Now THAT'S........Engineering

At the western end of the Gulf of Corinth is the amazing Rio-Antirrio bridge. It is the longest multi-span cable-stayed bridge in the world. It was calm as we motored towards it. We called Bridge Control and they told us which spans to pass between. Hours later as we continued towards th Ionian we could still see it behind us gradually fading into the distance.

Another day, another dawn

The alarms went off at 5.00am this morning but we were already awake. After a quiet couple of days on Kea we were due to make the passage to Aegina island or maybe on to Epidavros on the mainland.

We got up quietly and went about our usual tasks. I generally prepare the deck whilst Gill sorts out the inside of the boat. Today for some reason I decided to start at the back and work forwards. It was still dark when I began with just a hint of dawn in the east. Mizzen stopper off, mizzen cover off, halyard attached. Repeat for the mainsail. Main sheet bar on and main sheet. Prepare genoa sheets. Forward to the staysail. Take down anchor ball and attach staysail halyard. Check everything.

By now Gill has prepared below. Everything stowed, navigation equipment started, log prepared. For 20 minutes we have barely said a word to each other. We know what to do automatically. We have done it so many times now.

Time to raise the anchor with the old manual windlass. I notice the chain stripper has slipped (again). That's a job next time we have a spare few minutes.

By the time the anchor is up the sun is too. A big red fiery ball rising above the headland. No wind. Boo. At least that means no headwind.

We motor quietly out of the bay leaving Dilek and Deniz to follow us later.

Time for breakfast.

Passage Planning Greek style

A rare day off from sailing. Gill and Dilek study charts on the beach whilst John and Deniz play Waboba ball in the sea. Then a well earned lunch.

Sir John Windlass

A quiet Sunday afternoon in Ayios Nikolaou, Kea. We are anchored just off the town and are in a café awaiting with excitement the arrival of our Turkish friend Dilek and her 21 year old son Deniz. She is planning, no, is going to be, the first Turkish woman to cross the Atlantic single handed and is doing it in her 9 metre boat Symina. The radio crackles to life. “Petronella, Petronella this is sailing yacht Symina”.  “Hi Dilek we are here and waiting for you.”

She lines herself up to reverse onto the harbour wall but the boat next to her has its anchor in her path and hers catches on it. Now she is stuck with a 52 foot boat on the end of her chain. No problem, happens all the time. Except that she has caught the boat of a Russian who comes out of the restaurant he was having lunch in looking considerably worse for wear, starts the engine and takes off. She is flung first one way than the other as he roars round in front of the horrified crowd on the harbour wall, hitting an anchored charter boat on one of his mad swings and nearly crushing Deniz between the two boats. 

Then he is gone but her brand new anchor winch has tripped and she can’t get her anchor up. John leaps into our dinghy and climbs onto her boat where he and Deniz haul the anchor up by hand. She motors into the anchorage, and John helps her to re-anchor. When I go across to say hello half an hour later she is still shaking.  Hugs and tears and a Greek beer later she has recovered and is laughing, though not at what happened. She is irrepressible and we are full of admiration for her and Deniz..

But the anchor trips each time she uses it and there is a smell of burning.  We travel with Symina and John helps her to pull up the anchor after each night and shows her how he uses our manual winch. She christens him Sir John Windlass in her lovely Turkish accent. He is very pleased!

Symina rafted up alongside Petronella

Motoring towards Kithnos

Water pump fixed after a long hot day, chain stripper adjusted with the new 18mm socket and we are motoring westwards from Leros, one of my favourite islands, across the Aegean Sea towards Kithnos. The stern gland reservoir (we hope) is still using oil but we have decided to set off anyhow.



The wind was due to kick in a couple of hours ago but it is flat calm. It's hot but pleasant with the new shade and we have the first real opportunity of the year for a bit of "bareboat sailing". I've also used the relaxed time to rig up our new fishing system which consists of a bicycle inner tube, some 35kg line, a barrel weight, a wire trace and finally a nice new lure courtesy of David and Melinda from Sassoon. Guess what? Still no fish!!



Now we are out in the open sea I want to try the SSB radio/Pactor modem combination again as this is what we will rely on when crossing the Atlantic. I've forked out £100 or so for a software upgrade to Pactor 3 which should speed transmission up a fair bit. So, if you see this message appear on the blog then everything is working as it should do. If you don't see it, well it means it hasn't worked - but you won't know that. Right, off to try it.



