LIFE: Part 2

In Greece we lost our dinghy.

Somehow it came separated from us during the sail from Paxos island to Preveza, a distance of about 30 nautical miles. We spent three days searching for it but, alas, I believe that some lucky Greek found it and figured Christmas had come early.

Still, as the Greek police officer said, “you still have ourselves, your boat, and you are travelling. So all is good, no?” After all, who really needs a dinghy? Such a minor thing. And so cheap to replace too, after all, what is a few thousand dollars to rich tourists like yourselves?

Hah! No one quite realizes the stress of not having a dinghy. Sure, we can paddle ashore in our kayak, but that gets wet. And we cannot lock it up – remember back in St. Vincent when some kids took it out for a joy ride?

So, since it is now low season, we are reluctantly going into marinas so that we can simply step ashore.

Why the reluctance? Well, I just don’t get why everyone wants to be in a marina. You are squeezed in between everyone else. There is no privacy. The people who promenade along the quay love to look into the boat to see what you are up to. You can’t swim, as the water is usually dirty. There is no breeze, as it is all closed in. And then, if some wind or waves arrive, there you are bouncing up and down the dock and the other boats, at risk of damaging something.

Our first attempt at that was in Syracuse. Nice big empty town quay. We come in, we tie up alongside. And then some official comes along and tells us we can’t park here as a big cruise ship is expected tomorrow. So we go out and anchor. But then we get moved again as we are too close to the shore and the big ship can’t turn around. So we go even further out. And then we have to paddle ashore for our nice meal in Syracuse. So much for that attempt at staying dry! And how is Ceu supposed to dress up in her high heels?

But it gets worse. Since everyone on the Med seems to want to be at a dock, instead of anchored out in some lovely peaceful bay with clear water, and peace and quiet, there is no space for all the boats.

The solution?

Instead of docking alongside the quay, how about going end-on? Then you can cram more boats onto the same stretch of quay.

It is called Me’d Mooring’. I guess that is because it is done in the Med. Everywhere else people sensibly tie up sideways. And today we had to do it.

So what does that involve? Well, here is the procedure. Now tell me how we are supposed to do this with just two of us???

There are two variants, depending on whether the dock provides a bow line or not.

Med Mooring without a fixed line

Go to a spot about 3 boat lengths away (out to sea) from your target space. Drop your anchor.

As you let the anchor chain out, start to reverse into your slot on the quay. Now, it might be a narrow slot, so you need fenders out on both sides, and you need someone to watch your aim as you reverse into the slot. So that means one person on the anchor, and one on each side watching for the other boats. Plus the helmsman.

As you approach the dock, stern first, throw the two stern lines to some helpful people waiting on shore. They then tie up the two lines, one from each quarter. Now you are moored. All you have to do is adjust the length of the two stern lines and the anchor chain so that you are nicely positioned. Oops. What if there isn’t anyone on the shore? Ok, lets skip this stage.

Keep backing up until about a foot away from the dock, at which point the person on the anchor chain checks the reverse movement by tightening up the anchor.  Another person fends the stern of the boat off the wall, while the helmsman kills the engine and, if necessary puts a bit of forward gear so you don’t smash into the dock. Hmm. That takes three people.

At this point you are secured by the bow, but not by the stern, so now the cross wind starts to push you sideways onto the yacht next to you. You really need those stern lines on. But that means somehow getting ashore with the lines. If you can do that quickly, all is good. But now the taut anchor chain has pulled you off the dock again, leaving a 10ft gap to jump. Of course you could put the reverse engines on again and hope that you don’t snarl some ropes.

Ok, lets try that again. New procedure. We anchor and let out out a whole bunch of chain. Then Ceu gets in the dinghy with three long ropes tied together. She goes off to the shore to attach one end, and then come back to the boat with the other end.

Meanwhile I maneuver the boat backwards into the slot and hope to meet Ceu coming towards me with the rope. Oops, rope isn’t long enough. Tie on another length. Now we are there. Once she gets the rope secured to our windward quarter, we can then tighten that, and the anchor rode, until we are snuggly in place. The other quarter can then be tied up.

