the Philippines with a stiff breeze.
60 KM off the coast until we sailed out of the endangered area. Then the first bay where we could sleep.
Everything was great.
In the second bay on Palawan we received a visit from one of the typical small plywood fishing boats ...
however, men on board armed with machine guns. "We are the phillipine Coast Guard and want to enter your yacht!"
Shit ... what now?
I explained to them that nobody comes on board our ship without any legitimation.
Fortunately this Coast Guard was able to identify itself and when we got closer we saw that this outrigger canoe was labeled with Coast Guard.
(In addition, everyone had a decent military haircut, which is rather rare among the pirates in this area;)
They came to measure our fever!
Corona madness here too!
But that was just the beginning.
The next morning we sailed on to Port Barton, not without ramming a coral block, to find out that nobody is currently entering or leaving the Philippines.
Bravo!
But now we're here ... and we can't get out either.
Clarification is also not possible ... .. the world goes crazy.
We see the whole thing positively:
As long as we cannot clarify from given circumstances, our / my visa will not expire.
The fact that there are hardly any tourists here because of Corona is another nice side effect.
panic buying have not yet broken out in this sleepy town, the people are really cool and so we make the best of this situation in the knowledge
that there are worse areas to sit out this panicked crisis.
