For today’s breakfast I switched to pancakes though I was disappointed to find out that in reality it was only one pancake.

As it turned out, much more than sufficient!

Today we are joined on the boat by Barry and Judy as well as a couple of other new guests, 6 on the boat (which can easily take 20 divers) so there should be plenty of space.

We are headed off to Limisawa Island to dive Zac’s Cove and Adrian’s Cove.

The first dive was in zero current and provided spectacular views of the wall right down to 30m. As we our way back up we saw frog fish, nudi’s and related flora and fauna.

Back on the boat we took time out to familiarise ourselves with the vessels workings.

Unlike in the UK, the boats over here have both indicators and windscreen wipers which are all controlled in a familiar fashion.

The round bit in the middle provides rudder control (rear wheel steering, like in a dumper truck).

The large got lever is in fact a clutch and careful use of this and the small black lever (looking like a gear stick) does indeed offer a variety of different gearing options to suit the gradient and desired planing speed.

During the second dive (Adrian’s Cove). Jo decided (according to her computer) to deviate from the plan and dived to 42.8m and racked up 88 minutes of deco time though owing to the lack of available breathing gas, we elected to stick with the 3 minute stop at 5m.

Back on dry land, battery pulled out and put back in, no difference. Time to rejoice in the fact that we always dive with two computers and bring the spare in to primary position whilst the dodgy one is cleaned and dried, just in case there is anything that can be salvaged.

Lunch was BLT with the recently delivered Hellman’s along with Pork Adobo.

The PM dive was a wall/slope called Santa Sofia which was in zero current, always nice.

Back on dry land once more for loggin’ and bloggin’ with maybe a beverage or two!

Trounced at crib once more then I kind of won a round, kind of.

Dinner was Sunshine Chicken Wings, fried rice and vegetable chop suey. Also pictured is beef curry.

Ok, actually that’s stir fried veg for Barry and Judy, veg chop suey yet to arrive

It was all yum, washed down by the ubiquitous Red Horse and Sprite.

I think it is only fair, before we reset the crib score to 0-0, that I show a couple of hands from last night.

My first hand, of the second game…

The subsequent box…

Didn’t start well for Richard…

Didn’t get any better.

So back to 0-0 from 9-4.

Anyway, looking forward to today. Not only are Richard and I taking a road trip to Little Lembeh for a couple of dives, but by the time we get back Barry and Judy will have arrived!

Just need to say something…I had a slight niggle after the second time we missed the whale shark, yesterday. Not because we didn’t see it, after all we have been to Oslob, but because the French instructor of the large training group said it was because we are leaving the EU, joking, of course, but considering yesterday was the 75th anniversary of the D-day landings, I felt a bit miffed! If he wasn’t such a nice man I might have been angry. It just doesn’t appear that D-day rates highly in their thoughts… I could continue on this subject, but it is probably best not to.

Looking like it could be a lovely day…

Yesterday, we said goodbye to Chris and Pook, as they are leaving Ron’s House so that Barry and Judy can move in. Really nice people, good to be in the water with. Not sure about the egg white omelette for breakfast, but each to their own. We shall be keeping in touch. 😀😀

Excellent morning!

A 20 minute trip up to Malitbog in a pickup. Ian and myself in the cab and Richard and Dave on the back with the kit.

We get to the site, parking near the road, got kit on and took the short walk to the beach.

Dive #1 & Dive #2

Little Lembeh

Sandy slope with a ‘wreck’ slightly to the north of where we get in and a fish trap to the south.We saw:

• Various coloured seahorses
• Very tiny bright red scorpionfish
• Harlequin shrimp
• Mantis shrimp
• Frogfishes, grey, white, yellow painted, red
• porcelain crab
• Carpet anemone shrimps

Two excellent dives.

Here are some pictures of our surface interval, that included, coffee, biscuits and bananas.

When we came up from the second dive it was overcast a bit windy and just about ready to rain. On the return trip it did rain. Every time we when through a puddle it came up through the holes in the floor. It got even more wet for those on the back.

We arrived back at SBSR to be met by Barry and Judy, who had only shortly arrived.

Lunch eaten and a quick check in with the new arrivals. So much to say, but that will wait until this evening, over dinner, table already booked for 7pm.

Next dive is a 3pm meet. Another road trip, this time to Baluarte, five minutes north of the resort.

A very quick trip with the four of us sitting on the back of the flat bed truck. Quick kit up and into the sea.

