Help I am Being Held Against my Will

Our passage from Arbatax to Sicily began at 09:30 on Friday morning and we arrived in Sicily at Castellammare di Golfo at around 13:30 Saturday. At that time Marina and I got off the boat and did some exploring with Chelsea and also figured out the lay of the land, found some markets, got some cash, checked out restaurants and generally explored the town.

That night we ate in – Salciccia di Swina – grilled sausages with a great salad with ingredients we bought at the market. The boys devoured theirs and got back to gaming. By the next morning we got up and did some more exploring, came back to the boat at 12:30 to find Ross gaming and Hayden still sleeping. Hayden finally woke up around 13:30 and promptly joined Ross with his nose in a laptop.

At this point Marina and I said “We’ve been on Sicily for 36 hours and you haven’t even been off the boat.”  Ross, always the smart-alec-wise-cracker said – “yes I was, I plugged in the electricity when we arrived.” I pointed out that while we had been in Sicily since Saturday afternoon neither of the boys had yet set foot on the island. 

They got into a long explanation why that wasn’t relevant and that we shouldn’t care – I tried the “Hayden, your parents didn’t send you to Italy to learn how to play Age of Empires III” and he said back “They wouldn’t care” so under threat of losing internet and gaming privileges for a couple of days they acquiesced and left for shore. Fifteen minutes later they were back scrounging for food, but at least they got off the boat. Small victories are still victories.

Dealing with Fatigue

You get very tired when you've been up all night. Here's a picture of Hayden reading at 09:41 this morning. Part of being tired is that you become somewhat cognitively impaired. While we were sitting here this morning, Ross nudged me ... Hayden hasn't turned the page in 5 minutes.


Hayden reading...why isn't he turning the pages?

 We had a good chuckle ... it turns out that he was on the same page for about 15 minutes ... the quick word count was about 250 words per page ... so ... Hayden was able to read about 15-20 words a minute ... way to go WVSS!

Practical Jokes on the Sleeping



The arm actually says "Mom"



I guess that I started it all the first day we were out on Tara when I tried to wake Ross who refused to get up and then I got a Sharpie pen out and gave him a heart tatoo with Mom inside ... a good laugh was had by all. We keep threatening to do a mustache or other similar Sharpie art, but today we had a little fun with Hayden ... we were lifting up his nose with a piece of rope ... then moved on...



Princess Leia...sort of...

then Ross gave him the Princess Leia look with the Peltors and someone painted his toenails with Port-Starboard colouring.

Not sure if you can see Hayden's toes...
but we found some lovely nail polish
we thought he would like...
representing port (green) and starboard (red).



Port side toes.



What do we do on a 30 Hour Passage

Some passages seem to go faster than others, some seem slower, but there is a mix of tedium and excitement that can be hard to understand if you haven't experienced it. Sailing at night is kind of cool, but mostly boring. You can't really see much if the moon isn't out and usually the autopilot does most if not all of the driving.

Matt getting "quiet" time.

During the day the ritual is pretty normal .... we are sailing or reading or playing cards or eating or cleaning the boat up after eating. Once darkness sets in then we end up being a lot more conservative and we setup a watch system -- Marina and the girls up to Midnight, Matt and the boys until 04:00, then the girls again until 08:00 then we all straggle along during the daytime again.

One of the things that keeps us on track is our log-system. Setup in advance of the passage it predicts where we should be when, and then we fill in the blanks to make sure that we are regularly checking the engine, writing down our position, and documenting what we are seeing. 

Keeping energized with Coke!

What to do? Some of us read a book or two, others watch a movie or three. Chelsea chose to sun herself for enough hours to make her very tan back turn red -- again. That girl loves to lie in the hot sunshine and tan. She's co-opted Jessie who will lie in the sun with her cousin for hours, reading, chatting, listening to music and generally hanging out.

Fun along the way.

 Ross and Hayden played a number of video games -- or maybe it was the same game the whole time -- charging up the computer for a couple of hours and then playing for a couple of hours.

A nap to prepare for night watch.

Marina and I each finished a book, wrote a bunch of blog posts, an etiquette manual for future guests of Tara, talked about our plans and generally just enjoyed each others' company.
At sunset, we all gathered at the back of the boat and watched the sun slip under the western horizon.

