The Guinayangan Republic

All Saints day are coming, there were people I loved whose memories keep pervading my mind and I recall them the very moment I am jotting down my itineraries this coming November 1. I sit down for a while and pay respect to their courage. All in all, are just melancholy feelings of missing them though I know it’s hard to pay respect for they have no graves. So I will just find a way to make them feel remembered.

That early day of December 5, 1993, over the horizon, hazy wind darkens the skyline, must be a perfect storm looming over the Ragay gulf. “Hilaaa! Hilaaaaa!” – “Ay…Ginuuulpi!! , Ay…Ginuuulpi!!-(lifting chants read as "Eye-Gee-Nole-Pee")”- voices of fishermen were chanting while there were hauling and pushing large boat out of the water. Lifting chant orchestrates fishermen to synergize lifting and act as cadence on pushing particularly heavy object. Rhythmically blended with the yelling of words like “Gwarne, Gwarne!!” (It’s a seamanship knot tying order making a clove hitch on boat‘s bowline), sound of these chants and hails were across the hissing wind as I peeked from our living room. I gazed outside our crooked window-deformed by constant blows of strong wind and heard those loud voices. I had been accustomed to those sounds on every eve of storms ever since I was a child. Activities like these are essentials in securing and mooring boat to prevent damages during typhoon. When I was a toddler I was just looking at them from afar and admired their team works. That day I became an able bodied man who can help with mooring boats. I wore a jacket, suited a bonnet, went out and joined them. My father, uncles, cousins, neighbors were all helping. Looking at the scenario, I had a premonition; it was a strong one by just associating all the commotions from past typhoons. Typhoon Monang(International name "Lola") were coming with her strength of 170 k.p.h. to 200 k.p.h wind. She must be one of strongest that would soon to hit Luzon. It’s going to be a busy day at shore.

For hours we have been tying and fastening every stress point of our boat. After a while my sister invited us with my cousin Joey for a short coffee break-just next to the place from where our boats were docked. That was a good coffee though a bit lighter, but the weather added taste to it and fill the aroma, He told us that Felix Jr. was detailed somewhere in Gaboc. My cousin Felix Jr was just 2 years younger than me. With all his siblings and his father were all shaped by the sea. You can tell even at his young age, biceps are fully developed perhaps strained by too much pulling of fishing nets. They were exposed to the sea, though our both fathers were fishermen, we grew differently; my father is a type of man who don’t want us to be like him when we got old. Perhaps my cousins were kindred more to fishing rather than to do nothing after all. Felix Jr. was one of the crews of large fishing boat F/B De la Paz. She was a “Buli buli” a derived type of fishing from Moro Ami about 80 footer outrigger boat with bamboo as lee pods similar to a trimaran. Felix Jr along with Miguel Carreon and his friend Eto Gonzales were detailed as “Taong-Bangka”. In fishing, these tasks were actually able bodied man to guard and secure boat at time of storms. That means whatever the case they don’t leave the boat at any cause. F/B De la Paz was moored at the firth of Salt River near Gaboc. That firth was best for mooring large fishing boat. With its riverbanks as the mooring cleats serving the depth of mid river as best for fishing boat waterline draft. That salt marsh usually best to moor large fishing boat rather than pull and secure offshore. That makes her location favorable as safe haven from typhoon.