Dive #3

Baluarte

Shore dive.

Barry and Judy’s first dive of their holiday. Lovely bimble, down to about 15 metres and back again.

We saw:

• Turtle
• Shrimps
• Nudis

Straight out of the water and straight on to the truck for our trip back.

A quick shower and time to get photos off the cameras followed by a G&T on the veranda.

Lots for us to catch up on, so time flew by. Off the Alma and Gerry’s for tea. We all chose the same.

Lumpia for starters.

Sweet and sour pork, stir fried vegetables and fried rice for main course.

Delicious!!

An earlier start today for a spot of work related activity then back to the room for 06.00 to commence camera and coffee related activities. Really loving the black coffee now (as long as it is served with a couple of Oreos).

A brief power outage was dealt with in the customary fashion.

This mornings dives are Napantao and Marayag so a combination of an amazing wall in an MPA and a muck dive where we all be looking for, well, anything!

Breakfast shortly, I really should try something different but the eggs on toast are properly lovely so it might be tough.

Slightly overcast this morning (though it seems not to stop the sunburn), we shall be heading across the bay into an area protected from the prevailing winds though they tend to die off when the sun comes out anyway.

As we approach the far side of the bay the wind drops and we pick up the mooring in near mirror flat water.

The first dive is an outstanding wall dive with hydrozoa hanging at all levels, a small yellow painted frog fish is hiding inside one of them. We turn around just after 30 minutes into the dive to make our way back on top of the reef. The sun has come out and the colours are amazing.

Back on the boat it’s coffee and biscuit time as we move south a little to the next site.

After a suitable surface interval we drop in onto a bland sandy seabed and make our way down to about 20m, on the way around we see a mimic octopus, shrimps, nudibranches and crabs. A great dive which ended up being 70 minutes, nice.

Back on board, coffee, biscuits and banana!

The trip back is on a lovely flat sea though it’s tropically raining!

Back on shore for lunch which for me is stir fried cabbage and shredded beef with chilli, nice. Jo went for the BLT.

Back on board we find ourselves sharing with a group of trainee divemasters with their associated AOW students. They are about to do a drift dive, the current is boring through the moorings like there’s no tomorrow and they are briefing their students to get in and hold on to a rope. Well, from our perspective this had failure written all over it. Three of them get in and can barely hang on. Fortunately, common sense prevails and or guides step in. The dive is reconfigured, the boat is moved and the students all drop in where there is no current.

We kit up and drop in the same place (which is where we had planned to jump anyway) and we have a lovely dive spending the first 30 minutes between 20 and 25m until we hit the current at which point we rapidly conclude that the best thing is to just go with.

We enjoy what might be described as a fairly swift drift. After signalling with our guide we confirm that the exit point has changed from the moored boat to the shore so we slowly reduce our depth, complete the safety stop and then step gracefully from the torrent right on to the beach in front of SBSR.

The students all survived and managed to view a passing whaleshark, or so they say, no pictures, no proof! That’s the second one we’ve missed.

Back on dry land our kit is taken away for dry cleaning and we sort cameras, wet clothes, loggin’ and bloggin’.

Apparently it’s now time for me to suffer another trouncing at crib. Stand by for the results.

……and, yes, royally trounced, no, not once but twice. We agree not to take crib to the restaurant!

Dinner is yet another super tasty combination of Bicol Express (a spicy pork dish) and some stir fried vegetables, all preceded by the now ubiquitous deep fried Lumpia. All washed down with Red Horse or Sprite according to your preference!

SBSR do a mean double gin and Sprite, night night Jo.

Sunny and cloudy this morning, very little wind.

Slept 10 hours last night (9-7), to say that I am feeling wide awake would be a lie.

Breakfast now, the standard fried eggs 🍳🍳on toast. Sitting at someone else’s reserved table… In our defence, it was in the shade and they weren’t here.

Just to turn the clock back to last night, I though I would share one of my crib hands that helped me draw even in our crib tournament…

Oh, yeah!

Something else from yesterday, whilst we were between mornings dives we were watching fruit bats in the palm trees. Nice. 🍊🦇🍋🦇🍈🦇🍏🦇🍒🦇

Meeting at 8:30 to dive Santa Paz and Olly’s wall on the other side of the bay. Just the four of us on the boat, us, Chris and Dave, all from Thailand. Pook decided to take it easy after yesterday afternoon’s dive.

Two wonderful dives this morning.