Oh, I forgot. No dinghy. Ok, let’s go out and anchor in the bay and just paddle ashore.

But what if there are laid lines already on the dock?

Med Mooring With a Laid Line

Well, then we don’t have to bother with the anchor bit. We just backup into the slot, throw the two stern lines to that helpful fisherman standing around on the dock and tie those off. Then, while one of us fends the stern off the wall, the other grabs the lazy line, walks it forward to the bow and ties the bow off. A bit of tightening here and there and Bob’s your uncle!  Just as well the fisherman was there. Except he only did the one line. As the minute amount of wind pushed us sideways to the yacht next to us, while we were still 10 feet from the wall and so couldn’t go ashore, we had to call for him to come and finish the job! At least there wasn’t a real wind blowing!

But the hassle doesn’t end there.

We are now nicely med moored. A line off the bow, a line off each stern quarter, and a third line going across from the Starboard quarter to the dock on the port side, just to stop us sliding sideways onto the yacht next to us. Boat is secure. And it is a nice safe four feet from the dock.

Now we just have to get ashore. The ‘Med Moor’ way to do that is with a passerelle. We have one of those. We made it in Cartagena, having been warned about all this Med Mooring. It is essentially (in fact, exactly) a ladder with boards across it so you can walk along it to the shore.

So, what you do is you attach one end to your boat, and suspend the other end over the dock with a rope going up. A spinnaker halyard works well for that.

At least it does in a monohull, where the stern is in the middle of the boat. Our stern is off to one side. So hanging one end from the spinnaker halyard means the passarelle gets pulled sideways to the middle. Of course we secured it with a cross line. But you still can’t walk along it, as the line holding up the distal end is at an angle, cutting off your obvious escape route to shore. Try to duck under it and you fall in the water.

So now it is an hour later. We are moored. We have no passarelle in action but if we pull hard on the lines we can bring to boat close and scramble ashore. That will have to do.

Actually, Ceu has another solution. It does involve that friendly fisherman again. We tie an extension to the spinnaker halyard and toss it to him. He secures it somewhere on shore. And then we zipline down the halyard onto dry land. What could be easier?

Now, tell me again, why do people want to do this????

Current Location: Taormina, Sicily
Current Position: 37°49.61'N, 15°16.52'E
Distance sailed since last post: 46 nautical miles

After our crossing from Greece, we treated ourselves to a night on the town in Syracuse. Remembering a good restaurant that we went to last time, we headed to the large piazza in front of the Cathedral.

The restaurant was not yet open. But there were not one, but TWO accordion players in the square. Oh such dilemma! Like the husky dog trying to defend two pieces of frozen fish from the other dogs, we kept walking from one player to the next, trying to catch them both!

First we listened to this duo, with a home-made double bass! Just one string that he tensions or relaxes just by pulling the neck back and forth while he plucks with his right hand.

And then we had to listen to this lonely guy playing some amazing classical music

And then it was back to the duet

And then finally for a great meal.

Having arrived in Sicily we still wanted to go see Stromboli volcano before putting things to bed in Ragusa for the winter.

So, yesterday we had a lovely sail up the coast to Acitrezza where there are some black basalt pillars.

Apparently that is where they ended up, having been thrown by cyclops Polyphemus at Odysseus after Odysseus blinded him with a burning stick. And then Odysseus escaped by hanging underneath some sheep when they went out to graze. And that was after 6 of his crew had been eaten by the cyclopi!

Man, I wish Odysseus had kept a blog – he certainly had wilder adventures than we have had!

Anyway we crept into the tiny harbor and tied up alongside an empty pontoon. We had a quiet night, and no one came to charge us anything! And no cyclopi came to devour us either. Phew!

Early this morning we left Acitrezza at dawn, along with heaps of fishermen.

We motored up the East coast of Sicily in a flat calm to Taormina, at the foot of Mt. Etna. Along the way we had some spectacular views of Mt. Etna.

And then the fun begins.

