Fractured toe and land travel without Sophia

If you're following us on facebook (more action there now in Philippines when we have internet almost every day, and you don't even need an account to see our page), you may have already seen the picture of Phil's fracture little toe. Sigh. He was so unlucky to bang his foot into the genoa car track on the deck, right between his little toe and the next toe (ring toe?).

At first we didn't actually think it was serious, because it wasn't very painful. But the next day he had quite a limp and the foot was quite swollen and blue. We were going to the doctor anyway to find out about a vaccination booster shoot, and figured we might as well ask. We even betted on whether it was broken or not, I thought not, Phil was 50/50! Well, the x-ray showed a chip fracture on the little toe. A long day later, Phil got a half cast that can be removed for sleeping and swimming, however, we still thought this is very unpractical for boat life and especially for six long weeks! Luckily we have a orthopedic surgeon cruiser friend (the Americans we met in Stewart Island) and emailed him for advice. He suggested the much more practical solution of buddy taping the toe and wearing stiff soled shoes, so that's our approach now.

We sailed Sophia from Cebu City north to Port Carmen and while underway, Slick got a bunch of great sailing pics of Sophia, thanks so much!

Carmen has a basic sort of marina, or actually two but it seems like one, and it's full of crusty old sailors, most working on their boats. Here it's also very obvious about half or more old men cruising the Philippines have young Philipina wifes. We have left Sophia there while we backpack on land (and ferry) down south for various reasons: there's no anchorage where we want to go (Apo Island south of Negros) and we'd also have to bash against the wind to go north again, and also simply because we haven't been off Sophia for over nine months now.

We're now on Apo Island and are enjoying a proper bed that doesn't move at all. Apo Island is one of Philippine's (many) top dive destinations and also knows for lots of turtles that can be spotted just snorkelling off the beach. We can attest to that, we just saw four really big turtles, super cool!!

View from our room at Apo Island. I don't think it's possible to tire of an ocean view :-)