On Passage Again - Palau to Philippines

We are (so far... knock, knock, knock) having a great passage.

November is "transition season" where the summer monsoon transitions back to the winter northeast trades. It's this seasonal wind shift that makes the triangle we are about to complete--Davao to Raja Ampat to Palau and back to Davao--such an easy run, if you time it right.

November and December is also the time of year where the budding typhoons that normally sweep NW into the northern Philippines and Taiwan and Japan, sometimes get depressed by cold fronts and plow right through Palau, and into the middle Philippines. Instead of being a pretty safe season for hanging in Palau, and passaging westward to the Philippines, this can be a fairly hazardous time of year. We've had a series of developing lows marching west from the western Marshall Islands for the last month.

The November 1 Satellite Picture
(Red=Heavy Rain/Convection)
Our friends on Mystic Rhthms made the dash from Palau to the northern Philippines about 10 days ago, and we agreed to be their "eye in the sky" during their passage. About the only weather you can't get by Sailmail is a good satellite picture. But in the tropics, the satellite picture IS the weather. We had helped them find a weather window that would be able to sail most of the way. I was using the marvelous FastSeas.com website to check on the trip weather for about a week before we saw a likely window coming up. But we were so focused on the wind aspect that we forgot to pay attention to the "unsettled weather" aspect. Mystic Rhythms had wind all right...

Halfway through their 5-6 day passage the satellite picture was so convective that you almost couldn't see the ocean underneath the squally looking clouds. Richard said they had squalls almost the whole trip, with gusts to 40 knots. But they didn't have to motor!!

One of the old hands at the Bottom Time Bar at Sam's Tours in Palau was looking over my shoulder at the satellite picture and said "We're going to have a typhoon soon." And he was right--a day or so later, one of the passing Lows spun up into a full blown typhoon. Even though it passed well north of Palau, it brought some terrible weather for a week or so. The only direction that the protected Sam's Tour's mooring field ISN'T protected is from the southwest. This typhoon dragged a long monsoon trough behind it that brought 30-40 knot squalls from the SW for several days. Fortunately, we'd decided to go out for a last trip into the Rock Islands, so we were in a protected hurricane hole when the worst of it came through.

Anyway, we had decided several months before that we'd start looking for a weather window to head back to Samal around the 1st of November. The historical data (OpenCPN Climatology plugin) showed a good chance of NE winds after about the 10th of November. So we watched and waited, and as soon as the typhoon cleared away to the north of us, we decided to go. But wait... another Low popped up between Mindanao and Palau...hmm... which way was it going and was it going to develop??

Bottom line was, it looked like the Low was going to inch northward, and NOT develop. If we got going, we could scoot south of it and avoid the worst of the squally weather. We delayed our departure a day to let it drift a little north, and to let the big seas kicked up by the passing typhoon subside. And then we left...

With all that said... the unsettled weather season, more Lows building into typhoons behind us, etc etc, we have had a GREAT passage. We left with SW winds (which would be right on our nose), but the FastSeas.com weather routing algorithm routed us NW out of Palau, to go up and over an adverse current stream, and then had us motor through the light air in the wake of the Low, and after that it would be smooth sailing. And that's exactly what happened. The first day we tacked once to avoid a squally looking bunch of clouds, but after that we've had sunny skies and smooth sailing. We motored about 7 hrs in light headwinds, and then right on schedule, the wind switched to the NW and we could sail again. We have had one light sprinkle of rain that lasted just long enough to close down all the hatches, but no squally weather.

We are now smoking along with wind aft of the beam, and a 1-knot following current.

Our new Soggy Paws loves to sail in light winds. We've had nothing over 15 knots, and most of it has been in the 10-12 knot range. She's fast and comfortable on just about any point of sail.
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At 11/12/2016 11:45 PM (utc) our position was 06°30.35'N 126°37.66'E

Yes, Still Alive

Dennis, Bryan, Lee... and the rest of you lurkers... this one's for you...

Whoa, has it really been 3 months since my last blog post??

Well, there's really no excuse for letting it go that long. However, I do have my excuses!

