I exited the Philippines in the same state that I entered: eager. This longing to get out had nothing to do with the country itself. It was my mode of travel that was the challenge. For one month I sailed through the Philippines with six other people. I’d spent three years romanticising the notion of sailing without considering the realities. To sail in a crowded yacht for thirty days and enjoy it takes a specific kind of traveller. It takes the type of traveller I so desperately wanted to be at twenty-one. It takes the kind of traveller, it turned out, I was not.

SV Delos was a fifty-three foot Amel Super Maramu - which still means nothing to me as much of the sailing jargon never stuck. She had two masts and could comfortably sleep five people. ‘Delos’ was named after the mythical island off the coast of Greece. This was where Zeus’s half-god-half-human twins were raised by Poseidon. The island was said to be a floating oasis for the children. Hence, ‘Delos:’ Brian and Brady’s own floating oasis. 

Brian and Brady were brothers from Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Brian was a software developer who sold his company to Microsoft in 2010. Cashed up and disillusioned with the ‘American Dream’ he did what all men - at a particular age - with too much money seem to do. He bought an expensive toy. Brian and his younger brother, Brady sailed Delos from Mexico to New Zealand in that first year where Brian met his Swedish girlfriend, Karin. The crew of three set sail out into the Pacific. This is where my friend Josje entered the scene. Josje met the Delos crew in Fiji. She decided to join them for the next month of sailing to Vanuatu but quickly fell in love with Brady and ended up staying for six years. 

I’d lived through Josje from my dingy Dunedin flats and promised I would meet here somewhere in the world once I’d graduated. In 2013, I booked a flight to Singapore and hoped Delos would be somewhere in Asia by December. It was a difficult trip to organise as the crew weren’t so fond of planning. They preferred to feel out an area and anchor until it was time to move on.

After a series of reluctant goodbyes and forty hours of flying I landed in Davao city to meet the crew.  I caught a taxi from the airport to the ferry to get across to the island. ‘Royals’ by the New Zealand singer, Lorde, played through the taxi’s radio and I was temporarily overcome with a sense of earnest patriotism. Davao surprised me. It was more Singapore than it was Manilla. There were designated smoking areas in the streets and laws against littering. The order was credited to the mayor at the time, Rodrigo Duterte. He had supposedly transformed the ‘crime-ridden city’ into a relatively safe and investable place. His methods were controversial yet he served many terms in Davao across twenty-two years and went on to be elected President of the Philippines in 2016. When I was there a bomb went off in a movie theatre. There were whispers from the locals that Duterte was responsible. He instigated these ‘terror’ attacks as a way of keeping fear alive in the city; as a way of keeping himself needed. There were other stories of a group dubbed the ‘Davao Death Squad’ who were a vigilante gang that took out criminals. Duterte never admitted responsibility for the group but he didn’t condemn them either. In 2015, Duterte was questioned about his crime-fighting methods in Davao. He responded, “We're the ninth-safest city. How do you think I did it? How did I reach that title among the world's safest cities? Kill them all.” I heard stories about criminals who were convicted of rape or murder being tied with rope to the back of a truck and dragged through the streets to remind the people of the City’s intolerance of crime. 

Though, to me, I saw clean streets, cheery people and extravagance. To celebrate my arrival the crew, consisting of Brian, Brady, Karin, Josje, Ash (Brady’s friend) and Marsha (Karin’s mother), treated me to a night out at ‘Vikings.’ For $25 New Zealand dollars we had three hours to make our way around the enormous restaurant to sample as many of the four-hundred different dishes as we could muster. I spent at least ten minutes standing in front of the caviar bar overwhelmed by the twenty-seven varieties. While making the rounds at the buffet I thought I’d misread the drinks list. A triple shot Tanduay rum and cola was cheaper than a single. I hadn’t, Coca-Cola was more expensive than Tanduay and if I didn’t love it on that first night, I learned to.  The combination of the music, crowd and crippling jetlag sent me spinning. After gorging on a sickening combination of sashimi, parmigiana and yorkshire pudding we rolled out of there. 

I didn’t know at the time that this would be the ‘last supper.’ Rations are skint while sailing and the level of organisation required to store enough food to survive was immense. Everything on board had to be secured down in case of rough seas. Most of the food was stacked underneath the floorboards with the minimal fresh produce being positioned meticulously in the mini fridge. The organisation of the food was stage one of sailing preparation. Next, came the cleaning. I was assigned the job of scrubbing the deck with a toothbrush to remove any grime and polishing the salt off the stainless steel fixtures. Karin was assigned the task of scrapping the gunk off the lower hull. Two hours into it I heard her scream. It was the kind of primal scream that emerges only when someone is under serious threat. A large, gruesome jellyfish had draped itself over her entire back and shoulders. Brian dove in to pull it off her but chunks of tentacle tore off the alien, searing Karen's skin. I was silently horrified. Karen howled as Brian dragged her onboard and tweezed the bits of tentacle off her back. He then poured three litres of malt vinegar over her. Her scream intensified before settling as relief washed over her. Incredibly, everyone simply carried on with their chores. Karen took on Brian's job of checking everything on board was secured. Brian finished cleaning the hull and I moved on to the windows. The realities of sailing were beginning to reveal themselves.