That very night inevitable and violent storm hit Quezon. With her gale wind washing out all boats off shores, we were all seated and waited inside the house. We were chatting, were exchanging and telling stories with each other, while others were sleeping. Whistling of wind outside really couldn’t put us to sleep. Perhaps we were all worried what the shores might have looked like after that terrible storm. Experiencing the typhoon in urban areas and cities are different than coastal places. You can actually feel and hear vibrations of large waves bombarding the shores. We had felt the force that augments more our worries to many of us. At 4:30 AM the “Ganti” came. “Ganti” is actually a local term for the tail and spiral band of the Pacific typhoon. It is the moment where its wind shifted to opposite directions signifying the first spiral band and the eye were already passed.”Ganti” winds are dangerous due to typhoon clock wise swirling behavior making the wind swooped from sea directions. More hours had passed and the storm has subdued. 7:00 am everybody went out and checked their houses for damages and boat if there was none drifted elsewhere. An hour before lunch, news came over to one of my cousins. He said that f/b De La Paz were very unfortunate, it was hit by a “Buhawi” and was wrecked her apart, by looking at the files of timbers and rubles you could clearly estimated that no one would ever lived with such damage. All of her crew who that has detailed were missing. And right before night came my uncle went for search and rescue. Circled nearby coastal water of Gaboc, for the possibilities that bodies may have been drifted by strong current and wind. Hours more and we heard a news. Eto were found in Dancalan tied in 2 poles of “Katig”(outrigger). Speechless and seemed couldn’t believe he was alive. They asked him if he can tell whether Mang Miguel and my Cousin Felix were still alive or what did he may recall possibilities of their survival. He said “Your cousin (Felix) woke me up from deep sleep and tied me to this bamboo and seconds later I was drifted by large waves, and it was dark, I couldn’t see anything. I owe him my life”. During every typhoon, usually it is pitch black, nearby houses were no electricity, absence of stars add more darkness that he described.




Days came, search and rescue goes further than places where body has supposed to be found. Searching has gone desperate; we had all given up and lost hope. In a terrible sea storm even a great swimmer is not in advantage and most likely to drown than survived. 2 hours in a bare cold water and it can bring you to Hypothermia. Temporary paralysis follows, shocked, cramping, disorientation, losing your composure and drown. Weeks after, my Uncle Felix despite his seamanship skills told him that its hopeless, he has blinded by hope that my cousin still could be found. He was really in pity on disdaining him for staying at home and detailed him as “Taong-Bangka” instead, amidst the storm. “I shouldn’t have let him” crying as he said it. Two weeks after, a story in nearby town Tagkawayan, circulated that a man in descriptions of Mang Miguel were dredged in a fishing net, scared and disgusted by the awful smell of decomposing body, they threw it overboard without confirming if that was him. All was left is the description of sea jacket and built of Mang Miguel that makes his families accepted the horrific fate. Until now his body is nowhere to be found. A day after the second week, a telegram and UHF Radio came from Buenavista Quezon that a body was salvaged near the salt marsh swamp of “Sabang” and buried the body right after retrieval without embalming since body was in decomposition stage. All we know are descriptions of his clothes that he wore before his watch that night. Fitting the description of Felix Jr, we all assent that it was him. All of us, my sisters and cousins went to nearby town by boat to pay respect to Felix. We requested that body be exhumed to confirmed but my uncle conceded and relinquished his crying over two weeks of searching.




Voyaging back to Guinayangan that day, has made my mind thought of how cruel was the sea to all of us, I begun to enumerate names whom I know since childhood, the many who were lost, Janggo, Mang Miguel, Joel Berroya, Felix Jr and many names I couldn’t enumerate though I still can recall every incidents, for almost every super typhoon many had been lost somewhere in Ragay Gulf. No burial or funeral for their bodies (all we remembered were memories of them) left to us specially my young cousin who was my friends and playmate during childhood. Today Uncle Felix could not bear the demise and make pity of him. Months after, he was gone different. He is no longer left home for social interactions. Since 1993 till now my uncle never gone out of the house for no reasons. A clinical depression had him. He make himself desolated and confined in his room and making his mind depressingly hope he can reverse the many who were lost. It was very sad for him that we almost deprived him from knowing that his brother (my father) has already passed away worrying that his passing might again aggravated his already worsened conditions.

I hope this short story may reconnect you to our roots. May all friends of Felix Jr. and rest of people I mentioned once again remember them. My thoughts and prayers to all people we have lost and dearly loved.


-by Cornelio Cenizal

Photos Courtesy of Olivia Cenizal's Friendster
Map Courtesy of PAGASA Archive