(1) In Palau, the internet is sketchy. Some days it works great and some days I spend 2 precious computer hours just trying to get connected. As a semi-expert in computers, it was a totally frustrating experience. Usually I can figure out the system after awhile. But in Palau I never did. Why on some days, I get an immediate connection, good login, and good internet speed, and the next day, I spend 2 hrs just trying to get logged in. Anyway, I spent a lot of potential "make a new blog post" hours spinning my wheels in Palau. And there's no such thing as free internet in Palau. The best deal is to buy $10 10-hour internet cards in bulk, 20 at a time, and get the $10 cards for $8. I'd go thru a 10 hr card every 2-3 days. Meaning I was spending about $80/mo for crappy internet. The alternative is cellular data from the one cell phone provider. This is new in Palau since we were last there in 2014. They claim 3G, but my phone never reported more than a 2G connection. The sim card would work in my cell data hotspot (but then my phone wouldn't work). But data costs $45 for 1GB. In Mala.ysia, Philippines, and Indonesia, the same 1Gb would cost only $10-15. In the Philippines, you can get 30-day "unlimited" for 30 days 3G/4G for about $25.

(2) My second excuse is that I manage a huge amount of financial stuff online... including 3 rental properties, 3 mortgages, 3-4 bank accounts, 3-4 credit cards, and several investment accounts. Plus I'm responsible for all the insurance (3 houses, boat, car, health, DAN, etc). It's nearly a full time job just keeping up with this kind of stuff. Especially in light of #1.

(3) My 3rd excuse is keeping our website and our Compendiums up to date. We have been dribbling compendia of cruising information behind us since Ecuador. I now have a Compendium for: Ecuador, Marquesas, Tuatmotus, Societies, Cooks & Samoas, Tonga, Fiji, Fiji-to-Marshalls, Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, and Indian Ocean Crossing. These run from 100 to 300 pages long, and are packed full of timely cruising information. For the most part, there are no "guide books" out here. Fortunately, people crossing the Pacific this year have been emailing updates, so I've been updating and republishing the old Compendiums every few months. For areas we have NOT yet been, I've been spending countless hours researching for when we do go there. This is a labor of love, so I'm not complaining. But it IS time consuming. (If you don't know what a Compendium is, see http://svsoggypaws.com/files )

(4) Another big time consumer in the last few months has been doing "boat projects". We are still whipping the new Soggy Paws into shape. Some of that has been various canvas projects. Some has been researching and learning the new systems on Soggy Paws, including finding manuals and troubleshooting guides, ordering spares and new gadgets, as well as making sure we understand how the existing systems work. In Palau, we can ship stuff in using US Priority mail, duty free. So a lot of time has been spent online buying stuff--everything from LED lights to plumbing parts. Again, online stuff that would take me 10 minutes with a good fast computer connection takes several hours on Palau's sketchy internet. (Right in the middle of a purchase... "Whaddya mean, NO INTERNET CONNECTION??!!!" ... did I actually buy it, or not??

(5) Finally, the best excuse is life itself. I've been too busy "doing stuff" to write about it. We spent 3 weeks diving nearly every day. We had a great setup with Palau Dive Adventures (offseason "space available" rates), and we took advantage of that. We made 35 dives in Palau with PDA, plus a few on our own. I also made a 10-day trip to India with my daughter, plus we are planning a dive trip in the Philippines in December and our jaunt through Indonesia, PNG, Solomons and Vanuatu next year.

(6) Then there's the Facebook factor...If you're sitting in your armchair waiting for me to post the next blog post, you should probably sign up for a Facebook account and "friend" me. Because it's so easy to do so, I post a lot of little "what we're doing" tidbits on Facebook. I spend a lot of internet time keeping up with friends and family on Facebook... high school friends, former work friends, racing friends, yacht club friends, cruising friends all over the world. In the last few months, friends have died, got married, had babies, got divorced, got a sex change, lost their boat, graduated, etc etc. All . on . Facebook. Dave rolls his eyes when he sees me on Facebook--he thinks it's a big time waste. But when I say "Oh no, so-and-so are getting a divorce!" and he says "How do you know that?" I say (smugly) "Facebook".

Anyway, those are my excuses...

I love my blog, and I'm glad you're anxious to see the next blog post. So stay tuned. I haven't given up blogging yet.
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At 11/11/2016 5:00 AM (utc) our position was 07°38.43'N 130°58.01'E
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm

Arriving Palau Today

We had a good time at Helen Reef. More on that in another post.

After a great 2 days of downwind sailing, we will be arriving in Palau this afternoon. It has been a fairly fast sail, with wind on the quarter or directly behind at 10-20 knots. In these conditions we make 6-7 knots easily. The weather has been very settled...sunny tradewind conditions, with nearly a full moon at night.