Photo op just at sunset...

Sunset...she's half gone.

The night of our passage -- July 20/21 was a new moon -- meaning that there wasn't a moon at all. When you are 100 miles from the closest land and there is no moon, it is dark. Funny enough some of the stars and planets were bright enough to enable us to see...they are amazing when there are no city lights to dim them. At night, other than the 15 minute checks -- Radar, AIS, eyeball, and the hourly motor checks, -- we talk, and the boys devour junk food at an amazing rate, and the girls played UNO. Also during the evening was a big phosphor display in the water where soft-ball sized globs of blue phosphorescence welled up in our wake. It made Ross excited enough to come wake me up so that I could witness it. Until midnight we were the only vessel within 50 miles ... by 3 in the morning we had crossed several vessels -- most of them transmitting AIS coordinates, some, like us weren't.

I'm gonna stay up all night!! (This is BEFORE his shift).

Our closest encounter was about 2.5 miles away with another sailboat -- doing about the same speed in the opposite direction. I wonder who left Castellammare del Golfo for Arbatax Sardinia and met us half way at 3am this morning? I hope they have as good a time in Sardinia as we did.

Sunrise!!

We noticed it was getting lighter right around 04:00 and watched the horizon get brighter and brighter until the crescent of the sun emerged right on time at 06:05am, at which time Chelsea, Marina and I were still up to enjoy. Because there is so little else to do, appreciating a sunrise or sunset seems like a milestone worth observing. Marina, Chelsea and Jessie altered course to avoid a fishing boat and they too saw a sailboard that looked like it was on it's way to Sardinia.
Here are some photos of what we do on a 30 hour passage....

Oh...no surprises here...

Chelsea's "borrowed" cabin from Ross.

Heyyyy...I'm not at the helm...woo hoo!

I brought a book, I guess I should read it.

OMG...my tan HAS to be good when I go home.

OK...I like the Nook.

What?

I'll sew...that's something new to do!

Chatting on the lee side.

Skipper making sure all is well.

Singing...who cares how loud!

When Marina woke me up at 9:00 I was hopeful that we would be past San Vito Lo Capo on Sicily and making our way towards a 10:30 arrival at the Club Nautico Castellammare del Golfo. Not quite right -- landfall at the marina looked to be early afternoon as we were not able to aim into the waves and wind.

This photo of the instruments shows how far off the wind we were...almost 40 degrees. We hoped when we got past the point the waves would abate and then we could power directly into them.


I am a little sensitive about running the motor too hard. It needs a service -- I could hear the RPMs drop a 50 RPM or so every minute or two -- this means the filters are getting clogged. I have spares and will change them along with the oil in a service at the marina this afternoon (assuming we ever get there).
We were about two hours off our destination and running into smooth seas without any sails up -- powering directly at the marina.

There it is!

Further down the coast are some fairly high mountains and some villages or hamlets cut out of the shore accessed by roads carved into the steep hillside.

Time for bubbly...we made it to Sicily!

Passage from Arbatax to Sicily - Technical Notes

The theme of this blog post can be summed up by (sung to a Willie Nelson tune) "It's on the Nose Again". (Marina here...for my buds...you will likely be happy to give this one a miss, unless you are into the technicalities of sailing...then go for it! But keep in mind, there are no pictures. Back to Matt...).

An all too familiar sight the last couple of days ...
 a very thin slice of wind to be sailing into.

