Five Islands and the Pop-up Typhoon

There is a small group of islands just in from the San Bernadino Straits (a site of a WWII battle between Japanese and American fleets). One our chart they are shown as the Naranjo Islands, but cruisers call them the Five Islands or Medio Islands. Some cruiser had said how wonderful they were, so Dave wanted to go see them. Overview of Naranjo Islands (Five Islands)
We took off from Catbalogan with our friend Paul on Ttaaack. It took us 2 days to get up there, stopping overnight at Kirikite Island. Here again we saw the devastation from COVID. A once thriving dive resort was totally abandoned. We were sailing in light SW winds, so we did actually get some "pure sailing" time in. TTaak
The next day I went on a drift dive with Paul. That was one crazy dive. Where we were anchored, there were a few swirly currents. I figured we were going to dive on the reefs along the wall near shore, out of the current. But Paul wanted to see what it was like out in the blue. Instead of the wall we expected, it was just a slope, gradually getting deeper, and the current getting stronger. We ended up in 5-7 knots of current (towing Paul's lightweight dinghy). You can't really do anything when there's that much current, so we decided to surface slowly.

That was a crazy trip up to the surface! The current was swirling so much, it was all we could do to just hang onto the dinghy painter and try to control our speed going up. Several times there were strong down-currents. For less experienced divers, this could have been a very dangerous dive. When we got on the surface, Paul said "That was fun, want to do it again?" "Heck no!"

That afternoon, we moved around to an anchorage off of "Pink Beach". This was a beautiful white sand beach with a pinkish tinge to it, from bits of red coral being mixed in with the sand. Pink Beach
We had hardly gotten our anchor down when a guy on a jet ski approached us. This turned out to be Karl, who was a friend of a friend. Karls owns a resort/house on Crystal Sand Beach. He encouraged us to come around to his bay and come in for drinks and dinner. So we did.

We'd been watching the slow development of a tropical wave to the east of us. It wasn't forecast to develop. By the next afternoon, the forecast was for 30 knot winds and squally conditions the next morning. We weren't in a perfectly sheltered place but we could manage 30 knots. We went ashore to have dinner with Karl, and when we returned to the boats at 10pm, the storm had been upgraded to Tropical Storm Conson, and they were now forecasting winds to 50 knots where we were, tomorrow. Shit! Not much we could do that night. Overnight we had wind gusts to 25 knots, and the currents in this bay swirl around. Taack bumped into us in the middle of the night, and opted to move a little further away. At 0530 we had a conference via Radio with Paul, what to do. The bay where we were had 3-5 swells rolling in. There is no fully protected allweather place in the Medio Islands. The wind seemed to be shifting toward the NW, so we decided to go around to an area between the islands, that looked the most protected from NW winds. Well, all the local boats had gotten there first. There wasn't any place to anchor out of the wind, and trying to anchor in 50 knot winds--we abandoned the attempt after 3 tries. Trying to Anchor in 50 knots of Wind and Pouring Rain
Ultimately, we decided to just hang out on the lee side of the island (not really anchorable due to depths and swell) for a couple of hours. We just motored slowly back and forth to stay in the less. The wind was shifting fast, so we could tell the low pressure area was moving through quickly. Taack went back around to Crystal Sands Beach and told us the conditions were better. So we went back around there and anchored. But as the winds kept shifting, it became untenable as the wind shifted south. So we moved again--back to Pink Beach, which was well protected from the now-south wind.

We were lucky, as Typhoon Conson/Jolina eventually strengthened up to a pretty strong storm.

We needed to get back to Catbalogan for a checkup for Charlie (the cat). So that afternoon we dinghied around to Karl's place to say goodbye.

The next day we headed back to Catbalogan via Libucan Island. It was a gusty day with wind close on the nose, and for a time we were doing 8 knots. But the wind switched and we bore off for Libucan Island.

The next day we were back in Buri Beach, and the cat went off the vets.

All the anchorage waypoints for this trip have been given to Terry Sargent of s/v Valhalla. You can download Terry's collection of waypoints for the Philippines, and a lot of other good stuff, from here: http://svsoggypaws.com/terrystopics.htm