Delos had been moored in the Ocean View Marina for eight weeks, the longest time they’d spent in one place, waiting for an engine part to arrive. Brady told me they had taken the faulty part to a Filipino mechanic who only had to smell it to correctly identify the engine type and diagnose the problem. The delay was due to the unreliable Filipino post. The crew had settled into the comfort of the marina and had become a fixture in the community. There are many varieties of sailors including lone sailors, docked sailors and YouTube sailors. The marina was full of docked sailors: people, mostly over the age of 65, who lived on yachts that were permanently moored or ‘dry stored’. This initially baffled me though I came to understand the appeal. Among the perks of being a docked sailor were aircon and a reliable source of freshwater. As we bid farewell to these luxuries and set off to sail, the marina sailors came out to wave us off before retreating back to their cool cabins. We were beginning the first leg of the voyage.

Throughout the previous year I’d fantasised about days on the yacht. I saw myself diving off the railing and taking long strokes in the sea to stretch out my body and cool off. The Philippines has around 7640 islands and the surrounding sea is the largest in the world. In some parts, the water reaches depths of over ten-thousand metres. The ocean's magnitude and the speed at which Delos travelled was confronting and left me paralysed on deck. This first leg of the trip was the longest spent on open water. We made our way south to the Davao Gulf. By nightfall, we had hit the southern tip of the gulf and slowly started to make our way up the Northeast coast of Mindanao. It was a fine balancing act between hitting favourable currents and avoiding the fishing nets that littered the sea. 

I knew sailing wouldn’t be glamorous. But I don’t think I’d truly considered how tough it was going to be. The first obstacle was overcoming the migraines from the heat. There was no escape. In the hottest part of the day when the sun had reached its zenith there was no shade. I learned to slow my breathing, scoot down the narrow passage beside the cabin to catch the slight breeze and lie very still to avoid overheating. The next saga was the heat rash. My skin had not seen the sun for a year and the combination of thirty-five degree heat, thick sunscreen and a limited supply of fresh water caused my chest and arms to break out into large, unbearably itchy hives. Each day I buried myself in books urging my body to adjust to the climate and counting down the hours until the sun began setting. 

I imagine in almost every piece of travel writing ever written there is a section dedicated to a spectacular sunset like no other. Yes, I am going to follow suit. Let me walk you through sunsets on Delos: At the yacht's stern hung a canvas chair suspended over the water. The yacht would be cruising and all around, for as far as you could see, was sky. At around 7:00 PM the temperature dropped and the sky to the east would turn a pearly mix of purple and pink. When you turned to the west, the flame of the sun dimmed as it descended toward the horizon. One particular night the clouds had arranged themselves like Roman pillars where the sun hung between as if it was frozen in the frame. The crew stood in silent appreciation, though, someone was still filming. Someone was always filming.

The Delos crew were ‘YouTube Sailors'’ and filming took up a large portion of the days at sea. Delos made around $50,000 USD each month from their YouTube channel. It was big business and Brian took it seriously. Much of the day was spent planning filmable, ‘fun’ things to do or setting revenue goals for the coming months. They had a roster for who collected footage, who would sift through the hundreds of hours of video and who would stitch the pieces together to tell the story of the boat's voyage. I hadn’t considered that I would be in these videos. I was horrible on camera and those videos are still up on the internet. I went back to watch them while writing this piece and found a mortifying clip of me waking up with a camera in my face being asked if I was excited to sail. This produced a sort of erotic horror film effect that I was shocked to see make the final cut.

The contrast to the YouTube sailor came in the form of a man named Chris. Chris was Canadian but grew up in the Bahamas and worked online as a project manager for the United Nations. Chris was a lone sailor. He was as you’d expect: rugged, tan and gruff. Lone sailors have a reputation for being mad and Chris proved this theory true. Over a rum, Chris explained to me that whales sleep on the surface of the ocean and were a risk for lone sailors. In the previous year, Chris had been sailing through the South Pacific, asleep, when he was thrown out of his bed. He’d hit a whale. The hull of the yacht was caved in and he was taking on water. He described manoeuvring the yacht at a dangerous angle so the damaged hull stuck out of the water and he could begin repairing it. He sailed like this until he reached Easter Island where he stayed for ten months repairing the yacht. Most of his time there was spent waiting for a crane to arrive so he could pull the yacht out of the water.  After almost a year of living in an exposed beach shack, he was set to sail. The entire island’s community came out to see him off. Not long after Chris’s departure he heard that an intoxicated man had driven the crane off the wharf. 

We moored next to Chris for two weeks in a lagoon off the island of Siargao. The island was best known for the ‘Cloud 9’ surf break. The little town, General Luna, was crowded with surfers and bohemian, treehouse-like bars. Though, we rarely stepped foot on land as Delos was well equipped for activities. They had a dinghy named Maggie, five surf boards and dive gear for three people along with a compressor. We spent those weeks surfing the reef break and diving.