Last night we had our first squall of the passage. The winds gusted to about 35 knots. We had 2 reefs in the main and about 1 reef in the jib. In one gust, surfing down a wave, in a wing-on-wing configuration, we hit 15 knots!!! At sustained winds of 20-25, we were regularly doing 9-10 knots. All of a sudden our ETA concerns (trying to time our arrival during normal working hours to avoid overtime fees) went out the window.

It has been nice having additional crew on board. Liko and Claudia have been helpful and cheerful, and have been learning "the ropes" quickly.
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At 8/15/2016 11:51 PM (utc) our position was 06°48.89'N 134°24.04'E

Heading for Palau

We checkout out of Sorong, Indonesia on Wednsday, and left Sorong on Thursday morning. We spent Friday doing some boat maintenance on a shallow beach on the north coast of Batanta.

Early yesterday (Saturday) morning, we left that pretty anchorage to head north and east toward Palau.

Our first leg was planned to be 45 miles to an anchorage on the southeast end of Waigeo. We had originally envisioned this leg to be the typical Indonesian drift (motorsail). However, a strong monsoon trough moved in a couple of days ago, and we had big winds from the SSW. This made our planned anchorage untenable, but also gave us a speed boost, so we ended up going about 62 miles, going on around the east end of Waigeo, and found a nice anchorage on the north coast.

We had 20-25 knots most of the day, and with the main down to the 3rd reef, 2 reefs in the jib, and the wind aft of the beam, we were easily reaching 7-8 knots. It was good experience for us all--it had been so long since we actually sailed that we needed a refresher. And the new crew are soaking up the terminology and the sail handling.

None of our friends have been in this part of Waigeo, so for the first time, we had no waypoints or tracks to follow! But thanks to GoogleEarth and SASPlanet, we had some usable satellite photos. Good thing, because the chart is vague and way off in this area.

I have been learning how to make satellite charts from SASPlanet--it's not hard but something I haven't done before. Doug on Rigel gave me his SASPlanet program with about 4GB of cached sat photos, which have much better photos of this part of Indonesia (Nokia DGSat). I had made a few maps a week or so ago, so when I blithely tried to make a few maps of the east and north coast of Waigeo, I was surpised to find some problem between GE2KAP and SASPlanet. With Paul (the GE2KAP creator) and Terry on Valhalla's help, I tried a few things, but haven't solved it yet. It may be a Windows issue.

Fortunately we already have good cartography of the stops we plan for the trip to Palau. Our plan is make the jump to Ayu Islands (about 60 miles north of here) tomorrow. This is an Indonesian group of atoll-like islands. I think there is one village. I am sure we will be welcomed for a day or two stop there. The next stop after that is a single overnight NNE to Helen Reef, a tiny atoll at about 3N 132E. This atoll is owned by Palau, and is staffed by 3-4 rangers who live there and protect the reef from poachers (usually Filipino and Indonesian fishermen). If we have good enough weather, we hope to spend a few days there, diving and snorkeling. The final leg is a double overnight NNE to Palau. So we think we won't be in Palau until around 18-20 August.

It looks like the monsoon winds are dying down today, so we are hoping for only 5-10 knots behind us for our first leg tomorrow. We'll be leaving at the crack of dawn to give us an early afternoon arrival, as we've got about 5 miles of reef-strewn passage to get from outside the reef to the anchorage inside the reef.
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At 8/7/2016 7:55 AM (utc) our position was 00°08.52'S 131°14.39'E
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm

Off We Go to The Philippines

We had originally planned to stay in Palau until September, but the weather in the last month has really been poor. We haven't had one chance in 4-5 weeks to get out and go diving. The "Monsoon Winds" have arrived, and the Monsoon Trough has sat over Palau for weeks, bringing SW winds, rain and squally weather. The monsoon wind blows primarily from the SW--directly on the best part of the reef.

We have also tired of being cooped up in the one anchorage we are permitted to stay in without paying $100 for a 10-day cruising permit.

Anyway, after yet another bout of crappy weather, we have decided to cut our stay short and leave when our friends leave on this weather window. (one boat has been trying to leave for a month, and this is the first good window) We didn't want to take the chance of getting stuck for another month.

The flip side is, we'll be in Davao for their big festival in mid-August, and we have signed up to participate in the first part of the Indonesia Rally leaving from Davao around the 1st of September.

There's a lot of stuff we did in Palau that was blog-worthy. The internet is just so slow and expensive that I never got to it. Hopefully we'll get a chance to back-post, at least with some highlights.