My sailboat racing friends might relate more to this .... you know on when you're approaching the starboard tack layline in a westerly on Port tack about 100 yards from the mark and you keep getting lifted, and lifted and lifted -- so you never quite are able to lay the mark on starboard ... we call it 'The Great Circle Route' on Scarlet ..... that's kind of what we had, only in reverse ... for the last 24 hours all we have needed is a 20 degree lift (shift towards the stern) .... could we get a lift? No. Did we try to sail? Yes. Did we give up? Several times. In the last 36 hours we have travelled 240 miles -- first to Arbatax, then to Sicily, and the apparent wind has been 15-20 degrees off the nose the entire time!
For those non-sailors -- 2 concepts I'll try to explain -- apparent wind and VMG or velocity made good. Apparent wind is the wind you feel when you're sailing. When you're driving along at 100KPH and stick your head out the window it feels like the wind is blowing 100 kilometers per hour, even though the actual wind might be calm. If you have ever ridden a motorcycle through the Cassiar Connector, you realize that the wind must blow in there at close to 80KPH because it's like there is no wind when you're riding along -- a very strange sensation indeed.
Sailboats work the same way .... if you're in a 10 knot true wind (if you were stationary) and you sail at 7 knots into it, the wind you feel (and the wind the sails feel too) is 17 knots. If you sail downwind at 7 knots in that same wind it feels like it is blowing 3 knots. Got it?
The second concept is VMG or velocity made good. I love to tease my sailing buddies when they get new sails -- I tell them that with new sails they'll just go faster in the wrong direction. Sailboats can't really go directly upwind (kind of obvious if you've ever tried peeing into the wind ... somewhat futile). Strangely enough, sailboats cannot go directly downwind either -- or at least not very efficiently. Back to Apparent Wind .... if there's a 10 knot breeze and you are going 7 knots downwind your apparent wind is only 3 knots .... and of course a 3 knot wind isn't going to push a boat at 7 knots so you end up going r-e-a-l-l-y slow. Ideal wind for a cruising boat (read "Cruising Boat" as heavy ... just our anchor chain alone weighs more than our racing boat Scarlet; under-canvassed -- Scarlet also has about twice the sail area to weight ratio as Tara has -- just like having a bigger engine; and old, ugly sails -- racers replace their sails when they lose their shape -- usually after 2 seasons or so, our 10 year old sails have 'plenty of life in them'). Suffice it to say that Tara excels in conditions where the wind is between 15 to 30 knots and somewhere between a close and a broad reach ... this beating into a light headwind stuff is best left to racing boats.
So the wind was from the wrong direction, too strong to power directly into -- generating waves that slowed the boat down at the same time.
The end result of this thin wind is that you end up with GPS-course- made-good numbers that are somewhat pathetic and look like this: 40 degrees off course doing around 7 knots ... will we ever get there?
Come to think of it the last time we experienced this exact phenomenon was .... going north from Marzamemi Sicily to the Straits of Messina .... maybe we have to give some payola to the local Mafiosi if we want the wind to go our way .....

Arrival in Arbatax

We've done remarkably well in staying out of marinas on this trip. So far on Sardinia we had one night at Isola Rossa and two nights in La Maddelena, the rest of the time time we've been swinging on a chain, and living off the fat of the land. We needed to do a little Gardenage (that would be boat lingo for cleaning up the boat) provisioning (grocery shopping) and I needed to permanently wire in the new mast-head LED running lights we brought from Vancouver.

Arriving at Arbatax

We decided on Arbatax marina because of its proximity to town and boy did we make a good choice. They put us on a laid mooring beside a 48 foot Grand Soleil and there was washing water and potable water, showers, toilets (with seats AND toilet paper!), a bar, restaurant and a town nearby.

Marina counting litres at the fule dock (hiding behind)

It was a pretty high mole. (And what's Hayden doing?)

Backing into our mooring spot.

Marina and I left the kids with a hose and a couple of scrub brushes and hoofed into the marina office where we were greeted by friendly and efficient staff that spoke English perfectly. 61 Euros, not a bad price for a berth in Sardinia and the toilets and showers were outstanding. We got directions to town and found a chandlery that could replace the broken lightbulb we had in our steaming light (the one you put on at night when you are under engine) and we also found a great little Supermercato -- bought wine, pasta, croissants, Nutella, water, and, of course, cheese. Getting 500 grams of Grana Parmagiana for 8 Euros -- we need to move to Italy!
We walked back to the boat with our backpack and two bags each and found that the kids had actually cleaned up Tara very nicely -- but now everyone was ravenous (it is hard to describe two hungry teenage boys) .. we have had to institute a rule that the boys are not allowed to devour 20 Euros of cheese and hors d'oeuvres just because they are ravenous ... so we have bought them each bags of chocolate filled croissants that they can fill up on so we don't have a race to the cheese during cocktail hour. Marina provided them with leftover pasta and the strategy worked.

