Heat and Greece at last

The photo above is of the eastern anchorage on Vulcano, which we left on Friday 14 June. The boats you can see belong to a mob – I hesitate to grace them with the name regatta – of French medical students, who disturbed the peaceful place with much loud noise and goings on until well after dawn the next day. We would have let them to it but hadn’t stocked up on food for the trip to Greece, so we couldn’t leave until the following afternoon.

The leg from Vulcano to Lefkas in Greece is just over 300 miles, about 2 and a half days’ sailing. As our route took us through the Straits of Messina, one of the few tidal areas of the Med, we had to time our arrival there to make sure we caught the south-going current. In addition to that, we also wanted to arrive in Greece in daylight, so that meant going through the Straits at night. J had the watch as we entered the northern end and reckons it was the most taxing bit of sailing she’s done in quite some time: dodging ferries, being overtaken by merchant ships and sorting out the land from the sea amid the blaze of lights ashore. Other than the Straits, the trip was uneventful and, mostly, windless. We arrived at about 5 am in Nidri and dropped anchor where we are now, Tranquil Bay. The photo below is taken somewhere between Italy and Greece, showing miles and miles of sea…..

The next few days were taken up with meeting old friends from Gouvia* days (Alan and Bern from “Sanuk”,) sorting our a small mountain of laundry, getting a SIM card for the iPad and doing some geocaching by scooter. After three or four days, we moved to “Little” Vathi on the island of Meganisi with “Sanuk”. We moored there at George’s Taverna, which has its own moorings, offering electricity and water for a nominal charge. The moorings themselves are free on the understanding that you eat at the taverna. We stayed a couple of nights before moving round the corner to Spartachori where Spilios has a taverna offering a similar set-up to George. Whilst we were there, we met up with more friends from Gouvia, Heather and David from “Zinga.”

Unfortunately, our SIM card started to misbehave, so tonight we find ourselves back in Nidri, having been back into Levkas town to interview the Vodafone man and get the card sorted out. Tomorrow, we aim to leave here and go to Port Leone on Kalamos, about three hours’ sailing away. We’ll probably stay there for a couple of days before heading on to Poros on Kephalonia to pick up Jinny, who arrives on 1 July.

Above: Julia near one of the Lefkas caches we found.

Since we got to Greece, the summer has really arrived. The temperature has been in the mid to high thirties with little wind, so taking things easy has been the rule. It doesn’t get much cooler at night and the wind scoop has been a welcome addition to the forward hatch, pulling down what little breeze there is into the boat.

It’s been great meeting up with old friends and it is lovely being back here in the southern Ionian with all the little coves and bays to explore. We even found the Port Police to be helpful, stamping up our Depka on arrival from Italy with no questions! Our visitors start to arrive soon, with Jinny next week, followed by Susie, then Polly and finally Andy towards the end of August. Lizzie is also aiming to come but has yet to book flights, so we don’t know when to expect her yet!

Taverna Spilios on Meganisi. Great pork chops at a very reasonable price and a BIG washing machine.

*Gouvia is the marina on Corfu where we spent the winter of 2010/11.

The Windy Way to the Windy Islands (or revisiting the Aeolian Islands)

Regular readers of this blog will know that the start to this “summer” has been, shall we say, a bit windier than normal. As a result, we’ve been reduced to doing a lot of hanging about waiting for the winds either to die away from gale force or, equally frustrating, to go round to a direction that will enable us to make some progress towards Greece. We do have a deadline, as Jinny will be looking for a hotel in Kephalonia if we aren’t there by 2 July…..

Anyhow, we left you in Carloforte where we met up with Lee and Joan, the crew of “Wishbone”. We wound up spending nearly a week in the harbour there, although we did manage to find a free berth on the town quay for most of it. I had a stinking cold (thank you Lily for giving it to Granny, who then gave it to me!) but we had a good time there, enhanced by the local tuna festival.

Finally, we spotted what looked like a window of about 3 days where the winds were from the west and not too strong (i.e. less than about 30 knots). So we left Carloforte a bit earlier than intended at about 10 am and headed south then east round the tip of Sardinia. This area is notorious for its winds and we found, as we had last year, the actual winds to be some what more than forecast. We had a cracking sail for the first 14 hours or so with the wind firmly on our port quarter. Much of the time we just used the genoa as its easier to manage and the mainsail tends to steal its wind.

Then, as usual, the wind died away and we resorted to motorsailing to keep up a reasonable speed. In fact, this worked so well we were doing in excess of 6 knots for much of the time. This speed, however, was not all good as it meant we were in danger of arriving at our destination in the dark: not a good idea when entering an unlit anchorage. So we slowed down and pottered along at about 3 knots for a while until our time of arrival was just in daylight hours.

We were both quite tired by this point, as the motion of the boat during the first half of the trip had taken it out of us a bit so we were delighted to sight Vulcano and our anchorage. We entered as the dawn was just bright enough for us to pick our way through all the boats anchored there and we dropped anchor closed to the shore. We then retired to bed and slept until midday. We did little more that day other than going ashore to have an ice cream in the late afternoon.