We left Palau 2 days ago, and are now about 290 miles from the easternmost point of Mindenao, the biggest island on the SE side of the Philippines. We are trying to get to a place on the N end of the small island of Samal, off the big city of Davao, in southern Mindenao. There is a marina there called the Holiday Ocean View Marina at approx 07-11.87 N / 125-42.62 E. This is where we plan to leave Soggy Paws for our next trip home.

We are hard on the wind in 10-12 knots of wind, and bucking a .5kt current right now. There is a bigger current coming--the current running south along the coast of Mindenao peaks at 2.8kts!! (Think Gulfstream). To complicate our weather routing situation, just about the time we get to the strong current, we will have almost 20kts of opposing winds. This is not a good situation. So we are looking at t-t-t-tacking around a bit trying to balance staying out of the strong adverse current and the strong adverse winds--and especially out of the strong-current-against-strong-winds situation. (Think Gulfstream in a Cold Front).

So far it's been a very nice sail. But the next few days are going to get rough. Though it's only 295 miles straight to the coast, it's nearly 400 miles to the point we have to round to get up into the Gulf of Davao. And we won't be able to do it in a straight line.

Fortunately the weather in general is pretty settled, so at least we don't have to worry about 30 kt squalls in the mix.

We are in loose company with 3 other boats who left at the same time--Carina, Helena, and La Gitana. Westward II left for Davao a couple of weeks ago, and Challenger is stored in Palau, with Jerry in NC for a little while longer. New friends on Miss Behave set out the day before we did, on their way back to Australia via PNG and Vanuatu.

P.S. Our website was down for a couple of days--we apparently got hacked--but it should be back up now. Also, I think I fixed the position report widget on the blog--so that should be working again.
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At 08/01/2014 1:45 AM (utc) our position was 07°26.12'N 131°21.37'E
http://svsoggypaws.com/currentposition.htm

Reef Diving in Palau

We have now made two 10-day trips out to the Rock Islands of Palau. On the first trip, we were mostly diving on the SW and West reef, between German Channel and Saies Corner. On the second trip, we did a lot of diving on the Japanese wrecks left over from World War II (covered in the next blog post).

Sherry on the Blue Corner Wall
Below are the best of the photos from our reef diving. Most of them were taken by my husband Dave.

The signature dive for Palau is Blue Corner, which is just one spot on the reef. But in reality, there are about 5 miles of reef on the SW side of the Palau archipelago that have just incredible diving. Incredible because of the clarity of the water and the huge amount of fish life--caused by a combination of current outside the reef and environments conducive to marine hatcheries inside the reef... and stringent protection regulations.

Huge School of Snapper Hanging Out at Blue Corner
Stephen from Westward II Watching the Action
Using Our Reef Hooks to Hang on the Wall
Sharks Too!

A Big Moray On Top Of The Wall

The people who manage diving tourism in Palau have done a great job of making the dive sites accessible without damaging the reef. They have a string of dive buoys all along the reef.

Another Huge School of Fish at New Dropoff
We Found Nemo!
The Soft Corals Like the Current, Too
The New Dropoff Wall
Besides the SW reef area, there are several channel dives. These are drift dives in the channel, usually on the incoming current. The best one is Ulong Channel, and we have done this several times. During May and June the Grouper are spawning, and they are all over in Ulong Channel. Other popular channel dives are German Channel and Lighthouse Channel.

For a few dives, Jerry from Challenger volunteered to be "dinghy tender". This was quite a luxury for us. Makes things much easier on current dives to know there is someone on the surface following your bubbles, no matter where you end up.

Jerry With Three Dinghies
On other dives, we towed the dinghies with us. This is possible when there are no other divers or dive boats to worry about, and when there's not much wind.

Sherry Drifting with the Dinghy While Dave Takes Pictures
Grouper Spawning in Ulong Channel
(There were hundreds of them 18"-24" long)Awesome Spread of Lettuce Coral in Ulong Channel

There were lots of other very cool things to see in Ulong Channel, but it all happens pretty fast as we are drifting along at 1-2 knots. I really like the garden eels, but they are very hard to get a picture of. They are only about 8-10" long and sink into their holes in the sand when you approach. They look like turtle grass unless you look carefully.

