Filipino woman conqueror of Everest set to sail for China

ANOTHER MISSION Filipino adventurer Carina Dayondon hopes to reach China aboard a replica of the ancient wooden boat “balangay” (below). —AFP

After conquering Mount Everest, Filipino adventurer Carina Dayondon is set to sail to China aboard a replica of an ancient wooden boat in hopes of boosting national pride in a forgotten maritime prowess.

Dayondon is planning to sail from Manila to southern China early next year, recreating trade and migration voyages made before Spaniards colonized the Philippines in the 1500s.

“People tell me I am crazy. They ask: ‘Wow, why climb Mount Everest? Why go to China on this tiny thing?’” Dayondon told Agence France-Presse (AFP) in Manila Bay aboard one of the two boats that will make the expected six-day journey.

“I’m excited because our team will be more inspired realizing how good our forefathers were. We have to let people know we should be proud of being Filipino,” she added.

Dayondon, 39, a petite but muscular Coast Guard officer, made history in 2007 when she and two other female climbers became the first Filipino women to summit the world’s highest mountain.

Arturo Valdez, who led their Everest support team, is also heading the sailing mission and similarly sees the journey to China as a chance to inspire Filipinos.

“Like Mount Everest, I want this to be symbolic of what our people can accomplish, of what can be possible out of the socalled impossible,” said the 69-year-old Valdez.

The vessels are replicas of the “balangay,” which date back as far as AD 320.

“Early trade with China and Southeast Asia was made possible by watercraft,” Ligaya Lacsina, researcher at the National Museum’s maritime division, told AFP.

“Europeans during the colonial period were effusive in their praise of Southeast Asian boatbuilding skill. But somehow we’ve paid very little attention to this,” Lacsina said.

Tribal boat builders from southern Philippines, where the boats originated, have made the replicas of the balangay using skills passed on down the generations.

The boats, 18 meters long by 3 meters wide, are made of hardwood planks and include two sails, two rudders and a roofed area.

Their journey to the southeastern Chinese city of Quanzhou will be about 1,000 kilometers, and the crew members are aiming to do it with as little modern technical help as possible.

“We have no night-sailing capability so we can be run over by a supertanker. That’s my fear. The greatest difficulty of replicating an ancient voyage is modernity because there are new port protocols,” Valdez said.

“This kind of boat is being treated as a maritime hazard,” he said.

‘Spirit of a nation’

Daily life aboard the boat is a struggle, according to Dayondon.

“We sleep anywhere because we don’t have quarters. We have no toilet. We just hold the rope and use a harness and do the proper position so we don’t fall,” she said.

Nevertheless, a third boat with a motor will accompany the balangay—otherwise the expedition will not be allowed into Chinese ports.

The trip is planned to commemorate a journey made about 600 years ago by a sultan from the southern island of Sulu who went to China to pay tribute to Ming Dynasty rulers there but who died of an illness on his way home.   —AFP