Following an invitation to crew on a delivery voyage of a 40ft’er to Hong Kong from The Philippines I got’ the sailing bug’ !!

What followed was the acquisition of my own vessel , s.v. “Mr. Kiwi” and several years of both coastal and blue-water sailing  in New Zealand, Fiji, Vanuatu, New Guinea and Philippine waters.

A friendship developed with the late Brian Hepburn and his wife who were the operators of Island Cruising at the time. As a favor, I arranged courtesy flags and ensigns to be produced in my adoptive home in the Philippines. A subsequent owner of Island Cruising did not want to supply flags.  Thus started a thirty-plus-year involvement in the supply of flags to the cruising yacht community, We now consider ourselves to be the leading supplier of courtesy flags internationally even though we remain a small personalized source of flags to the cruising community.

Thus, in semi-retirement I have become known as “The Old Flag man” !!

Welcome to our website!  Bato Flags is devoted to providing the very best in both products and services to both the worldwide Maritime Cruising Community 

as well as those reselling flags in Australia and New Zealand..

To join us in this ongoing journey (40 years so far!)  please join us by registering and account by