Since we are currently dinghy-less, having lost our poor dinghy in Greece, we are reduced to paddling ashore in the kayak. Which is all well and good, except that you get wet doing so. So we decided to Med Moor in Naxos harbor (right next to Taormina, which is up in the hills). That adventure is the subject of the next post.

However, we eventually succeeded and are now nicely settled with gorgeous views of Etna and Taormina

From here we need to wait a few days for some forecast westerly winds to pass and then we will strike out north to brave the ship-eating whirlpools Scilla and Charybdis of the Messina Strait. Those are in Odysseus’ blog too. Fortunately I believe an earthquake changed the underwater topography and they are not as fearsome now as they used to be. We hope.

Beyond that are the volcanoes of Stromboli and Vulcano. If we survive the formidable Messina Strait.

In the meantime, the weather is still hot, the sun is shining, the water is warm, and all is right with the world.

Current Location: Syracuse, Sicily
Current Position: 37°3.55'N, 15°17.2'E
Distance sailed since last post: 283 nautical miles

What a lovely sail!

We set off from Preveza in the morning of Wednesday, Oct 2nd, motoring through the calm. By lunchtime the northerly wind had arrived and we were close-hauled on starboard making over 7kts. The seas were moderate, the sky blue, and some dolphins joined us for a little while.

The wind increased through the day so that we had 2 reefs in for the 25kts by the end of the day. Through the night we kept the reefs, though the wind did drop to 15kt or so. But still, we made 140 nautical miles in the first 24 hours. That put us halfway.

Towards the end of the next day, Thursday, the wind, as expected disappeared. For a few hours we were again motoring, wondering when, and from what direction, it would return. We tried to watch a movie in the evening – only to be constantly interrupted by our wind-shift alarm as the fickle light airs danced around all directions of the compass.

No matter. By midnight the wind was back with a vengeance. Over 20kts again from the north. A quick double reef put in, and we where chomping our way to Syracuse again. We always over-reef at night just to be on the cautious side – and if the wind drops we rarely shake it out either. We prefer to go a bit slower than to have to keep waking the other one up to do a reef change in the dark.

This morning we arrived. 50.5 hours after our departure (2 hours better than our trip the other way) for an average of speed of 5.6 kt including 18 hours of engine time. Bear in mind that when we are motoring, we travel at only about 4 kts. so it does cut down our average.

At one point, in fact, we were barely making 3kts towards our destination. Why was that?

The wind had dropped to about 7-10kts true and turned right on our nose.That is the most frustrating of conditions, here’s why: We have three options:

1. We can sail. But since it is now a beat, we have to tack. At 12kts of wind (apparent), we make maybe 4 kts through the water, giving us a VMG (velocity made good into the wind) of under 2 kts.
2. We can motor straight into the wind. But, again, we have 12kts of wind apparent right on our nose. With just the one engine on, which is what we normally cruise with, our speed drops down to maybe 2.5kt
3. We can motor sail – ie we tack, but assist the sails with the motor, giving us maybe 5.5 kts through the water – and a VMG of maybe 3kts.

So frustrating, as whichever way you cut it, it is slow. With less wind we would just motor straight into the wind and make better speed. With more wind, we sail, go faster, and make better speed. We had maybe 6 hours of this, so it rather cuts down your average.

Anyway, here we are back in Syracuse. And the good news is that our internet still works! Another month still pre-paid from when we bought it in Sardinia.

Excellent.

Current Location: Preveza, Greece
Current Position: 38°57.78'N, 20°45.7'E
Distance sailed since last post: 55 nautical miles

Wow…how time has gone so fast

Welcome to Greece Jessica! We really enjoyed having Jessica around for a couple of weeks.

The first week we rented a car for a couple of days. Went on a road trip up to Acheron River. We had so much fun horse back riding, zip line, rafting and walking along the Acheron River, including the crazy  drive through high mountains, steep gorges and zig-zags with Mama at the wheel.

After all that excitement, it was time for a drink!