Near Ulong Channel is a very nice no-current reef dive called Coral Gardens. This is a great place to take a novice diver as it is shallow and easy, with lots of pretty fish and coral.
Big Eye Fish Hanging Out in the Shade of a Large Plate Coral

Further out from Ulong Channel is Saies Tunnels and Saies Corner. It's a long dinghy ride (3-4 miles), but doable in our RIBs with 15-25 HP motors. In the early morning (half tide or greater to get over the reef) with no wind, it's an exhilarating ride. And totally worth it.

Interesting Caves at Saies Tunnels
Colorful Tridacna Clam
Hanging Out in the Current at Saies Corner
Eagle Ray
A Rather Large Nudibranch We Found in German Channel

The only problem with all this "resource management" is that it ends up being very expensive to cruise here. The $120 you pay on arrival as a cruiser is just the beginning. To go and anchor ANYWHERE except the single designated cruiser anchorage at Sam's Tours, it costs $50 per month for a Cruising Permit for the boat, and $50 per person for a 10-day Rock Islands permit.

So the first excursion out to the Rock Islands costs a whopping $150 for 10 days, and another $100 for another 10 days. Plus, there has been almost no wind (good for diving, bad for sailing), and so we've had to motor everywhere, and diesel is $5.45/gallon.

But it's better than paying the fly-in tourist diver rate of $145 per diver per day for a two-tank dive (plus of course, hotel, meals and transportation).

In my next installment, I'll post some pics of the wrecks we have seen.

Enjoying Palau

We have been in Palau for 3-4 weeks now. I have been really remiss in not posting, but we just been so busy!!

We have settled in at Sam's Tours--one of the most yacht-friendly non-yacht businesses we have encountered in 7 years of cruising. For $35 we joined the Royal Belau Yacht Club (essentially based at Sam's), which entitles us to use the dinghy dock, trash disposal, hot water showers, secure bike rack, AND get a 10% discount at dive shop and the bar/restaurant. We joined on arrival, and have contracted for a nicely-maintained mooring for $50/mo.

Sam's is primarily a dive operator, but they also arrange eco-tours, etc. They are incredibly busy in the mornings and late afternoons. But once the divers are away in the dive boats, by about 9:30 in the morning, it is a great place to hang out. The managers and helpers--when they aren't overwhelmed by their diver-handling duties--are incredibly friendly and helpful. They have already several times gone out of their way to help us out.

The anchorage is in a nice setting--we are essentially in one of Palau's quirky "Rock Islands" and surrounded by nature, in a fairly protected (but deep) location. It has fairly clear water, and is swimable. In fact there is a cave dive (Chandelier Cave) located right next to the mooring field, and in the late afternoons, there are 2-3 dive boats hanging outside the cave waiting for divers to return.

They speak Palauan and English here, and use the U.S. dollar as their currency. When Americans check in on their boats, they are asked, "How long would you like to stay?"...in other words, like the Marshall Islands, no visa hassles. (not so for non-Americans, unfortunately).

Sam's/RBYC is also a secure and easy place to have mail packages sent. Like the Marshalls, Palau has a U.S. Post Office zip code, and so you can have mail sent from the U.S. via USPS. Priority Mail packages don't cost very much to send, and they get here normally in a week to 10 days.

We have been hearing about the grocery stores here ever since we started reading up on Palau. There are 3 big stores, well stocked with both American and world-wide goods. There is a fairly large Asian contingent in Palau, so lots of small Asian stores as well. Due to the flourishing tourism business, daily flights bring daily replenishment of the veggies. So there seems to always be reasonably fresh-looking broccoli and lettuce on the shelves, and usually some decent tomatoes.

There are also two American brand hardware stores here... a Do-It-Best and an Ace, both well stocked.

There are several restaurants within easy walking distance of the anchorage, and "town" is a $5 taxi ride away, with a few more restaurants. So between eating out and eating in, we've been eating quite well!!

"Town" is, unfortunately not in easy walking distance of the anchorage. At high tide you could get there by long dinghy ride, but there are no dinghy dock facilities there. The alternatives are a $5 taxi ride each way (for up to 4 people), bicycles, or hitch a ride with Sam's on their morning run to pick up divers from the hotels. We have unloaded the folding bikes we bought in Hawaii (for the first time in 3 years!), and have been using them for getting around. Our friends on Carina bought a pair of bikes from another cruiser who was leaving. Jerry on Challenger bought a bike from a local store for about $150. The rest of the cruisers here have been carpooling with taxis, or occasionally walking. (Usually you only try to walk once, then you take an air-conditioned taxi).