When I was back in Dunedin watching the Delos YouTube videos of sailing the Pacific there were many clips of the crew sourcing most of their food from the single line secured to the stern. Within minutes of throwing the line out they would bring in enormous Mahi-Mahi and fillet them on the deck to eat raw with soy sauce and rice. The ocean in the Philippines was not as generous. Dynamite fishing was still a disastrous issue in the Philippine Sea. Commercial fishers would detonate dynamite then, indiscriminately, scoop up all sea life caught in the blast with nets. They tossed the dead turtles, birds and dolphins aside and kept what they could sell. The area we were diving in was an airy and barren gravesite. The kilometre swim from the boat to shore was an unsettling experience. I sensed there was life out there but all I could picture was the vulgar jellyfish that had attacked Karen.

After two weeks of Tanduay and the constant rocking from the current in the lagoon we farewelled Chris, pulled up the anchor and made our way to Bucas Grande. We moored by tying Delos onto the surrounding limestone rocks. The yacht hovered above the edge of a shelf where the ocean floor abruptly dropped off to thousands of metres. The underwater landscape gave me a curious case of vertigo as I struggled to wrap my head around the depth. This was my final stop aboard Delos and I was starting to get itchy feet. The yacht was made to sleep five people and we had seven on board. I’d spent the past month sleeping on a fifty centimetre wide mattress crammed into the bow with Josje and Brady while Ash, who I’d grown to dislike, hogged the single bed. 

To sail is to truly live communally. Every decision had to be made as a group as there was only one dinghy, one survival kit and a stretched food supply. The one meal I remember eating regularly was ‘pork adobo.’ Abodo is the national dish of the Philippines so pork was easy to stock up on when we were close to land. It consisted of gristly, fatty pieces of meat cooked in a marinade of soy sauce, spices and garlic served on rice. We had this at least three nights a week then ate the leftovers for lunch the following day. By this stage in the trip I’d lost about one fifth of my body weight from the heat, manual labour and my aversion to abodo. I took to sneaking cucumber sandwiches whenever I had a rare moment alone onboard. I was dirty, hungry and growing increasingly hostile.

The forecast leading up to my exit was grim. We’d had still, calm weather for the entire month and I cursed the sky and swell for attempting to trap me on Delos. On Christmas Eve we set off toward Siargao where I would catch my flight to Manila. The swell continued to build and the rain was coming down in heavy, violent drops. I was determined not to show fear out of fear that we would have to turn back. But Brian called it when Marsha began screaming with every wave that crashed onto the deck. We cruised into a bay by a tiny town to wait out the storm. I was, irrationally, furious with Marsha. My true colours were beginning to shine through. I was far more high maintenance than I’d let on and I’d reached my limit for pork and the grotty layer of sweat and salt that permanently coated me. I demanded to be taken into the town on ‘Maggie.’ The streets were practically empty as most of the community were celebrating Christmas to Lincoln Park’s live album in a big hall on the edge of town. I walked up and down the muddy path between the market stalls until I found two men who said they had a boat. It wasn’t difficult to convince them to get me to Siargao. I agreed to pay their extortionate price and they agreed to collect me at 6:00 AM the following morning. 

 The Philippine government introduced a tourism campaign in 2012 called, “It’s More Fun in the Philippines.” Everywhere we went the locals would raise a glass and chant, “It’s More Fun in the Philippines!’ Exiting the Philippines lived up to this slogan. The two men arrived early calling me from their ‘banca boat’ that had an outboard engine strapped onto the back. They’d prepared for the weather by fixing plastic sheets over precarious wooden framing. The rain was hurdling in at every angle as the three of us crammed in a single row. We spent the three hour trip chain smoking and passing packets of Marlboros back and forward down the line. We roared with laughter as we bounced over the swell and cheered like madmen with every landing . The size of the banca meant we could hug in close to the coast and avoid the perilous waves Delos had been up against. Just as the novelty was beginning to wear off we made it to the wharf in Siargao. The men fired my backpack onto the concrete and called for someone to lift me out of the boat into the mayhem of chickens and fishermen on the dock. The rain was still coming down and as I handed over their pesos I shouted back “What do I do now?” Another man arrived on cue and ushered me to the street, strapped my pack over my shoulders and pushed me towards a motorbike. With no time to think I climbed aboard and we tore off toward the airport. By some miracle I made it. After the panic and rush I took a seat on a flimsy plastic chair on a concrete pad that was the departure lounge and relaxed for the first time in weeks. 

I’ve heard the phrase ‘type-2 fun’ thrown around when people are talking about a difficult hike or a marathon. It is a way of describing an experience that is miserable during but enjoyable in retrospect. This rings true to my sailing experience. To this day I fib when asked if I enjoyed sailing. Maybe to preserve the intrepid idea I had of myself at twenty-one that lives on through those YouTube videos.