Here’s a picture of our captain, Puloy…

Dive #1

Santa Paz

Straight down the wall and out to the pinnacle, the top of which is at about 26 metres, spent about 9 minutes there and then back to the wall and gradually up and on to the top of the reef.

The pinnacle is so very pretty, covered in white hydrozoa, which seem to drape all around the sides.

Surface interval included coffee, biscuits🍪, watermelon 🍉 and pomelo 🍊.

Dive #2

Olly’s Wall

Not such impressive scenery as Santa Paz, but a really wonderful dive.

We were moored over the reef at the beginning of a slope that went down to 28 metres. Just a lovely bimble. Saw the yellow pygmy seahorse in the yellow sea fan at 28 metres, then gently back up the slope and on to the coral garden at the top.

On the top of the reef, we saw five crown of thorns. They are a problem here at the moment. In the past they have devastated almost all of the sites, only Adrian’s Cove was left unscathed.

We reported our find so that they could be dealt with at a later date.

Now for a couple of pictures of the boat. Ian and crew getting ready to catch the buoy, back at base. Notice the flat calm sea.

A picture of the resort, with the big boat and our transport back to shore.

Lunch now, a BLT baggette for me, only needing the Hellman’s that Barry and Judy are bringing out with them. Richard had the stir fried cabbage with ground pork, spicy.

Perhaps, time for a little nap before the next, hopefully current free, dive.

Shortly after lunch the wind got up, big time! I elected not to dive which just left Richard and Chris as a buddy pair with Ian as their guide.

I took video of them making their way out to the boat. This will follow as I will need to compress it.

This is Richard’s report of the dive.

Dive #3

Baluarte

It was great!

You would have loved it!

Hmmm….. 🤔

Here is a picture of the boat while I was waiting for them to come back.

On to getting the photos of the cameras before a pre dinner drink. I have deleted so many. Not quite in the swing of things yet.

Next up, a Red Horse and a Rhum and Coke…Time for crib…

Ooo!

I’m in the lead!

🎉 🎊 🎇 🎈 ✨

Came from behind! Excellent last hand and box!

5-4!

Ooo!

Won again! Thanks to hands like this…

6-4!!

Oh dear, 7-4…

Perhaps for martial bliss we should reset to 0-0

🤔

🤔

🤔

Nah…

Oh, dinner was good. Lumpia for starters followed by sweet and sour pork, stir fry vegetables and plain rice. Delicious. 😀😀

Power went off during dinner. MWAH! MWAH!

Back in the room now. Looking at photos 💻 whilst Richard is checking out the inside of his eyelids.😔

Crib update from last night, we ended up with me one game ahead. Having pre ordered dinner the night before, time for crib was reduced, as was time for drinking a litre of Red Horse, perhaps a smaller one tonight?An earlier start this morning, had a whatsapp call from my daughter which was nice, more on that later.The usual fried eggs for breakfast and a whole bunch of camera preparation, almost as much as was necessary.On the boat we head off to Limisawa Island for dives on Zacs Cove and Adrian’s Cove. The first dive is a spectacular wall festoon with soft corals, then it’s on to frog fish in a variety of colours and sizes. Great photo opportunities, just a shame my battery was flat ☹️. So for once I spent the entire dive Not looking through a viewfinder. Clearly its going to take me some time to iron out the inadequacies in my preparation technique.The water is crystal clear, there is no wind, its all super lovely.On the way to the site we passed a large pod of dolphins that spent a few minutes with the boat, somewhere between 20 and 50 of them depending on who you ask.The second drive was on adrian’s cove, a spectacular set of inlets and outcrops of hard coral with overhangs and soft corals, nudibranch and many many fish and absolutely zero current, definitely one to do again.On the way back to base the sea is mirror flat so a spot of sun bathing (ten minutes each side, turning regularly until evenly brown all over) then on shore for Red Pork Curry and Bicol Express (which features green beans and coconut milk).Lunch was lovely and we headed back out to the boat for an afternoon dive on Max Climax Wall. We remembered this as a particularly nice wall dive, as it turned out there was a raging current so not too much going on in the way of photography. There was a brief moment at the wall near an inlet where we were protected from the current then it was off again onto the drift. Finally the current subsides and we see banded sea snake and nudibranchs before returning to the surface to find that the oily calm sea had been replaced by a reenactment from The Perfect Storm which made return to the boat a brisk and relatively un relaxed procedure.Safely back on board we head back to the mooring as the wind dropped a little we notice a lot of rain headed our way so, quickly back to shore for showers of the warmer kind.We managed a couple of rounds of crib before dinner, winning one each I manage to retain my lead. Moving over to Almar and Jerry’s we manage an extra round where I am beaten by a clear margin so it’s 4 games each at this time – anything can change!Dinner was a chicken curry (not a spicy add I might have hoped for) and fish in coconut milk, all very lovely though k it’s back to the sweet and sour tomorrow.