We have great pay-as-you go internet in the anchorage. But the downside is that it's not cheap, and it's very slow. With the booming tourism business here, the internet pipeline is not adequate to accommodate the number of people trying to connect. In the middle of the day, even with a strong wifi signal, you are lucky to get a fairly complex page like Amazon to even complete loading. Forget trying to download ANYTHING bigger than 100Kb.

There seems to be no magic way around the speed issue, except to get up and do your internet business in the middle of the night. For this, the worst internet service we've had since the Marquesas, we pay about $1.25 per hour (via $10 for 7 hour scratch-off cards). If you buy your scratch-off cards in bulk (10 at a time), the price comes down to $8 per 7 hours. Due to the slow speeds, even getting up at 6am to do my surfing, I burned through $80 in a week, and have contemplated going on a monthly plan at $175 per month (unlimited time)! This is one reason I haven't been blogging or Facebooking much! Not only is it expensive, everything on the internet takes 2-5 times longer to complete.

I have heard that the Palau government is trying to upgrade their internet trunk line, but I haven't heard any hard dates, so it's probably "not this year". So we are stuck with the situation until we move on to the Philippines in September. I've heard the internet is better and easier there.

Another downside to Palau is that everything in general is a little pricey on a cruiser's budget. This is due to Palau being a tourist destination, plus being way out in the Western Pacific. It's not quite as bad as French Polynesia, but similar to Hawaii and big-city-American prices. The prices wouldn't be shocking for someone flying in from the U.S., but with the very cheap Philippines just over the horizon, some of our cruiser friends are complaining. Some examples... meals out are $7-25, with around $8-10 the norm. Liquor is probably the worst--there must be some hefty liquor taxes here. The cheapest bottle of wine you can find in a grocery store (what would be a $4 bottle in the U.S.) is about $12. We have yet to find any boxed wine. The cheapest beer we have found is $1.05 per can, and that's Milwaukee's Best or Japanese Asahi. They have a local micro-brewery that brews some really nice beer, and that's $1.75/can. Hard liquor is outrageous--the cheapest most rot-gut vodka is about $25 per bottle (what would be $5-7 in the U.S.), and everything else is more expensive.

A third major downside to Palau is that non-American visitors are only given a one-month visa, and then must extend monthly at about $100 per month per person. So our non-American cruising buddies are only staying a month and then moving on to the Philippines.

It seems like everyone on this cruising route is heading for the Philippines. The cruiser grapevine says that, if you avoid the bad spots (like Zamboanga, a hotbed of Muslim separatist activity), it's a great cruising destination and very inexpensive to cruise, and to get work done on your boat. Somewhat like Venezuela was before it (recently) got so bad.

This is long enough... I'll stop here and get this off before I get re-prioritized. I promise to fill in some more in the next few days.

Passage from Yap to Palau

May 6 - May 8, 2014

We checked out of Yap on the morning of our departure. The Yap officials would not permit us to check out late the afternoon before and leave at the crack of dawn, as we had wanted to. So we had to wait until their office opened at 8am to check out. But it was done quickly and painlessly and without cost. We made one last stop at the grocery store--hoping that tomatoes would have magically appeared on the shelves. But alas, we had to make our passage tomato-free.

As seems to have been the pattern during our whole trip across Micronesia, we left port on another long passage with the promise of wind that never materialized.

And also true to form, Dave didn't want to drift along in the light winds, so we motored a lot of the way to Palau.

The entire trip was pretty uneventful. We spent most of the second day with passing squalls and doing the zero-to-25-to-zero squall "two step". But about midnight that day, the final squall passed and our last 12 hours was pretty good.

The whole passage was 260 miles, from the anchorage in Yap to the commercial wharf in Palau. It took us 53 hours, and we motored 31 hours of that.

Our check-in in Palau was pretty hassle-free. We tied up to the commercial wharf at 1pm, and by about 3pm, we were completely done. The whole thing cost $150 U.S. And as Americans, we have a year in Palau before we need to worry about a visa extension. (Non-Americans get 1 month, extendable to 3 at a cost of about $100 per month).

By 3:30pm we were on the Guest Mooring off Sam's Tours, and by 5pm we were enjoying a nice cold draft Red Rooster beer (great German beer brewed in Palau) at the bar at Sams. Hot showers, nice dinghy dock, etc.
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At 05/08/2014 9:17 PM (utc) our position was 07°20.32'N 134°27.17'E