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Prelude
Our guests, Pauline and Chris, left us on Friday. We've been very busy since preparing for the trip to Sicily.
Sara has been grocery shopping, carried four loads to and from the laundry, and organised a Turkish agent. Phil has done a day and a half's work
We went chandlery shopping, importantly for spinnaker tape to repair a rip we put in the Furlstöm sail recovering it when its halyard unexpectedly parted the week before. We made a replacement halyard, then went up and down mast several times to feed it and replace the masthead block. The block has worn, sharp edges and is the main suspect in the death of the old halyard. While up the mast, I did a rig check. All looks good, but I do have a "watch" on the main sail halyard.
Sara made some food for the first few days of the passage.
We cleaned growth from the hull and the propeller.
We went running. Running routes stick in the brain, and it is strange that we won't be doing the Datça route for a few years.
All of our weather routing software (TimeZero, PredictWind with several weather models) forecast it will take six to seven days to get to Sicily, with 40% of the time upwind and 60% reaching. There should be wind across the Aegean, a short lull around Peloponnissos, and a window to catch fresh wind across the Ionian Sea. We can't arrive before the 1st July (due to our Schengen plan), and don't want to arrive much later because Wayne is flying in to join us in Sicily.
It's hard to capture the feelings before a passage. There are so many planning and jobs to complete, making us very busy. But there are also emotions: a build up of nervous energy, excitement at heading to a new and unknown place, and in this case, sadness at leaving the Eastern Mediterranean.
Tuesday 25 June
We checked out of Datça, Turkey in the morning. The agent was good and well priced. He did well out of us because we were keen to get off so left him €20 of change to avoid a traipse to his office.
We were soon up-wind into F7. We switched out the genoa for the trinquette and rigged the running backstays.
The water maker is not happy making water bouncing upwind. We departed with about 100 litres, so we started to worry about water conservation.
As night fell, we had a fast blast past Kos, together with some shipping traffic to dodge. The moon came up at 2300 which is always welcome for a night watch.
I had a minor coffee incident with the Aeropress, exploding coffee over the galley and scalding my wrists. Fortunately, the burns weren't serious.
Wednesday 26th June
We passed north of Astypalaia at first light. During the morning, the wind veered, putting us on a beam reach with F6-7.
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| Just your everyday 43 knots. |
By the afternoon, it was gusting up to 43 knots, and a bumpy 2m sea. The wind would occasionally drop down to around 12 knots for ten minutes, but rapidly revert to blowing its socks off. This required many sail changes, including using our fourth reef for only the second time, messing about with the running backstays, and a boom preventer to stop the rig from banging around in the lulls.
We both caught up on some sleep. We always do two hour watches on the first night of a passage, since it is very hard to rest until we've settled into the rhythm of things.
2000: the wind has slackened off to 10-15 knots, the sea state is down to 1m waves, and the wind has veered giving nice reaching conditions.
It was a fine night, except for one quiet hour where we motored to avoid slopping about. Three hour watches, and plenty of sleep.
Thursday 27th June
0300: it's flat enough to run the water maker.
0800: rounding the infamous Cape Maléa! A lot of shipping traffic compresses around the point. It's like crossing the English Channel, only with the ships going around a right-angle, no traffic separation scheme, and hard lumpy stuff to hit on both sides. Plus it can be dangerously snotty if you're trying to go eastward against a strong Meltemi wind. Knowing this, we timed the crunch point for the early morning and weaved our way through.
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| Fine conditions for rounding Maléa |
1000: we're out of the shipping and blasting along the north side of the channel in 30 knots. Three miles later, we're motoring in a flat calm. That's Maléa for you.
Today is our opportunity to do lots of jobs while the wind is on holiday. Extra cooking; using mobile internet to download weather and contact friends (we won't have an internet connection crossing the Ionian Sea); showering; and a bit of boat tidying.
We plan to motor around bottom of Peloponnissos to pass Point Tainaron before the wind got up. In our previous experience, Tainaron can be lumpy and extremely gusty.
1300: saw a pair of dolphins.
The aft heads toilet pump had been stuck for 24 hours – it was impossible to push the handle down. We carry a spare pump so I decided to take the opportunity to swap it out. In doing so, I discovered the fundamental problem was a blocked outlet pipe. We removed, cleaned, and replaced the outlet pipe. Apart from it being a four hour strugglethon, I don't want to say anything further about that.