I should just add, during the early crib games, the power went out for a good 5 seconds, never one to miss an opportunity, wah wah!

Well, here we are, our first dive day, ignoring the extra one yesterday afternoon. We are well rested. We both slept nine hours, 9-6.

Coffee and Oreos in bed and now contemplating getting up of breakfast.

The room is lovely, plenty of space and storage. Most important, comfy bed.

There are 13 divers here at the moment, however, only 5 out on the boat. Eight divers are doing the PADI Dive master qualification, via Open water, advanced open water and rescue Diver. This is done over two, two week holidays. Very different to the BSAC way.

A couple of things that happened on the ferry yesterday, that Richard didn’t mention. First was that I went in search of the toilet, which, with help, I found, on the outside of the ferry in the heat. So far so good. The problem was that I found getting out of the toilet a bit a challenge. Two locks to confuse me. A very small door knob, very close to the edge of the door meant I couldn’t get my large hands around it to open it. This was followed by some banging and shouting, some more banging and shouting. Nothing! No one to help! For one, who doesn’t like enclosed spaces this is my nightmare. More knob wobbling and lock twisting and I was free!!!!!! Luckily, no-one around to see my complete mortification!!!!

Can you imagine…? Philippines National News….Ridiculous, stupid British women gets stuck in loo on ferry…

So embarrassing…

Second, our ferry was going to a port that we hadn’t been to before, Hilongos. Once that we docked, I heard someone say “Hello Jo”. It was Darlene, Mrs Phil, from the dive centre. She said that she had spotted me, from way off. She was coming back from a few days in Cebu with the family. I was a little shocked that I had been spotted, after all, Richard is generally more noticeable than me, and he was wearing a particularly noticeable T-Shirt. However, it appears that here in the Philippines, tall (that’s Philippines tall, not UK tall), pale and paisty, and blond sticks out like a sore thumb.

This leads me on to the subject of soreness. Bashed my toe yesterday. It hurt, blood from under the nail and around the sides. Quite a lot! However, putting pressure, and tissue, on the ‘wound’ has made it all better this morning. Thank goodness. See I was paying attention, when I didn’t manage to save Keefe after he had his leg chopped off in a training exercise at Vobster Quay.

Having read Richard’s blog from yesterday, I notice that he had forgotten to mention the crib score, possibly because he doesn’t remember playing the last game, and I don’t really like to mention it as I am currently loosing 1-2. Plenty of time to rectify this!

Go team Jo!!

On to the diving… On Kermit.

Dive #1

Bunga Bend

One of Richard’s favourites.

Slope with coral and some sand. Down to about 30 metres, where there is a beautiful overhang with soft corals.

We saw…

• Various slugs
• Soft coral crabs
• Lots of reef fish
• Large batfish

Lovely bimble.

An hour surface interval, coffee, biscuits and pomelo, never had pomelo before, looks like a grapefruit but not sour.

Dive #2

Santa Sophia

A wall dive that drops to about 26m followed by a coral slope. Gentle current, which we swam against and then drifted back with.

We saw…

• Two turtles
• Two small frogfish, one yellow painted and the other red.
• Some of us, not us, saw a whale shark, it didn’t hang around but there was lots of excitement as it was their first whale shark

Now lunch…

Chose well, Thai fishcake in a bun with salad and pineapple accompanied by herby chips. Hold the herbs next time.

Dive #3

Tankaan – MPA

We found the current fish on this dive, so we just went with it. Not my favourite type of diving as it really makes it tough to take photos.This was the site next to dive #2. I think they were hoping that we would see a whale shark. We didn’t.

We saw…

• Current fish

We have got the photos off the camera and now sitting down for a drink and a rematch of crib…Sitting on the veranda, enjoying the ‘sun set’.

As we are facing east, this a purely a reflection of the sun on the clouds.

I have just won at crib, yay… Two all.

So far so good, Ibo our driver was on time so we made a quick getaway and after no time at all ( probably something to do with the torrent of abbuse coming my way from Ibo) we arrived at Gatwick North. No check-in queue, no queue at security so we now find ourselves tucked in at ‘spoons with a tasty beverage in hand.

