Stone Skimming Championship Winners 2012

Image Courtesy: David Kershaw

This year will mark the second running of the International Stone Skimming Championships in Romblon town, Romblon, Philippines. Scotland has long been the ancestral home of International Stone Skimming Championships but now it has a challenger that aims to offer competition at least as good and possibly surpassing the founders, by virtue of its more exotic location.

What is stone skimming (ducks and drakes or stone skipping)? If you hold a roundish, flattish stone in your hand, with your index finger curled around the circumference, and flick your wrist just the right amount then the stone will spin upon release. If you simultaneously catapult your arm in a horizontal arc at just the right height above the surface of calmish water, the spinning stone will bounce across the surface of the water. Too little spin, not horizontal enough or the wrong height, and water not calm enough, then the stone will simp

Red Sky At Night - Shepherd's Delight?

Image Courtesy: Martyn Willes

Getting wet seems to be the easiest thing to do in the World at the moment, with floods (or snow fall that will turn to flood) in: United Kingdom, Australia, South Africa, Mozambique, the United States et al

Why does there appear to be so much precipitation?

Is it, as a friend of mine said recently, "a factor of the ability to deliver immediate news and especially when there is no real news flooding is a good headline&

Super Typhoon Bopha (Pablo)

Image Courtesy: Kochi University, Japan

Super Typhoon Bopha (locally “Pablo”) made landfall around 6am (4th December, 2012) just South of Baganga town in the province of Davao Oriental. The expected track will take super typhoon Bopha across central and northern Mindanao to near Dipolog, Zamboanga del Norte, and then to Northern Palawan. What is unusual about super typhoon Bopha is that it has tracked so far South, for so long.

The weather system started as a tropical depression, some 1300 nautical miles East of Davao City, near 2.5N 159.0E, on the 25th November, as reported by the Joint Typhoon Warning Center and subsequently via the Puerto Galera Yacht Club email Typhoon Warning service. At that time, the storm system was expected to track west-northwest, with only a small chance of touching land in the Phili

The red/orange under-layer is nickel ore; get to it by taking all above

Image By Girlie Cervantes

I recently visited Surigao del Norte to report on tourism activities there, with a special focus on water sports. I found plenty of water sports and many new ventures in the pipeline. But what really took my breath away was the rape of Surigao over the past five years in the quest for easy money.

Jake Miranda, local hotelier and scuba diving fanatic, described Surigao del Norte as “presently suffering an identity crisis”: does it want to continue to be rapped by the global mining industry or does it want to embrace eco and adventure tourism. It cannot happily

Electric cars destined for Negros ev Rally?

Image By Domenick Yoney used without permission

Next year, Negros Island could be home to the first biennial electric vehicle road rally in Asia (if you exclude the famous World Solar Challenge in Australia). Why Negros? Because all of its power comes from renewable sources and is virtually free.

Negros derives its electricity from geothermal sources, deep beneath its rainforested interior. Thanks to initiatives of the previous administration, in the funding of modern road infrastructure, Negros also has some of the most underutilized roads in the Philippines. This unique combination of almost free electricity and underutilized roads has inadvertently created the ideal conditions and location for the World's first electric vehicle road rally. And in my opinion there are few better places to showcase environmentally friendly road vehicles than on an island where there is no pollution from coal, oil or gas powered electricity generating

Bohol Wakefest 2012 Pandanon Island

Image courtesy The Board Shop

The beautiful Pandanon Island will be the venue for Bohol Wakefest 2012 – a month long wakeboarding and wakeskating festival for everyone interested to get into the sport of boarding in the Philippines. Bohol Wakefest 2012 also includes a two–day Wake Jam. The Wake Jam is where invited, top–class wakeboarders and wakeskaters, from all over Asia and the Philippines, will be demonstrating their skills and performing some astonishing tricks, for the entertainment of spectators and to motivate local enthusiasts to excel.

The Bohol Wakefest 2012 is enabled by a new, straight–line wakeboard cable system (Sesitec System 2.0), which is a mobile wakeboard and wakeskate facility that could be located across almost any short stretch of river, lake

Santa Ana Yacht Club burgee

Image courtesy Girlie Cervantes

It is not often that a new yacht club opens in Asia, even less often that one opens in the Philippines. The Santa Ana Yacht Club has this month announced its opening in the northeast corner of Luzon, in Santa Ana, Cagayan.

If you are a cruising yacht or power boat owner, and you have previously wondered where to tie–up in the North of the Philippines, the Santa Ana Yacht Club has the answer: tie–up in Cagayan. The facilities are a little bit limited at the moment but it is just a question of time before moorings, a clubhouse, restaurant and a bar will be finished to satisfy everyone’s needs. In the meantime an anchorage and partner beach resorts will more than

Ryan Binidel and Sam Chan (left) match racing Flying Fifteens in Subic Bay

Image courtesy Martyn Willes

Subic Bay, 12th April 2012 – The first two of five Flying Fifteen class sailing yachts were launched at Watercraft Venture today for exhibition match racing event between international sailing champions Sam Chan and Neil Pride. The Flying Fifteens were donated to SAGS (Saturday Afternoon Gentlemen Sailors) by the Hong Kong Flying Fifteens Association in order to encourage young sailors from around the country to embrace the spirit of yachting and, in particular, to prepare them for competition in the Flying Fifteen Worlds, to be held in Hong Kong, 24th October to 7th November, 2013.

According to Ricky Sandoval of Watercraft Venture, these donated boats will provide the foundation for a reinvigorated Philippine Flying Fifteen Association fleet, with more boats to be added as soon as sponsorship from government and industry can be