----------

radio email processed by SailMail

for information see: http://www.sailmail.com

Straw Poll

Hands up all those that enjoy listening to motorbikes roaring to and fro along the harbour road at 2 in the morning.

No takers on Petronella.

Trouble in Paradise

We are 200 miles closer to the Caribbean now but at the moment it's not all fun and G and T's on board Petronella. We limped up to Leros Island with the water pump letting a fine spray of sea water into the boat and a stern gland losing oil out into the sea at an alarming rate. Not good. Not this early in the journey. Not ever. So poor John is sitting on the harbour quayside in Lakki Marina surrounded by tools taking the pump to pieces whilst the rest of the world walk past him dressed in their finest outfits ready for an evening out in Lakki! And all the men stop and offer advice! 



Think we might be here for a while!

On a more cheerful note, last night in an anchorage just south of the marina we met up with our Turkish sailing friend Özkan and his girlfriend Suzi. It was their first trip out in his newly restored beautiful 40 year old classic boat. Two lovely boats together in the anchorage. Ok we admit it, we are biased. Lots of pretty geeky talk about solar panels, marine toilets and steel maintenance! All four of us enjoyed the evening. It will be strange to not know people wherever we go. But easier on the liver.

Evernote helps you remember everything and get organized effortlessly. Download Evernote.

Petronella live on the web

Several people have asked whether our new AIS system allows you to see our position live on the web. The answer is yes unless we are really remote from land. Every AIS enabled boat has a unique ID known as an MMSI number. Ours is 235051477. Type this into any AIS tracking system such as www.marinetraffic.com and you should see our most recently reported position. If we have our AIS switched on you will basically see live information updated every few minutes. Clever or what! The reason you can't see us when we are really remote from land is that our signal must be picked up by a receiving station and these are mostly land based. When I get some time I will try to embed a live "Petronella is Here" map onto the blog.

Return to Greece

It's always interesting to arrive in a new country and the first few days are when you recognise the differences. Here's my take on moving from Turkey to Greece.

No  Muslim Turkish call to prayer. Greek Orthodox church bells.
No 80% air white bread. Crusty Greek bread.
No Turkish. All Greek to me but it's easier than I remember.
Turkish exit 60 euros (only via an agent). Greek entry (Police, Customs, Port Police) 35 euros.
Very little English spoken. Lots of English people and English spoken.
Turkish music and arabian scale. European (Greek and English) radio.
Warm and pleasant. Hot for the first time this year.
Cheap vegetables and food basics. More expensive food.
No pork. Bacon and ham without going 'round the back'.
Headscarves. No headscarves but still no crash helmets.
Turkish lira. European euros.

Tonight is party night as Richard and Barbra have rounded up friends from around Simi to say goodbye to us. Then tomorrow we will make ready to sail northwards on Sunday to meet up with our round the world sailing friend from Posedonia and Teos, Özkan the Crazy Turk. We're also tracking Dilek the singlehanded Transatlantic lady sailor who is now in the Sea of Marmara with a view to meeting up in the near future.

First night sail of the season

We left early from Kalkan aiming for a long overnight passage to Simi in Greece. Out of the bay, round the point , past Patara Rock and motor along Patara beach. Plenty of activity on Ch16 with the Turkish navy calling up several boats. Then what do we see in the distance but said Turkish warship heading our way.

"Yacht off our port bow, this is Turkish warship".
"Turkish warship this is Petronella over".
"Live firing is due to commence in this area, please turn around and follow a course of 090 degrees".

So that is just back from where we have come from. An hour later later we have flown downwind  and are allowed to turn onto 180 degrees, only 90 degrees from where we want to go. Ah well, at least we can sail. We tack back towards where we were when we were forced to turn around and about nine hours setting off we are level with where we were when we turned around. Not a good start as we still have 60 odd miles to do.

So, evening comes, we prepare dinner, get washed and take in a reef. After the meal the sea begins to build and the wind is right on the nose. Engine on and we struggle to make 1.5k as we bash onto the waves. Night falls and we start 2 hour watches. It's too swelly for the autopilot to work so we handsteer right through the night. It's a beautiful full moon though but that is about the only good thing of the night. It's short, sharp waves and a 20k headwind. At 1.17am with the moon beam tracking from the horizon to our port beam the silhouette of a big bird flies through. Magic. I pretend it is an albatross.