 

We enjoyed some beautiful sailing down from Corfu into Paxos Island where we visited some amazing caves, and cliffs on the west side of the Island, and a famous white sandy beach, cristal clear waters in Anti-Paxos

 

 

During our road road trip we took some detours, this one into an old, abandoned Monastery.

Perfect size!!!!

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Ahhh…soo cute, the ducks were enjoying the floods right outside a little church along the waterfront

 

 

Thanks to Heidi Noel is carrying on the recipe. Noel made us a yummy  breakfast as soon as I found some nice plums.

 

For more pictures check out the gallery, but the scenery was soo amazing , pictures cannot describe.

We have enjoyed Greece very much, but now the summer is almost over and it is time to leave.

Tomorrow we leave for Sicily. It will be a three day sail, so we won’t be online for a few days. When we get there we will be going to Marina da Ragusa where Life Part 2 will be berthed for the winter.

 

Current Location: Corfu, Greece
Current Position: 39°36.83'N, 19°55.42'E
Distance sailed since last post: 60 nautical miles

Wow, we have had some fun cruising around the Corfu and Lefkas area, as you can see from the map.

Beautiful cruising around here: the sea is sheltered, so no waves. The winds are usually flat calm in the morning, but then pick up to  a nice breeze in the afternoon. Mind you, the wind seems to pretty much ignore the forecast. In fact, on Thursday when we sailed from Lefkas to Sivota (in order to avoid the 25kt headwind forecast for yesterday) we had a 25kt headwind for most of the trip – leading to some exciting close-hauled sailing at 7-8kts! Then yesterday, when it was supposed to blow, it was flat calm all day. Go figure!

This is definitely charter and flotilla land. Even now in shoulder season it is still busy with lots of them everywhere. In fact, this is the busiest place we have been to the entire summer.

We will be putting up some photos into the gallery very soon.

But, tonight, we are picking up Jessica from the airport. She is flying from Vancouver as we write this, and will be visiting for 2 weeks.

Ceu is so excited!

Current Location: Vonitsa, Greece
Current Position: 38°56.09'N, 20°51.98'E
Distance sailed since last post: 60 nautical miles

After spending a couple of days in Kerkyra, we headed down the east coast. Our first stop was in a nice village of Benitses. I read somewhere that was a Greek Fiesta happening  (to honour the mother of God, a local confirmed it for me..) on the next town of Gastouri, inland just up the hill, so we stopped there  to party with the locals. Also this town is home to the beautiful Achellion Palace. The sun was beating…last week was close to 40 degrees, so we decided to take a taxi and he dropped us off at the Palace.

The Palace was built in 1880 for Empress Elisabeth of Austria, more known as Sissy. This luxurious villa is built overlooking the coast of Corfu, with amazing views.

Sissy’s depression and anorexia, throughout most of her life, led her to losing her children to the care of her mother in law. Later she left the husband too, who she said never spent anytime with her. She took pleasure in traveling, mostly Madeira, Italy and Greece. She fell in love with Corfu.

She was also fascinated by the mythology of the ancient Greece. She named the Palace after her favourite hero, Achilles, and adorned the halls with all these statues of gods and heroes. The beautiful gardens also have statues everywhere.

Unfortunately she was assassinated in Geneva, in 1898. What a tragedy.

After her death the place empty, till someone bought it in 1907 . After world war2, it opened to public as a functioning museum.

We read that James Bond movie “For your eyes only ” was filmed here.

The Palace is very big and beautiful, and I wish they would show more to public. They had many rooms closed and they show mostly the halls and of course the gardens.  I really enjoyed the visit to this place and felt for her tragic life and death. She had also lost a child of the age of 2, and an adult son to suicide.(but she was already depressed before that!)

We walked the gardens for awhile and watched the beautiful sunset. We are now on the way to Gastouri…Fiesta time!!!

The lambs were roasting……

the whole lamb comes out in a table, we didn’t have the cam, Noel went to grab it, when he came back head had been chopped off and our portion had been served into a big wrap, Greek style (at least they chopped the head off)….

the lamb was very much enjoyed with french fries and a large Greek salad..what else???? ahhhh

a huge chunk of feta cheese!!!

