Tuna Capture - Picture Gallery

As promised pictures of the famous tuna capture, subsequent processing and preparation for the table...

Is it a fish?

It IS a fish!

It's a nice tuna

Gutting

Hefty steaks

Preparation complete

Sushimi for lunch

Seared tuna for dinner (again) with chilli sauce

Rock and Roll towards Sardinia

This is the third day now and we are rocking and rolling. Crash, bang, wallow, wallup, roll. Get the plastic container ready to put in the locker. Put it down because two hands are needed to get to the locker beneath the cushion. Realise the container is scooting across the boat. Put half open locker lid to one side. Chase container. Put in locker. Wonder where locker lid has gone. Find it. Close locker. Phew - there's another major task completed.

I had to pause this posting to stagger up on deck and watch a pod of eight or so dolphins playing in our bow wave. Sparkly blue sea, sunshine, white wave crests and dolphins having fun for us.

We have one more night on the water and tomorrow morning with luck we will fetch up on the NE coast of Sardinia near Olbia where J and M fly from on Wednesday morning. They have been great and Marcus is fine today even though we are being bounced all over the place. They have been planning their new life in S America this morning.

Yesterday morning the sea was steely grey and dead flat, like a stick being dragged through a bowl of mercury. Today it was an angry, confused mess when I came up on deck. Genoa up, then down trying to find a comfortable accompaniament to the ever present drone of the engine. We have struggled to run downwind for the last couple of days which does not bode well for the Atlantic.

We are all ready for landfall now. It's like a mini Trans-At with a start, a middle and a finsh with different moods to match. We just want to get there ahead of the strong headwinds that are forecast for tonight.

EDIT from Olbia:
It was another bouncy night. Here in Olbia I changed the fuel filter, previously done only two weeks ago. This is why you need filters to catch the gunge. Horrid.

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Fish On (pictures to follow)

At last. After one and a half gazillion miles of towing a 4" lure behind us we finally hooked and landed a tuna. We were 180 miles from nowhere. It had just got light. I handed over from my watch to Jen and Marcus. The rod had just been set up for the day's session and I was in the aft cabin half asleep. Suddenly I heard the reel scream. Oh, that'll be another plastic bag/bit of seaweed/piece of fishing net/tin of spam (delete as appropriate). But no, it's a fish, a real live fish and just eating size. Once I had turned it round it came in like a bream.



Could we find the killing alcohol? No. Could we find the squirting syringe to squirt the alcohol into his gills to kill him? No. In the end I bought him (it turned out to be a her once we gutted her) and Tony the Tuna (well Tina the Tuna) was safely on board.



Although she was jumping out of the water as she was reeled in she must have had a heart attack or something as she was dead when we handed her out of the water. Gilly, whose fish factory skills from aged 18 came into play, got me to sharpen the knife and she then gutted it and cut it up into steaks and fillets.



Lunch = sushimi with soy sauce, wasabi paste, cucumber and bread

Dinner = seared tuna with salsa sauce and boiled potatoes



Thanks to all for your fishing advice over the past few years. If anyone has Mike and Maureen's address please forward the blog address to them. www.yachtpetronella.blogspot.com



Pictures of the famous catch to follow.



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Straight from Messina

Today's blog posting is brought to you by Marcus, arguably the most scurvy of Petronella's scurvy crew.





It's a pleasant evening and a Sicilian is taking a quiet walk along the north coast of the island when his thoughts are interrupted by the sound of distant chanting. He squints and refocuses his view out into the Tyrrhenian Sea. There, sailing neatly along is a majestic green boat, with four animated people up on deck. He squints his eyes. All four crew appear to be chanting. He stops walking to focus his hearing on the chanting, which he can just about make out over the sound of lapping waves. He hears something, but thinks he must be mistaken. He listens again. Yes, he was right the first time. "White Chocolate, White Chocolate, White Chocolate!" it goes, just as he had thought. "White Chocolate, White Chocolate, White Chocolate!" Cioccolato blianco? Thinks the Sicilian. What on earth could be the meaning of this?





It may not have meant anything to our Sicilian friend, but the chant was in honour of a Petronella landmark. Since trundling out of Kas marina some 45 days ago, she has now completed 1,000 nautical miles in her trip to the Caribbean. And what better way for her crew to celebrate than with a few chunks of the sweet stuff.





