A Slow Boat from China - Berk's Revenge.

Wednesday 11th April 2012 - Day 7

The night before I was quickly asleep at 6pm due to the beer and being gently rocked to sleep by the boat.

I was woken up by Berk telling me it was my shift and I reckoned that I might have had more beers than I reckoned because I felt a bit foggy and rather tired.  Still, a man has to do . . . . 

So I got up and took the controls and looked around to see if I could see if Jim was about to join me.  No sign of him so I soldered on with steering the boat.  There was a mass of fishing boats out there, like fireflies dotted all over the place so I felt I needed to be alert to make sure I didn't collide with one.  It was only then I looked at my watch and saw that it was only 9pm!  It was way before my shift and Berk had disappeared below deck - revenge I wondered?  It was little surprise then that I was feeling tired.  

I looked around the rest of the boat and there were bodies slumped everywhere, like a navy ship after shore leave.  I figured there was no point in trying to wake any of them up and so I just knuckled down to steering the boat.  I struggled to stay awake so what I did was to point the boat on the right heading and then walk port side and take a look, then walk to starboard side and take a look, and then back to the wheel to correct the course had the boat drifted off, but as the sea was calm and there was no wind it generally stayed on course.

From 9pm through to 1am I managed to do what England expects - my D.U.T.Y. - but by 1:00am I needed someone to take over so I went and found Jim and roused him.  I stayed on watch until sunrise. Again, we were poodling along, more so than normal, so that we didn't arrive in Subic too early and by sunrise we were just approaching the entrance to Subic Bay. Berk re-appeared and took over to bring the boat in.

Sunrise on the approach to Subic Bay

There was wonderful sunrise again and the sea in the bay was like a looking glass.  It was a fabulous feeling.

On the final approach to Vascos

The team at the end

Coming into dock

Our final destination was a bar/dive shop/hotel called Vascos on the shores of the bay. There was a small welcoming committee, mostly consisting of concerned friends an relatives.  On arrival at 6:30am I had a big fry up breakfast and then went straight to the office to do some urgently needed reports.

Once I'd finished them I rested my head on the edge of my desk and just zonked out, which is hardly surprising as I'd only had 3 hours sleep in the past 36 hours.  I awoke a short while later as the sharp edge of the desk was digging into my forehead and had made a groove in the skin making me look decidedly like Frankenstein.

Here's the final GPS plot for the last part of the trip:

. . . and the final lap of honour