Amarula - Discovering the butterfly-shaped Camotes Islands in the Philippines

Who: Lynne & Eric
Where: Philippines
Multihull: 60-foot Crowther catamaran
Blog: www.amarulasail.com

 We are an Australian, Eric (naval architect), and a Brit/ Australian, Lynne (former teacher). We met in Tanzania, East Africa in 1993. Our dream, while working in a challenging environment, was to build our own catamaran and sail around the world! We built SV Amarula in Australia and launched her in 2001. In 2002 we returned to Tanzania to offer exclusive crewed charters alongside our marine consultancy business. After a number of years back in East Africa we finally sailed away from Tanzania in 2009. Another 2 years in South Africa and we set sail across the Atlantic in February 2012. We are now in the Philippines. Last month we finally escaped our lockdown anchorage at Port Carmen, Cebu after more than a year and sailed across to the nearby Camotes islands. Inter-island travel here in the Philippines is still very restricted, but we are permitted to sail within Cebu province at this time. The Camotes are shaped like a butterfly with the 2 main islands of Pacijan and Poro making up each of the wings. We began our trip at the north west tip of Pacijan island and anchored off Esperanza. It was wonderful to stretch our legs on white sandy beaches again after more than a year in lockdown! Using Esperanza as a base, we dinghied across to Tulang Diot, the small island off the north west tip of Pacijan island, where we had a walk on the lovely white sand beach and a dive off the west coast near to the light house. From Esperanza we relocated to the south of the island to anchor off the popular Santiago White Beach. The diving here was good, but the anchorage got very rolly at times, and we had the loudest ever lightening crashing all around us for a number of hours on our second night there, so after a tasty lunch at one of the beach restaurants we moved around to the more protected gap between the wings of the butterfly! To our north was the extensive mangrove forest, which we explored by dinghy and enjoyed the lovely mangrove walkway. It has been a wonderful experience, travelling around the world, but our floating journey is almost at an end as it is time to sell our lovely catamaran and return home to Australia and family.