ODESA

The maiden voyage

Our overseas biking seems to have come to a full stop but I was given the opportunity to sail with our friends Allan and Lyudmila Powell on their brand new Catamaran Odesa as they brought it from the factory where it was made in Cebu , Phillipines.

Allan met me at Cebu airport after a 21 hour day.

Allan took me to his hotel so we could get an early start in the morning. It’s a public holiday but the authorities are going to go through the departure legalities so we can get away

It was a hair raising trip across the island to the factory and I wasn’t surprised when my blood pressure was up when I had my mandatory health check ( it came down after I’d settled down)

This factory was building at least 20 of this model. It’s in a tax free zone where they also make ships. 16,000 workers ,all with jobs because of the tax breaks.

Then out to the wharf where Odesa and one other were ready to go

Some of the staff took us for a short sail then after waiting a few hours for the last of the government departments to show we decided to get a few miles behind us while the wind was favourable. The route we were to take was predicting head winds for the first 140kms and then light winds east of the islands. ( blue is light ,green is about 10 knots)

So we are at the white dot and we’ve decided to take the north route to the open sea instead of the other way . Both ways are about 250kms to the ocean. Anyway we’ll just do a couple of hours then anchor for the night