Burgers now demolished, the Abbot consumed, holiday spirits are rising, to say we are in no rush might be considered by some as an understatement.Just managed to dodge the Harry Potter shop, that ‘Walletum Emptyanas’ spell ain’t gonna work on me.So what’s that thing when you see the gate announcement, go there immediately only to find that everyone else is already there? Perhaps we’re not regular enough flyers to know that this flight always goes from this gate, must try harder.After a smooth and pleasant flight we arrive in Dubai at which point we match what seems like one end of the airport to the other. We clear the transfer security checks and then proceed to walk all the way back again, and then some. Finally we arrive at C7 where we are clearly not the only passengers on the flight. The first part of the check-in involves having your hand baggage weighed, it seems to be quite a thing to take more than your allowance.
This does not speed up operation in any way, regardless, we are now sat down and waiting for boarding to commence. The airport is full of people going everywhere, fortunately they are not all going to Cebu.So, here we are on the 777 ready to go, take it away skipper and keep the beverages coming.It’s supposed to be night time and sure enough, after a could attempts to watch some really bad films, I resort to radio and sleep. The crazy thing is that before you know it, it’s light again though the airline try to maintain the illusion of night time by keeping the lights off and blinds down for at least another 6 hours. Then it’s lunch time, after which, a movie then it’s time to land and here we are. Bags collected, pickup sorted and now we have to crawl through Cebu city on a Saturday evening. I say crawl, it’s actually not that fast. Stuck on tower bridge for 10 minutes? I wish, we’ve been crossing the river for half an hour and we’ve still not made it to the other side.We finally make it to The Henry Hotel and we are greeted by PDH royalty in the form of Mr Tony Exall, now that’s extreme customer service!Moments later, cold beer and dinner at a local French restaurant are the backdrop to much talk of diving and all things related.We are awake and before long we are checked out of The Henry and on our way to Pier 3 to take the Super joy ferry to Holingos. First time at Pier 3, same as Pier 1 as it turns out, all baggage checked and now we wait for departure.What could possibly go wrong?We make our way on board and manage to get all our bags stashed in the hold (ok so they’re stacked on a palette at the rear of the vessel) and find our allocated seats (5A and 5B).The boat is nowhere near full though there are still 10 minutes to departure.

The sea is oily calm (not unlike the pictures we saw of the club dive this weekend) so all fingers are crossed for a smooth and swift passage.According to our tickets, Jo is a 42 year old male whilst I am a 44 year old male, I’m happier than Jo about this!We’ve just pushed off and can see that the dodgy in flight movie is about to be selected, what will it be now, Titanic?, The Posiden Adventure? No, it’s Sully, kind of sea drama related. Well that’s over, now we have Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, not seen that before, let’s see if the rumours are true.

We have arrived SBSR and it’s all good, dive gear unpacked, cool drink consumed, lunch on the way, then it’s time to see if we remember what to do.

Which, as it turned out, we did! With four divers on the boat, we headed over to Baluarte, only 1 minute by boat for a dive which ends up back at the mooring line for the boat. We slipped into our skimpy rash vest and leggings whilst the other divers got in to full wet suits. One of them even had a wooly hat, did they know something I didn’t?

We jump in to find that the water was a good 29 degrees at the surface and it only dipped down to 28 at depth, toasty!

A lovely dive, all kit worked as it should. An hour later we are back on board then it’s back to the shore for shower, log books, Red Horse and crib.

We then decide to head over to Almar and Jerries for tea. The obligortry Deep Fried Lumpia followed by Sweet and Sour Pork, Sunshine Chicken Wings and Fried Rice with accompanying beverages.

Whilst waiting for our food, a second round of crib was enjoyed, all very lovely.

Sogod Bay 2019 summer expedition has commenced.

Well ok, we’re not quite off but the bags are packed, the glass is almost half full and the taxi is on it’s way (ok, so it comes tomorrow morning) then we’re off proper. Shall do our best to entertain you with our mindless ramblings and observations as we make our journey over to the Philippines.

Even though we are suffering with coughs, colds and bad backs we have had a great day of diving, Morazan and then a reef and finishing off with the Olympia Maru.

Wind starting to get quite strong this evening but huts holding together nicely.

Another day of travelling but we are finally here in Sangat and what a beautiful Island. Richard No Red Horse here!

Following an evening in the Island bar it was early to bed.