“Balangay” calls Maasin Port
The Balangay is cheered as it docks at the new terminal in Maasin. Photo by Jani Arnaiz
By Jani Arnaiz
November 23, 2009
MAASIN CITY — ‘DIWATA ng Lahi (Fairy of the Race),’ the 3×20-meter replica of ancient boat popularly known as ‘balanghai’ or ‘balangay’ calls on Maasin Port at noon Friday with its 18-man expedition team on board.
The team is headed by former Transportation undersecretary and the 1st Filipino Mt. Everest expedition lead-man Arturo Valdez.
Erwin “Pastour” Emata, the second Filipino to summit the Mount Everest, who came a day earlier with Reynaldo Godoy as advance party, said the ‘Balangay’ sailed at around 6:30 Friday morning from Jagna, Bohol.
The boat with dominant yellow and red stripes sails arrived at the fish port at around 11:30 to the applause of about a hundred people who have been waiting patiently as it was seen in the horizon back dropped by the Bohol islands.
The Maasin City call of the historic voyage is part of the fifth leg, from Mactan, Cebu, Bohol, up to Butuan City, to take 20 days and 66 sailing hours, 265 nautical miles distance.
“Kaya ng Pinoy, Inc.,” the non-government organization (NGO) is spearheading this expedition in close coordination with local government units in the stop-over points.
Expedition leader former DOTC Usec. Arturo Valdez said in a press conference at the city’s SP session hall, “The expedition aims to retrace the seafaring life of our ancestors, not necessarily Filipinos, reconnect the present with its past and rekindle our maritime consciousness.”
Valdez together with the core of the Philippine Mt. Everest Team – Leo Oracion, Erwin “Pastour” Emata, Carina Dayondon, Noelle Wenceslao, Janet Belarmino-Sardena, Dr. Ted Esguerra, Fred Jamili and Dr. Voltaire Velasco – or the “Kaya ng Pinoy Incorporated” are in the fifth leg of their ambitious voyage to retrace the migration routes of our forefathers.
He said, Diwata ng Lahi is built to the same specification of a balangay by master boat-builders from the islands of Sibutu and Sitangkay in Tawi-Tawi.
Art Valdez was the leader behind the project to put the first Filipinos on the summit of Mt. Everest in 2006 and 2007. With his watchful eyes, the boat took form in 45 days.
The boat sailed from Manila to Calaparan on September 1 for its maiden voyage.
During the voyage, Valdez and his crew applied ancient navigational techniques using the sun, stars, wind clouds and even bird migration as point of reference. They will continue to use the same techniques throughout the voyage.
While in Maasin, Valdez and his crew were billeted at Floiquin hotel courtesy of the City government.
A symposium was held Saturday at SP session hall attended by some 150 student leaders.
From here, the voyagers will sail to Limasawa Sunday then Butuan where they will be joined by another balangay built in Butuan.
“We will be in tandem for the rest of the voyage,” said Dr. Ted Esguerra, another member of Team Mt. Everest.
Esguerra said “No way. We didn’t even think about it whether it is Limasawa or in Butuan,” when asked whether the Butuan balangay would rekindle the controversy surrounding the site of the celebration of the First Mass in the Philippines.
Limasawa and Butuan are both claiming as the site of the First Mass, which was incidentally declared by Historical Institute as in the Island of Limasawa in Southern Leyte.
Meanwhile, Esguerra, who figured prominently during the Guinsaugon tragedy as one of the leaders of the rescue teams, said what was exciting on their voyage from Jagna to Maasin, which took them five hours, was the sight of several butandings as they approached Maasin.
The pro-Mazaua, Butuan so-called experts have denied the unwritten history of Portugal in Mindanao, the Spice Islands, the entire Indonesia and Asia. They denied or ignored the historical fact that the Portuguese explorers and colonizers were in Mindanao at least one year before Magellan and his fellow sailors even landed in Homonhon, one of Samar’s islands, then Limasawa island in Southern Leyte and Cebu. Under the Treaty of Tordesillas (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Tordesillas), the entire Philippines belonged to Portugal but so far they had only explored the entire Mindanao and some of its islands.
The pro-Mazaua experts wrote about the “Kingdom of Butuan” which was a big and known kingdom from Sulu and spread up to Butuan. The natives of Mindanao had their Muslim calendar which they learned from their Islamic brothers whose origin came from the Middle East, and centuries later their religion spread to Asia including Mindanao.
Since Magellan and his fellow explorers sailed from Spain westward across the Atlantic Ocean, down to South America, then west across the Pacific Ocean, then to Guam, Homonhon and “MAZZAUA” island, they would have learned that the “First Mass” on Easter on March 31, 1521 was too late or done with.
The intelligent circumnavigators know that when they sailed westward from a certain point in Europe, goummnavigator
For further in-dept study, you may link and read the following articles:
http://www.7th-mil.org/Limasawa.html
http://www.7th-mil.org/limazzaua.html