It was a beautiful evening with a nice fresh breeze, much appreciated after such hot days, and the night goes on with a band playing beautiful Greek music, and everyone was having fun. I was surprised to see the Greeks were all holding hands a dancing in a big circle and not in pairs.

We also stopped to pay a visit in this popular spot, and very picturesque: Vlaherna Monastery, at the south end of Corfu. It is set on a small island connected only by a narrow wharf and it dates back to the 17th century.

You walk through the arch way and bellow the bell tower into a cute courtyard, just before you enter the church on your left.

The Church is much smaller than we expected, most space is taken by the gift shop!!!

Up above there are many shops and restaurants, and everyone busy taking photos and enjoying the amazing views

The island in the back has another Church dating back to the 13th century.

As of yesterday…. til tomorrow morning we stopped in this quiet bay just before the town of Vonitsa, in the Ambracian Gulf, one of the most important wetlands in Europe.

We are now updating blog…haha!

 

 

Current Location: Kerkyra,Corfu
Current Position: 39°37.31'N, 19°55.62'E
Distance sailed since last post: 15 nautical miles

Welcome to Corfu town (also called Kerkyra) ……we got off the bus, after walking a few blocks, found a telephone place where we could buy internet. Noel realized his wallet was missing from his pocket. We also remembered he used it to pay the tickets on the bus. So we ran back to the bus station and there, they had it for us! That was a relief….lots of good honest people still around. Most people speak English and they all are so friendly and willing to help you, everywhere we have been.

Soon we were all set up with a new internet connection and we were on our way visiting this old charming town of Kerkyra, with lots of shopping, Tavernas, elegant restaurants throughout the narrow streets and panoramic points.

Current Location: Sarandes, Albania
Current Position: 39°52.25'N, 20°0.21'E
Distance sailed since last post: 18 nautical miles

From Paleokastritsa we needed to go around the top of Corfu Island to go and check in. But we also needed to go outside the EU so as to reset our VAT clock (allowed a maximum of 18months in the EU otherwise we have to pay VAT on the boat).

Since the trip to Albania was shorter than to Corfu, we decided to fit in a quick visit. Albania has a bad reputation, but we had been told that now it was quite safe to visit. So we thought we would go off the beaten track and see what it was like.

It proved to be very straight forward. Before we departed, we were in contact with the customs agent Agim Zholi, and then we radioed him on channel 11 as we approached the harbor. As we got there he had one of his assistants waiting for us.

The quay at Sarandes is TINY. And it is in constant use by ferries going to Corfu and further afield. That meant that we had to move twice on the quay so as to let a ferry use our space. Eventually we were snuggly tied up on one corner of the dock. There were three other yachts there, plus one big motor yacht.

Checking in was painless. We just gave Agim our papers and he did it all. And even supplied us with a huge courtesy flag for us to proudly wear on our starboard spreader. However, we then spent several hours sitting around waiting for Agim to reappear, and for us to be assigned a proper place to tie up. One thing that caught us unawares was the time change. We had put our clocks an hour forward for Greece, and didn’t realize that they needed to go back an hour again for Albania. So it seemed to us that everyone was an hour late, until we finally figured it out!

The next day we took a day trip with a guide that Agim found for us. He was excellent, but a bit pricey (130 euro for a 12 hour day). He was very enthusiastic, even showing us the town and villages where he grew up and went to school.

The two key cultural destinations are Butrintit, which is an island fortification dating back to 600 BC, and Gjirokastro, which also has a fortress and old town. Both are UNESCO World Heritage Sites. And the entrance fees to visit them? 1.50 euros each! Wow, what a change from 11 euros in Sicily!

Albania uses the Leke as its currency. With the current exchange rate of about 138 Leke to the USD we found things to be pretty cheap. We stocked up on 50ml beer for 79c in the supermarket, and bought heaps of fruit.

In Gjirokastro we had a large Albanian lunch – which, including drinks, cost the grand total of 21 euros for three people. Gjirokastro was a charming little town, with little tourist development.

