Manila Bay

[escapeyachting]

We are sailing our new 55 foot motor catamaran (with Volvo Penta IPS drives) from Hong Kong to the Philippines in mid-December. We have to collect family flying into Manila so need to be as near as possible to Manila Airport.

Any advice about sailing into Manila Bay? We have heard it is not the safest place to bring a powerboat, with all the debris etc. as well as the oily water.

If we don't clear in at Manila, we can clear in at Subic Bay - but where would be the best, nearest place to collect people from Manila Bay?

We would be grateful for any current, local advice!

[Randal Johnson]

Take your boat to the Subic Bay Yacht Club and leave it there. Take a Victoria bus to Manila, about three hours and $4.00 US, and stay overnight in the Aloha Hotel overlooking Manila Bay. Meet your visitors at the airport and spend a few days seeing Manila then the bus back to Subic. The little town outside of Subic is Olongapo and that is where the bus station is.
The trip from HK to Subic is about 90/95 hours so watch the weather carefully. There is still an occasional rotating storm this time of year.

[escapeyachting]

Thanks Randal. We will probably clear in at Subic Bay and will avoid Manila Bay but interested to see what others say!

We could collect our family from the airport by taking the boat to Batangas - which is only 1.5 hours from Manila Airport. Thanks also for the advice about the crossing from Hong Kong. We are planning to do this a bit quicker at 20 knots but are keeping a good eye on the weather patterns at the moment on passageweather.com - assuming that is the best source of information.

[Boracay]

Speaking personally, Manila is a place I usually visit at the inconvenience of an airline, but it could be that you have good reasons to to want to go there.

If you must it's hard to go past the Manila Yacht Club.

I would not worry too much about large bits of flotsam. Anything large enough to be dangerous would be cooking someones dinner long before it imperiled anyones hull. The main danger, other than it being Manila, would have to be plastic bags blocking a water intake.

The Manila Yacht Club may be able to advise.

[Pelagic]

As my own yacht is berthed at SBYC and I also have a resort/home in Puerto Galera, I am quite familiar with the logistical problems of guests flying into Manila and have tried it a number of ways.


Someone else from your boat PM’d me with basically this same query. Their primary question being the logistics of picking up fly-in guests while trying to cruise further south. Their known options of basing in Subic or Manila during guest change over and concerns about forward facing props on the power cat


Thought I would share my advice to all:

1....Your friends are correct, Manila Yacht Club is a smelly, polluted, and garbage strewn location, open to weather and it is also a considerable detour using that as a pick up location. It is easy to foul props or jet drives especially after a rain when so much plastic washes into the Bay.


2....Basing in Subic for guest changes is repetitive and would work against being already positioned in the prettier cruising grounds you mentioned further south.

3...There is a 3rd option for you to consider, which will provide a more relaxed entry for arriving guests, avoid any weather issues once your cruise begins and will save on fuel while helping your Captain and Crew with provisioning Logistics.

The finished SLEX highway from the Manila Airport to Batangas Port is a 90 minute drive on a mostly new highway.

Since Batangas is the boarding point for all dive resort guests going to Puerto Galera, there are many private transport services specializing in picking up VIP guests and their dive gear from Manila Airport, in good vehicles to suit the numbers. So it will cost about Php3,000 to have a tourist van waiting for them at the airport. (and you can go up with the driver to greet them)

Batangas has a modern Super market, malls and suppliers so your crew can take care of logistics while waiting for arriving guests.

Then it is only a relaxed 12-13 nm trip back to PG where they can get acclimatized in a beautiful bay before cruising on.

The biggest advantage of using Batangas/PG as a pick up hub is that you will avoid the tide driven rough weather at the West entrance to Verde Pass if you are making repeated passages down from Subic or Manila because of new guest arrivals.

[escapeyachting]

Thanks Pelagic for your reply with all that really useful detail! Can you also clear in to the Philippines in Batangas - or could we do that at SBYC on the way down from Hong Kong?

[Pelagic]

SBYC is your best entry point, very convenient and the club handles it well.
Contact Marina Manager, Randy Pastrana sbyc.randy@yahoo.com with your ETA and clearances will be handled seamlessly.

UPDATE: ….SBYC is now under new management where the majority shareholders are steadily improving the club, hotel and marina facilities after years of neglect. They are committed to development of the surrounding properties into a harmonized Marina Village, so things are finally changing for the better.

[bewitched]

Originally Posted by Pelagic

UPDATE: ….SBYC is now under new management where the majority shareholders are steadily improving the club, hotel and marina facilities after years of neglect. They are committed to development of the surrounding properties into a harmonized Marina Village, so things are finally changing for the better.

This is good news pelagic. Can you give an update on whether Customs, Immigration and Port Control there are being more reasonable these days? I haven't been to Subic since about 2005, specifically because of the unreasonable costs of checking in and out with a foreign registered boat. The charges then were 50usd per person per department in and out, which lead to some outrageous costs for fully crewed boats..

Coming from and going to Hong Kong I bypass Subic these days and go straight to Puerto Galera, where the check in for a crew of 3 this year was less than 60usd total.

This year I have checked into Puerto Galera, checked out of Puerto Princessa and then checked back into Puerto Princessa. This is the first year that there has been consistency with the charges and the first time I have seen the charges printed out and hung on the wall. Some government directive? The new presidents clean up corruption campaign?

Are you able to tell us the situation in Subic these days? Are they adhering to the official costs, or are they still doing their own thing?

[Pelagic]

For Entry or Exit clearances……I have only ever paid $25 per boat per dept… total $75… but then again, I always ask for an official receipt.


Not sure what the posted rates are, but it is good to hear that it is being displayed in Palawan.


Will ask the club to encourage this.

[Pelagic]

Just confirmed last week super-yacht entering SBYC paid $75 total for QCI at dock

[zUrchin]

I realize this is an old thread. There are direct flights from Hong Kong to Mactan International Airport in Cebu. Options for mooring/slipping your boat would be either Port Carmen Cebu, or the Cebu Yacht Club. Either way, much less hassle than Manila. Just a hop from Cebu and you're not too far off from some of the best cruising grounds of the Visayan islands (Cebu, Bohol, Negros, Panay), and Palawan.

Hope this helps provide other folks who use CF some help in the future.

[Bruce626]

Re Cebu: Eddie Porter has a marina of sorts across the channel from the Cebu Yacht Club in Lilo-An. The CYC gets expensive after about ten days and the Porter marina was somewhat more reasonable when I last checked a couple of years ago. At the time the CYC was charging about P3K for the first ten days, Porter was charging P10/foot + P150 for the security guard - both per night.

The airport on Mactan is an international airport so guests can sometimes fly directly there and bypass Manila altogether.

[Daruffians]

Guys,

Any updates membership fees on any yacht clubs in the Philippines?