Jeff's Log ~ Sunday, April 27th, 2008

I lost track of days because my back went out and between the pain and stretching and sleeping, things became a blur. Yesterday, after anchoring for the night, I jumped in the water and just floated around while trying to get straight. Finally after a while, there were a couple of good pops and a clunk, and I was almost as good as new. It is still very tender, though, so I am moving slowly and carefully. Today we stopped for lunch and snorkeling at a remote island that looked like a real find on the chart. It turned out to be nothing spectacular, so I just floated around again, while Mark, Bill, and Donna took the dink to try to find something spectacular.

After a short while, they came back, we reloaded the outboard and the dink, and were under way in short order. Scott came in swimming with me and put on a mask to check the bottom. He was very pleased with what he saw except of course for the damage. I found a couple of areas that my bottom cleaning helpers were a little lazy on, so I got the brush and quickly cleaned those areas up. The swimming helped my back some more, and right now I am resting comfortably as I write this. Bill is on watch, and Mark is in the process of preparing lunch. Provisioning in the Philippines is not easy. Almost everything on the shelves has tons of sugar in it, and the vegetables and fruit are almost too ripe in the store, so they do not keep long. In Roxas and Coron, supermarkets were unheard of, so everything had to be purchased from roadside vendors. We still had some meat from Port Au Princessa in the freezer, and there is enough other staples on the boat to last a few more days, so I’m sure we won’t starve.