Gal: Albania, August 2012 dsc08786 The museum inside the Gjirokastro fortress. So many guns. Most of them dating to WWII

Gal: Albania, August 2012 dsc08753 More guns. The fortress is huge

Gal: Albania, August 2012 dsc08776 A large stage in the grounds of the fortress, used for large concerts

In Sarandes, which is the beachfront town, it was difficult to find Albanian food, as it was primarliy Greek and Italian catering to tourists.

Gal: Albania, August 2012 dsc08731 A view of Sarandes from a different fortress above the town

Albania used to be communist, but is rapidly embracing capitalism. We met a British couple who had moved there three years ago. They told us there had been huge development in Sarandes in just those few years. Certainly there were countless new and unfinished apartment blocks up. The streets were congested with traffic, and the beaches were heaving with tourists. Loud music blared from countless bars and restaurants.

We also visited nearby Ksamil – a beautiful setting on the way to Butrintit (but we visited by boat) – that was spoiled by the numbers of speedboats, jetskis, swimmers, and beach crowds.

And so our impressions of Albania were very mixed. The people were very friendly. Their language incomprehensible – but many spoke English. Prices were cheap. The cultural sights we saw were world class. But it is clearly rapidly developing its tourist trade and the beach front towns looked almost identical to every other well developed beachfront in the Med.

No doubt before too long their prices will catch up too.

For yachtsmen it is an interesting place to visit for a few days. But there are some obstacles to staying for any length of time. For one thing, they charge 10 euros a day for just being there. This is not a docking/mooring fee – that was free. So our total stay, including Agim’s services and the courtesy flag came to 70 euros. Not bad for resetting our VAT clock. But 10 euros a day would start to add up for a longer visit.

On top of that, there are not too many places one can anchor. Large parts of the coastline are ex-minefields. They are safe on the surface, but not for dropping and anchor to the bottom. And there are basically no marinas to visit either. But the coastline that is accessible, is beautiful – though very similar, of course, to Corfu and mainland Greece just to the south.

We didn’t visit inland or northern Albania. The mountains are much less developed and sounded interesting. They even have skiing there, which would no doubt be pretty primitive!

A good brief visit, but that was enough.

Current Location: Paleokastritsa, Corfu
Current Position: 39°40.4'N, 19°42.5'E
Distance sailed since last post: 193 nautical miles

After 51 hours of mixed sailing and motoring, we have just anchored on the west coast of Corfu in a small bay with resorts at the head. We covered the 253 nautical miles at an average just under 5kts.

The sail started off with 25kts of wind driving us along at 8 knots, and finished with 16kts of wind driving us along at 8kts with the spinnaker up. But in between it was mostly too calm, so we had a lot of motoring.

That, however, was expected. We had chosen this weather window in order to avoid the rest of the time when it is just ongoing NNE winds – basically a beat the whole way. This way we had the wind, such as there was, with us instead of against us, which is always a plus.

So here we are.

The sun is shinning, the clock has gone forward another hour (now 10 hours ahead of BC, and 2 hours ahead of UK), and the tourists are all madly dashing about in motor boats, pedaloes, and towed bananas. All having a great time – to which we have added some additional spectator entertainment, especially with Ceu doing the laundry on the foredeck!

Of course, the challenge is finding an internet connection. But if you are reading this that means we figured that one out – probably by going to the bar ashore. Then, I guess, we need to find a town that can sort us out with some 3G connection, somehow, somewhere.

Then, tomorrow, we will start to explore…

Current Location: Toe of Italy
Current Position: 37°57.85'N, 16°12.54'E
Distance sailed since last post: 60 nautical miles

Leaving Catania we were stomping along at 8kts in 20-25 kts of wind. Then, 5 hours later, just six miles from the toe of Italy, the wind totally vanished.

Just like that we were back to motoring.

However, after an hour the wind picked up again, and now we are stomping along again at 6 kts. All very odd.

So how are we publishing posts while at sea? Simple, we decided to scoot along the edge of Italy so we could snag some internet along the way! Seems to be working.

But it is dark now, so time to sign off. See you in a couple of days 🙂