An Encounter at Sea- The Philippine-May 2008

An Encounter at Sea in the Middle of Nowhere

Sailing in the Philippine Sea

About 3pm on the 5th day as we were wallowing along at 2kts under sail while Fran was on watch, a rusty dilapidated looking fishing vessel appeared out of now where and came zooming over towards. I was nervous about their approach as we were close to the Muslim Extremist Island of Mindinao. They had their faces and heads all wrapped in T shirts, bandit style and wore the latest Ray Ban sunglasses. All in all looked very frightening so I called Tom up from down below where he had been resting. Fortunately, after our time in Chuuk and Palau we knew that often the outdoor workers dressed in this fashion to protect themselves from the tropical sun so we were not too alarmed.

However, you can imagine our surprise when these 4 or 5 scary characters took out their mobile phones and started taking photographs of us! We were so stunned we didn't even think to photograph them. They then proceeded to call out to us "where are you from, where are you going, where do you come from and do you have any cigarettes?"

We answered their questions as best we could all the while feeling a tad unsure of the outcome. However, after they had taken all the photos they needed and we had answered all their question and they had found out that we had no cigarettes, they zoomed off towards their fishing grounds. Tom and I had a good laugh about it and decided not to tell the oldies for a while as they would worry about us even more!