Always love a dinner out...no-one on KP duty!

I needed to continue to pull wires on the boat so the gang went to the restaurant for pizza -- leaving me with a walkee talkee. Ross has his 'patented' call "Paging Dr. Faggot" that the kids use it to get my attention. Perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to let them load 'The Hangover' onto their laptops.






Good conversation...



I finished up, put the floorboards, seat boards, bunks, cushions and circuit-breaker panel back together and went and had a pizza too. We came back, everyone had a bit of Internet time and then we hit the hay -- long day tomorrow. Leaving for Sicily around 9:00am.

Heading out of Arbatax

Sicily is out there somewhere...



Rondinara to Porto Brandinghi

With a tear in our eye we decided that it was time to leave Corsica and Rondinara for points south. Two of our crew are approaching the end of their time with us and we need to get to Sicily. We briefly toyed with the idea of going to Roma, skipping Sicily but decided that it would be too difficult a logistics problem, plus Hayden's flight to Munich from Rome would be seven hundred Euros. So much for instant planning.

Fun along the way...

More fun along the way!

Anyway, that means that we are going to head further south before we go. I had tried to convince Marina that the route from the top of Sardinia was only 45 miles longer to Sicily than from the south end -- 120 miles away. While I was unable to convince her that a 220 miler was not much different than a 165 miler, I was able to convince her that 180 vs. 165 was not much different and it saved us going another 60 miles down the coast of Sardinia, So south back to Sardinia we go. 

Matt at work...tough life.  

The day started like many others, me getting up at 7 and calling my buddy Trevor to talk about work for an hour or so. Marina usually gets up around 8, starts the kettle boiling, makes me a coffee and tea for herself -- then we sit on deck for a bit to enjoy the sun and quiet timw while everyone else is still asleep. We decided to get going at around 8:30 so we woke of Ross to help us get the dinghy engine on deck and lift the anchor to get going.

Ross and Chelsea bringing in the jib...not enough wind.

There wasn't really much wind so we powered out of the bay, dodging the dozens of other boats that were anchored there. We definitely needed to get going because we had filled up both holding tanks and definitely needed to lighten the load.





 

It was a pretty uneventful day powering and trying to sail as much as possible (but keeping the speed up) for about 8 hours. We dropped a hook in a place called Isola Tavolara where we definitely saw the pecking order of wealth -- you had the millionaires in the 40-50 foot boats, the 10-millionaires in the 70-80 footers, the 100-millionaires in the 150 foot boats, the Billionaire in the 250 foot boat and the multi-billionaire in the 500 footer called Rising Sun -- might be the biggest yacht I have ever seen.


The bay at Tavarola

  Tavolara was a nice anchorage and Marina, Ross and Hayden swam to shore to check out what was there...which wasn't much more than two restaurants, a bar and an outdoor movie theatre.



Our "neighbours" at Tavolara

 We decided we needed some food so we went around the corner to Brandinghi -- we dropped Marina and Chelsea into the dinghy and they went ashore in search of provisions at this posh little marina while we tooled around with a little bit of a jib out and were a floating swimming platform.


Gelato for the shoppers...Yum!

 The girls returned in about 45 minutes with some provisions, some gelato cups -- not sure where the gelato was, and a story about a lady that took f-o-r-e-v-e-r to check out a bag of groceries. Anyway we pulled out the rest of the jib and ended up anchoring in a lovely bay callled Brandinghi, without using the engine -- which is something that's useful to practice because no-doubt it will happen in real-life someday.


Fancy marina...looking for food!

 We then made and enjoyed fun, cocktail hour and a great meal. The fun included, to Ross' dismay, a jelly-fish sighting. After a late dinner (as usual) we went to bed and woke up early with another 50 mile day to get to Arbatax -- about mid-way down the east coast of Sardinia. The good news was that the wind built to a reasonable strength throughout the day -- the bad news is that it was from the south -- and directly in our way. We ended up powering, motor-sailing, sailing, motor-sailing, then powering to get to our destination. We were also fighting a current of about a knot.

Cockpit mess.

Marina jellyfish watching! (Note...Ross is NOT in the water).

Jessie changing the steaming light bulb.

Sunset at Brandinghi