Thursday morning arrived and we pulled off the dock and got going. Marina set the alarm for 05:00 but it was still dark. I let her sleep another hour as I prepped the boat and shot off a few more emails. Then we lifted the anchor, spent 20 minutes sluicing the mud off the anchor chain. Marina found a brick stuck to the flukes of our anchor … we pickup the weirdest stuff. Anyway, once we were clear, we powered out of the harbour, pointed the nose 252 degrees and for the next 250 miles that’s the course.
After we powered out of the harbour, Marina took her leave and headed down for some more sleep. Unlike moi, she has trouble napping during the day. Me on the other hand feel no guilt and have no trouble having a power nap during the day. Tara powered along happily towards Sicily and at 7:30 Marina gave up trying to sleep and came up top to keep me company – and what wonderful company she is. At around 9:30 we started to motorsail, using the motor at lower RPMs and the jib to stabilize us in the waves and also gives us more speed and better fuel economy. By 10:00 we were sailing … and sail we did at 8+ knots for 12 hours. During this time the crew tried to keep its feet underneath them. Close-hauled/close reaching for the first 6 hours means that we’re heeling (leaning) over on about a 20-25 degree angle. Our trusty RayMarine autopilot ‘Otto’ did an OK job steering in the wind and waves. I could hand steer about .5-.75 knots faster, but that was a lot of work, so we let Otto do his job most of the day.
Our routine on overnights is to have everyone up during the day (except the boy who sleeps 6 hours a day when in port and 18 when we’re sailing…. go figure?) and we play games, read, do some work, enjoy the scenery. It gets dark at 7 so I take the 6 to 8pm shift with either Ross or Jess. Then Marina and Jess take the 8pm-12am shift waking me and Ross up at midnight where we go 4 hours and then the Girls (they really do have a great teamwork thing happening that I need to get going with Ross too) take over until the sun comes up. Then usually it’s me on my own for a few hours enjoying the morning sunshine, a cup of tea and some time to think.
This trip followed our routine except that we were sailing most of the time instead of powering. In Ross and my 6-8pm shift a small land bird – we think maybe a swallow, kept flying around the cockpit of the boat … scoping out whether to land. It was getting dark and he was becoming more bold. He tried landing on the table but it was too slippery, he landed on the side of the hatch cover – a piece of teak trim but it was too slippery too. After dozens of landing attempts he decided that my hat was the place to be. He took off and landed from my hat perhaps 6 or 7 times. I then took my hat off and placed it over top of one of our cabin winches. He flew in again, this time deciding to land in Ross’ hair. I did the ‘finger under the belly of the bird trick’, he sat on my finger and then I placed him onto my hat that I had put on the winch. He flew away one more time, then returned to sit on the hat ontop of the winch. And there he stayed.
Ross and I took off at 8pm and when we returned at midnight, Marina had switched on the engine as the wind had died down, and the bird was still on the hat, but Marina had moved the hat from the port to the starboard winch so she could roll up the sail – and the bird stayed put. Through Ross and my 12-4am shift the bird sat contentedly on top of my hat. When I woke up at 7 Marina said that he got up around 6:45 when the sun came up and flew off to the North. He left me a couple of “good luck” presents on the hat but … what the heck, how often do we get to spend time up close like that with nature?
Other than that the night was pretty uneventful, not too much traffic. At night we use a combo of eyeball, Radar and AIS. We can typically pickup the ships by eyeball first – then almost right away they show up on the AIS, that tells us their names, speed, closest point of approach in both miles and time. This takes the guesswork out of whether we’re safe or not and makes life much more pleasant. When we can see lights but no AIS track then we check with our Radar – a useful backup and also able to pickup land in fog – something we’ve managed to avoid so far.
Other than that the night was pretty uneventful, not too much traffic. At night we use a combo of eyeball, Radar and AIS. We can typically pickup the ships by eyeball first – then almost right away they show up on the AIS, that tells us their names, speed, closest point of approach in both miles and time. This takes the guesswork out of whether we’re safe or not and makes life much more pleasant. When we can see lights but no AIS track then we check with our Radar – a useful backup and also able to pickup land in fog – something we’ve managed to avoid so far.
We have noticed that the AIS stuff shows up about the same time as we see the ship. It makes us wonder whether they cycle them on and off … perhaps in a reaction to the Somali pirates. What’s the point in letting the pirate know where you are, your name and usually by extension cargo, and your heading and speed. My guess is that most of the AIS systems are turned off on the west coast of Africa.
The morning brought us lighter winds but still pretty big seas and powering into these is both uncomfortable (think bash, bash, bash) and it takes a knot and a half off our speed. So we pulled out the sails and aimed a little lower to see if we could make a marina south of Syracusa sailing in the beautiful morning sun. We aimed about 20 to 30 degrees lower than our course for a while until it became apparent that the wind was going to continue to veer … we rolled up the jib and waited until the wind switched to port-tack and then we pulled out the jib again. About 20 miles out from Syracusa we experienced building wind and had to reef our jib – 25 to 30 knots of apparent wind so we sailed at high speed and high heel angle into Syracusa. And lucky us, along this stretch we had a nice long visit from a big pod of dolphins. They are such a delight to see.
We came into the ancient harbour and called to the Marina … no answer … now what do we do? We decided to take a chance, pulled out the bumpers and came into the harbour looking for some dockspace to use. Unfortunately we didn’t have a schematic that took into account the mooring lines under water so we were cautious and decided to pull up on the wall of the mole.
The 20 knot wind was blowing us off the quay so we needed some help onshore to tie up our stern while I motored forward being careful not to rip the stern cleat off while bow-thrusting like crazy. We got tied up, took a few deep breaths, said our thank-you’s, and had a quick shower before heading off into old Syracusa.
We came into the ancient harbour and called to the Marina … no answer … now what do we do? We decided to take a chance, pulled out the bumpers and came into the harbour looking for some dockspace to use. Unfortunately we didn’t have a schematic that took into account the mooring lines under water so we were cautious and decided to pull up on the wall of the mole.
The 20 knot wind was blowing us off the quay so we needed some help onshore to tie up our stern while I motored forward being careful not to rip the stern cleat off while bow-thrusting like crazy. We got tied up, took a few deep breaths, said our thank-you’s, and had a quick shower before heading off into old Syracusa.
We wandered the beautiful city for about 2 hours looking for a Vodafone store to get our new phone numbers and internet stick SIMS, then selected a pizza restaurant and went for dinner. Turns out that .5l Heineken, a tall glass of local wine, and a 330ml Sprite or Coke are the same price. There are some things you just have to love about Europe!
Anyway, we walked back to Tara, put our heads on our pillows and slept the sleep of the dead for about 10 hours.
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