31st. May 2000

Written: Wednesday 31 May 2000

Hi all:

It seems as though now it's time to write my last newsletter - Regula's in bed with a fever, all of our stuff that is to be collected today has been collected, the stuff for tomorrow is ready and our place is looking . . . very empty. We're leaving Moalboal on Thursday morning (1 June); we hope that the weather in Switzerland is warm when we arrive, of course just so that the cats don't have too much of a shock on Friday morning when they get out of their "luxurious" travel accommodation and find their new home is not quite what they've been used to!

* The Weather

Something of a mixture as seems to be usual at the moment. Some days flat calm with not a cloud in the sky, then within minutes a squall blows up the channel and swamps us with rain for 10 minutes. Underwater the visibility has been very good - 20m or so on Sunken Island this morning, Pescador has had 30m in the last week and some good fish sightings. Regula and I dived Narc Rock on Saturday and saw a 2m Thresher shark cruising around the base of it, and a 1m+ barracuda in shallow water at the end of the dive.

* Activities

- Biggest congratulations of the month must go to Alain and Andy of Escapade Marine (escapade [at] mozcom.com). I'm sure many people noticed them cruising up the coast last Sunday morning for the sea trials of "Typee", their 24m live-aboard. Alain said that it went pretty much as expected, some minor things to fix or adjust but generally OK. There is still some work to do on the interior of the boat, however progress is being made every day and full operation is looking closer and closer. The boat looks very solid and will sleep 22 (eight passengers in four double rooms and eight in two four-berth rooms, plus six crew) in comfort.

- Special congratulations to Mark Harman who was successful at the IDC that Mario ran in Moalboal and then went on to pass the IE held in Cebu last week. Well done. The "lad" knows when to study and when to party (and when to study partying!)

- For some rather different action, Jochen took a group of die-hard adventurers on a trip round Negros last week. They took wind-surfers (but there was no wind), took dive gear and found a wreck and took their 99 year old cave guide further into the guides cave than even the guide had ever been! They all had a splendid four days and plan to repeat it when they can find another groups sufficiently crazy . . . !

* Births, social etc . . . .

- Chicago left Moalboal on Saturday to spend a little time in the real world (though I don't really call the Sundancer liveaboard in Palau the "real world"!). She leaves behind her other (better?) half who promises to be a very good boy while she is away and only go to Chief Mau's on alternate days! I'm sure that Lars is missing her already (and by the way Lars, she told us that she did speak to the T-Shirt girls before she left!!

- Paul Foley who did his IDC in Moalboal in 1998 and has since been back a few times has landed a temporary job in Malapascua looking after the Malapascua Island Dive Centre. They can offer the frequent sight of Thresher sharks on their dives and Paulie guarentees a good time for any visitor.

- Lybeth and her baby are still fine and her day is approaching fast. She and Jesper are spending the waiting time with her family in Santander so the next time we see them will be when there is another Nykvist in Cebu . . . !

* Internet

A very big "thank you" to John Wright from Hong Kong who has found the Moalboal web page very useful and wants it to continue after I leave. To this end he has volunteered to pay the costs of the page for the next 12 months. This means that the web page will stay up at its current location (we have just over 4000 hits now and have been the top-ranked Moalboal site for the past five or six months on Yahoo, Excite, Web Crawler, Alta Vista and Infoseek) and I will edit the page from Switzerland. The only change will be that I will no longer look after the Newsletter; that job will pass to Lars Starner (starner [at] hotmail.com), so he's the man to pass any news, press releases or snippets of information, gossip or what-have-you to. The "What's New" page will become just a pointer to the Moalboal newsletter page where you can find the archives of these mailings.

* General

If anyone has any information that they think would be interesting for people on this list, please do let me know and I will add it in.

You may check the list web site - http://moalboal.listbot.com - to have a look at the message archives for this list or to subscribe and unsubscribe from this list.

Best regards to all who remain in Moalboal.

Simon Wright.