The landmark came at the end of a day of vigilance up the Stratto de Messina (Messina Straight). After leaving George's Buoys (which, it turns out are a series of mooring points, not an East London gang) at Taormina, we headed north up the straights and prepared to bid farewell to Sicily.

Early speeds of five to six knots were promising, those these soon took a hit as peculiar currents slowed us down just as we reached the busy entrance to Messina. Dragging along a just a couple of knots, we were like a geriatric crossing a motorway as we trundled across the ferry routes shuttling between Sicily and mainland Italy.





Once clear of the ferries, our attention turned to the large number of swordfish boats that we were now surrounded by. Apparently swordfish have a tendency for taking naps while floating on the surface of the water. To catch them, you first need to spot one basking, before fatally jabbing it with a harpoon before it can stir. To achieve this, swordfish fishermen use boats with a very high tower built on deck, with a basket perched at the top. This basket, about shopping trolley sized, tends to contain three men on the lookout for the drowsy prey. Out the front of the boat is a long cantilevered walkway which, once a swordfish is spotted, sees a member of the crew scuttle along, harpoon in hand. Communication between the basket and the walkway takes place via the medium of shouted Italian. On more than one occasion we witnessed a fish being spotted, orders being barked, a boat veering off towards its prey, harpoon guy running along platform ready to strike. However, on none of these occasions did we see anything captured. Not an easy task, it seems.





The same can't be said of Petronella's fishing prowess. Not long out of the shipping lanes, the fishing rod out of the back exploded into life. All crew scampered to the rear witness the reeling in. It was a big one, putting quite a bit of strain on the line. "One this size would be just great," said Gill, indicating something about ten inches long with her hands. John continued to reel, it was getting closer, almost out of the water. Here it comes…





Well, I guess a bit of ripped fishing net might come in handy sometime.



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Etna Erupts

We've spent the day motoring north along the east coast of Mount Etna, a great brooding presence on our left hand side. Little wind and flat calm most of the way it took us 10 hours to cover the 54 miles from Syracusa to Taormina. No fish yet again but we did play with a dozen or so dolphins on the way. At one stage we thought we had engine problems as we kept hearing a deep growling noise. Eventually we put it down to planes flying overhead that we could not see.

Arrived here at Taormina around five and tied up to one of George Rizzos famous buoys. He remembered us from 2010.

As Jen and Marcus prepared dinner that loud rumbling began again and looking up to Etna we realised they were not planes this afternoon but Etna rumbling away. It seems we are in the middle of quite a big eruption and now it is dark we can see lava cascading down the side of the mountain from our eastern side. For more information look at Twitter account @iammountetna.

We are here for a few days. We had hoped to go round the south of Sicily this time but forecast strong winds have put paid to that idea. Whilst still not ideal we are hoping for much lighter winds once we are through the notorious Straits of Messina in the middle of next week. Meanwhile we'll have an easy day tomorrow. On Tuesday we would like to rent a car and go up to the top of Etna but seeing the lava cascading down the slopes tonight that idea might have to go on hold.

SicilIan Gastronomy

Lunch in Syracusa

 We finally arrived here in Syracusa, Sicily mid afternoon the day before yesterday. Plans to tie up in the Grand Harbour were thwarted by extensive engineering works so we are anchored in the large bay around which the old town is based.

First day thoughts on Italy are that this isn't really Italy, it's Sicily. Differences from Greece?

The food is amazing - cheeses, cooked meats, seafood, cheaper fresh vegetables, cold red wine. It really is excellent. They speak Italian which even for me with no Italian is easier than Greek. There are a lot of beautiful people in the evening parading along the front. The architecture is very neo-classical (thanks Marcus).

For those of you who have never been here you have missed the amazing jumping fish in the harbour. Once night falls they are throwing themselves around like nobody's business. Hilarious.

In other news the crew Jenny and Marcus have picked thing's up quickly especially the golden rules....

Rule 1: Don't fall overboard
Rule 2: Don't fall overboard
Rule 3: Don't fall overboard
Rule 4: Don't fall overboard
Rule 5: Don't fall overboard
Rule 6: Don't fall overboard
Rule 7: Don't fall overboard
Rule 8: Don't fall overboard
Rule 9: Don't fall overboard
Rule 10: Remember to switch the gas off
Rule 11: You must laugh at the First Mate's jokes

Today is our 34th wedding anniversary. No present from 'the kid's but we did get a very nice card.