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| Code Brown! Code Brown! |
The night was spent beating into 25-30 knots under three reefs and two in the genoa. We didn't reef the genoa further because the sheeting angle made it flap too much when hard on the wind. We tried to use the staysail a couple of times, but it lacks the power to pull us through the classic "Mediterranean chop" (2m waves, 4s period), so we flew through the night a little over-powered.
I always wonder what I'm doing when the boat is powered up and blasting into the night, having to trust the equipment, our maintenance, rely somewhat on the radar and AIS to track the opposition, and on the rest of instruments for situational awareness. Oh, and pray that the autopilot marches on - hurray for the autopilot. These worries are greatly alleviated when the moon comes up and you can see a little.
Friday 28th June
1100: The wind has veered and abated a little, in line with the forecast. We are hove-to (stopped, with the sails set for a controlled drift) for a pit-stop to make lunch, prepare more food, a new batch of bread dough, and have a general clean up. Hoving to really helps, especially as it put our deep, top-loading fridge "down hill".
1230: Holiday over, let's get to Sicily.
1830: We are hove-to again to eat dinner (baked potatoes and coleslaw) off a plate. Positively civilised.
Saturday 29th June
0600: It is still occasionally up to 30 knots and 2m waves. Every 15 minutes or so, we hit a wave just right and it completely showers the boat. We continue with our 3+2 reefs.
0930: We have just passed the 12000 NM milestone for Vagrant. The wind has veered and begun to ease (just a bit), so we've come off the wind by 10°. Siracusa is only 190 NM away, and we don't want to arrive before Monday. However, we're expecting the wind and sea to drop off considerably by the end of the day, so we're hammering on at 6-7 knots to close some distance.
1300: Shake out a reef in main, set the second reef.
We proceeded to shake out all of the reefs from the genoa by 1500.
1330-1400: I took my first ever "noon sight" by sextant. This was a little tricky because the wave trains kept messing up the horizon. The longitude came out to within a couple of miles, but I messed up the altitude reading, so the latitude was out by 50 NM. Good enough to find Sicily, but not Siracusa!
1530: We received a Mayday Relay broadcast from an aircraft Rescue India Mike Alpha calling upon vessels in the area to assist a stricken "fishing vessel" with an estimated 100-200 persons on board. So a migrant boat. I believe Rescue IMA is an Italian search and rescue call sign, but the radio operator had an exceptionally British accent. Perhaps a stronger possibility is that it is one of the several international / humanitarian missions in the area. There is some intense politics here. The current Italian government is actively discouraging such missions from giving assistance to migrants at sea, and has issued fines for doing so.
The location of the ship was 45 NM away, so it would have taken us many hours to get there, and it is very hard to imagine we could have been of any assistance and could have done so safely. Fortunately there were many commercial ships in the area. We moved on.
1800: The wind is dropping further, so we shook out the remaining reefs.
Sunday 30th June
0700: We had a quiet night, drifting along at 3-4 knots. We have one reef in the main so we don't arrive before 1st July.
This morning, about 75 NM out, we turned south a little, in expectation of a forecast wind shift. The forecast is a couple of days old now, so we're hedging bets on the timings, hoping to avoid too much motoring.
1120: 65 NM out, drifting at 2 knots in 2-3 knots of breeze (yay for scrubbing the hull!). There's a little too much shipping around for this to be relaxing, and we're cleaning the boat. Turn on the engine to close the distance and give us more control.
1315: Wind shift as forecast, and it's slowly building: 4 knots, so engine off.
1500: I've just finished the calculations after taking my second noon sight with the sextant. This one is much better, with the latitude within 1 NM of the GPS position. That's definitely good enough to find Siracusa.
1550: 42 NM to go. We don't want to arrive until day break, so double reef to reduce our speed from 6+knots to 4.5kts.
Monday 1st July
After all our fretting yesterday, we still got here too fast. We spent the night sailing slowly or drifting under bare poles to wait for day break.
0610: Requested and received permission from Port Control to enter Porto Grande, Siracusa.
0645: Anchor down. 681 NM and 16 engine hours logged.
Postscript
We've slept, had our passage beers, and begun the bureaucracy. Our current challenge is that Turkey is on some kind of health watchlist, so we're unexpectedly quarantined. Practically, this limits us to the lovely city of Siracusa for a few days, so there are worse problems to have.
All of the wind forecasts we used were spot on. This was a pleasant surprise having dealt with un-forecast land effects being dominant for the previous few months. I do need to tweak our boat polars though because "40% upwind, 60% reaching" was more like "70% upwind, 30 % reaching."
I will never again voluntarily touch the plumbing again at sea.
Wayne has just whatsapped us. Time to hit the town for dinner...
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