Today we have moved round to the eastern side of the island, as the wind is changing tonight. We’re doing a bit of maintenance and cleaning things up today but plan on climbing the volcano of Vulcano tomorrow to bag a couple of geocaches up there. After that, we aim to visit more of the islands in search of geocaches before we head on to Greece.

That’s it. No philosophy, or good advice to others thinking of taking up the lifestyle. We’re now too busy living it to bother…..

Oh, photos. Not quite figured out how to do this properly using the WordPress iPad app, so the ones below are:
J on watch during the crossing, not warm but well wrapped up! Hot chocolate is a life saver on long passages.
D in his new wooly hat. It should have been Jonno’s but it was stolen before delivery.
The remaining 2 photos are of the eastern anchorage on Vulcano where we are today.

What’s Going On With The Weather???

This blog is something of an experiment as we are writing and posting it using the iPad. this means it will probably be shorter than usual and won’t include most of the photos we have taken, but does enable us to bring you up to date.

Duncan stayed on board “Rampage” while J was in Ireland visiting the grandchildren. He had decided to bite the bullet and pay for a marina berth as there are no facilities ashore at the anchorages in Porto Conte. As it turned out, this proved no bad thing as the weather was extremely windy and he was able to watch all the antics in the harbour in the comfortable knowledge that “Rampage” was safe and sound. He had a fairly quiet time although he did a few maintenance jobs on board and when J retuned he was able to install the new chart plotter which we had bought on eBay, had delivered to Polly in Cornwall who duly took it to Ireland with her, bless her, and handed over to her mother. A somewhat convoluted delivery trip! Duncan was also able to finish wiring a new, much larger radio antenna as J had picked up the requisite cable while in Ireland.

We can’t put captions on the photos! So from the top: J knitting the Skipper a wooly hat ‘cos it’s cold, Rampage on the town quay, one of the old tune boats and a backstreet in Carloforte.

Her visit went very well; not only were there all the excitements of Charlie’s 1st Communion but Jessica brought forward the date for her birthday party for Granny’s benefit! The weather too, was pretty good over there – warmer indeed than that which greeted her on her return!

We were obliged to wait several more days in Alghero before we were finally able to escape last Monday and head south. Having waited some time for the wind to abate sufficiently to enable us to depart, it then died completely and we had to motor all day in a flat calm. The wind only started to pick just as we were entering the Golfo Di Oristano, about halfway down the western coast of Sardinia, where we stopped for the night. Seeing a few other boats at anchor, we did likewise but had barely turned all the instruments off when we were told that if we intended to stay the night we needed to pick up a mooring buoy so we duly did as instructed. Next morning, after a rather windy,bumpy night, we set off at about 07:30 and as with the previous day, were obliged to motor all the way as the wind had disappeared. Not only does the wind keep failing to co-operate but it has been intermittently grey, rainy and fairly chilly for the past three weeks. We keep being told by various Italians that it is most untypical for the time of year but this is poor comfort, frankly!

We had an uneventful trip down to Carloforte where we had arranged to meet up with friends Lee and Joan from “Wishbone”. Unfortunately when we entered the harbour we didn’t know where they were berthed and, naturally, picked the opposite side of the harbour from where they turned out to be staying. This was particularly irritating as we handed over €39 for a berth at Marina Sifreda when they had negotiated a rate of €20 a night for us in Marinatour where they are staying. In fact, however, we moved onto the town quay the following day and have been here free of charge ever since which has been great.

We had thought we would only have a night or so with Lee and Joan before we pressed on towards Greece and “Wishbone” continued on her way to the Balearics. However, once again the weather has intervened and strong winds have prevented either of us from leaving. The compensation has been that Carloforte has turned out to be a charming little place and particularly lively just this week as they celebrate the annual tuna festival. Whatever your feelings about the continuing practice of corralling the tuna in net “basins” for an exceptionally bloody slaughter, thankfully we did not have to witness it and I have to admit that the fiesta atmosphere around town has been fun. There has been lots of food and wine tastings, some great live music and all the usual food and craft stalls etc along the waterfront.

Joan and Julia went together to a wine tasting last night. Since neither of them speak more than a word or two of Italian, the spiel about what they were sampling was completely lost on them but they had an excellent time none the less. (Duncan did not join them since he is recovering from the cold which J generously passed on to him, courtesy of no.2 granddaughter, Lily, and Lee didn’t bother as he’s not a wine drinker!). Tonight however, we all plan to go out for a meal together before going our separate ways. Unless the weather forecast changes again, we plan to make a single hop to Vulcano in the Aeolian Islands, departing here tomorrow and arriving, all being well, sometime in the early hours of Thursday. News of how we get on will be in our next post.

Photos below are: more street scenes in Carloforte and folks enjoying the tuna festival.