Finally morning arrives. The engine is still thrumming away (is that a new noise we heard and why has the rev counter stopped working?) and we are creaping forward at 2k if we are lucky. Dawn comes. We have both got some sleep and we celebrate a hard night sailing. The wind slowly dies as we approach Rhodes and so gradually we push up to 3, then 4 then 5k. We start to eat up the miles. Perhaps we can still make Simi today. The new AIS tells us all about the ships that approach and which ones we might hit. As we are transmitting too the other boats see us too and we see them take avoiding action well ahead of us. A great new toy!

Finally after 27 hours we turned into the gorgeous Panormitis Bay on the SW corner of Simi. We anchor and slowly put Petronella to bed. Then a beer. 10 minutes later we have a visitor. Richard from Breakaway dinghies over and we are invited to for drinks and a weather forecast. Then to bed for a well earned rest.

WE'RE OFF!!

On Saturday I walked past the dinghy only to hear a loud "ppppfffffsssss". Our trusty Mailspeed Marine dinghy had finally exploded along one of its seams. This was just typical as only two days earlier I had put its new green anti-decay cover on. A quick inspection showed the problem to be terminal so we hurridly ordered a new one.

So, after waiting for four days for a new dinghy to arrive it finally appeared in Kaş. I moved it onto the boat and blew it up whilst Gill went to try to start the normally tortuous check out process from Turkey. Ten minutes later we hear that the Port Police will be round an hour later and we must be ready to leave there and then. Panic ensued.

We made it though and as we left all our great European and Turkish friends were there to wave us off. Very emotional it was too. Gifts were received and our bicycles which went on general release at the end of B Pontoon were snapped up in a trice.

Anyway, we are now anchored in a large bay just west of Kalkan. We had a good sail most of the way, tacking westwards along the coast. After our tea tonight, courtesy of Joy the Turk, will be up tomorrow probably to do our first overnighter of the passage, aiming for Simi before the strong winds come in.

The main thing is we have broken our ties with shore life and are on our way. Antigua here come.

Bittersweet Times

Yesterday was a day of emotional ups and downs. Finally after months of work Petronellla was launched and spent the day bobbing in the holding bay whilst nasty winds bounced her up and down. Shortly after midday the crane arrived and her mizzen mast was re-stepped. Thanks to all the marina stalwards who turned out to help and watch the fun. Yesterday was also the day we said goodbye to our great friends Curt and Jeri who are returing home to Squim in the US (oh, all right then, Sequim) for the summer, returning in the autumn (oh, all right then, the "fall"). Curt, we will see you in the Caribbean, Jeri hopefully in Sequim.

Unfortunately my work rebuilding the raw water pump was not too successful with water pissing into the bilge when we switched on the engine. Ah well, it's not the first time and today when we brought her across to B Pontoon (aka "The Party Pontoon") it appears it might just be the face plate that is leaking. We'll see when this wretched wind dies down.

Here comes the travel lift. Fingers crossed.

In we go

Splash

Back in the water at last

So after the day's slightly stressful events we were all off to Çan MoCamp the campsite just outside the marina gates. Çan's place is a throwback to the 60s, the sort of place you would have loved to have spent your 20s in. Chilled out, good music, full of backpackers, couchsurfers and volunteers. Çan had heard we are due to leave and offered to do a deal for us and our friends. We were greeted by a 4' high model penguin with a scarf over its face to mark the first anniversary of the Gezi Park disturbances. The penguin became the symbol for the protestors lat year (something to do with CNN running a programme in their Penguin series on the subject I believe). Anyway, the wind finally died, the beer flowed and the campfire crackled. Then it was time for more goodbyes. This time to our Turkish boat assistant, Zerrin, and her husband Mete. No more dressing up in overalls, aprons or chain saw massacre antifoul gear for you Zerrin. Very sad to see them leave with not a few tears shed across this cultural divide. This is one of the few downsides of the cruising life. You build great friendships often over a fairly short period but before you know it one of you, or both, is leaving for somewhere new. Sure, there will be new people to meet and fun to be had but that doesn't mean you forget the good times you had in Kaş either.

Çan's place

Groovy steps with welcoming penguin

Mete

Çan himself

Gilly and one sad/happy Zerrin

Campsite staff get the dreaded Gilly stare!

Andy plays out the evening