Final Delivery of the Boats

Day 10: I have reached the home stretch of my Philippine trip and am just about done with the work aspect of the trip and almost ready to start playing a little bit. Today was a good day. It actually started out with a traditional Filippino breakfast. I had smoked fish with rice and eggs. Not bad even though the fish was looking at me the whole time. Then we refueled the boats in the morning and started up the coast of Palawan to the beautiful Honda bay. I've read a lot of nice things about this bay although my book says that Honda Bay is the "poor step child" compared to the islands around the city of El Nido. But at the same time my book says that Honda Bay holds up well against your average Caribbean beach. Anyway, the trip up was nice. The weather cooperated as we slowly went up the coast. But then as we entered the bay we slowed to a crawl as we navigated the many shallow spots and reefs in the bay. I was kind of neat because there was a rain storm coming over some nearby mountains and you could see it pouring down on the countryside and towns. Then as we entered the dock the real action began. During our whole voyage to Puerto Princessa we had been carrying a spare motor on each of the boats. Each one weighs hundreds of pounds. Now was the time to off load them. Originally when the police told us that they had arranged for a crane I was thinking "Wow, great, this is going to be easy". The problem was their idea of a crane was much different then mine. Their crane was actually a flat bed truck with a crane apparatus on the back. And as we docked and I'm thinking "how in the world are we....", my boss turns to me and says "Well, Marc you can take care of this, you know more then me". "Great" I'm thinking "somebody's going to die". Not to mention we had to do all this while the boat was in the water and in only about 5 ft of water under the boat. And that rain storm I told you about reached us as we started to do the first motor. But as the guys said "Manny Marc Pacquiao" was on the job. So, with the help of my guards from yesterday we slowly got all four motors off the boats and I was ecstatic. I'm just glad nobody asked me if I knew what I was doing because I wasn't all that sure at times. But it all worked out well and I think I even made a couple new friends in the Philippines. Especially the one at the top of the page. It's a lot easier to work with someone when you're on the same team. Blog you tomorrow.

Philippine Marc