Tomorrow we leave this lovely city, working north to Taormina where we stayed on the reverse journey five years ago. Then we must hope for better weather than is forecast to get us through the notorious Messina Straits and over to Sardinia during the following week.

Mid Ionian Sea

Trolling along with blue skies now. Quite the contrast to last night when we had gross (says Jenny) conditions. Big waves, strong winds and "very tippy". Gilly and Jen both fell out of bed as foolishly we had not installed the lee board. But we survived. Hurrah!



During the night we had a couple of squalls where the wind went in one case from 9k to 33k in about 10 seconds. All around us lightening was flickering throughout the night. Everyone is tired, but still going strong. Marcus is still asleep but drinking and occassionally eating "health biscuits". Hopefully he'll feel better in the morning.



This is nigh on impossible to write with the sun on the screen so will write more tomorrow.



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50 miles off Kefalonia

It's 9.30pm and Petronella has been beating to windward on a starboard tack for the last 10 hours. We are making 5k bearing 250 degrees and it is pretty uncomfortable for a first day out. Waves are around 2m and wind is around 20k. We are picking a course somewhere between where we want to go and what is 'comfortable'. To give you some idea of how we are bouncing I struggled to get my fingeron the correct icon when I started up this Sailmail message. Poor Marcus has spent most of the day asleep only actually throwing up once. Gilly is on watch and my watch with Jenny starts at 10pm.



After further trouble with the Pactor modem I finally seem to have cracked itas a combination of using the correct USB (COM1) port, a more distant Belgian station and distance away from ports has resulted in excellent reception today. Hopefully this message will get through too when I send it tomorrow.



After tonight we have tomorrow, tomorrow night and half of Thursday at sea before we make landfall in Sicily, either at Taormina or Syracuse depending on the wind. Right, gotta go, it's time to get ready for my watch.



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Passagemaking starts today

Typed as we leave Kefalonia and Greece behind heading for Sicily.

We tied up bows to in Sami on Kefalonia last Thursday. By arriving at 11am we hoped to go alongside. Initially we did but unfortunately scraped our hull on the dock as we pulled alongside using our midships  cleat - the result of a poorly placed fender. Then the Port Police came and told us to move on as a big boat was coming in our place. It turned out to belong the owners of clothing giant Zara and they had a massive yacht to match. So it was bows to instead which takes us an age to set up.

Strippers

Is it fixed? Possibly, maybe.

When I crank the anchor chain back in it goes halfway round a big cog (the gypsy) and then drops down into the chain locker below. The problem has been that the stripper, a small finger of metal that forces the chain off the gypsy, has become loose. This is because the stripper itself is worn and the thread holding it to the rest of the window as has almost disappeared due to frequent attempts to straighten it.

The solution (or so it seems at present) has been to introduce a longer, narrower bolt and use a locking nut actually within the hause pipe where the chain falls through.  The danger of this solution is that the nut could impede the fall of the chain.

This improvement was made in Vathi and then tried out when we went to refuel. To date all seems good.

Hey, talking of Vathi who should should come in whilst we were there but Will and Viv (Sao Vincente). We had no idea they were around the area. Ah well, there's another non-alcohol-day out the window. Great to see them especially as it was completely unexpected. They are trying to sell both their catamaran and apartment in Kas so they split their year between their vinyard/guesthouse in Cappadocia and their homeland of #new Zealand. Cracking evening and great to meet Will's brother and wife too.

Sir John grooves to Chris Rea's "Easy Rider"

Tonight at Big Vathi anchorage on Ithaca I can report that Sir John Windlass has found a new "best track ever".

Before we left Kaş Andy and Val (half of Sundancer) gave us a load of CDs after I said I was still listening to the same tracks as when I was 20. There's some pretty OK stuff in there but tonight I put on Chris Rea. Wow! That first track just blew my mind, man. Many thanks guys. We think of you whenever one of those CDs goes on...and this is just the best.

The rest of the album is prrety awesome too.

My family will tell you that until today I only knew about 30 song words in total and since Oh When the Saints counts as 19 that's pretty poor. Today I've just added another two.

Cheers guys.

However, more rats last night and the windlass chain stripper is knackered. That one is going to require some ingenuity to fix I fear. Oh yes, it looks like my anchoring assistance for Dilek (Symina) is going to make me famous - the story has now been syndicated to a national (I think) Turkish newspaper. What a wierd life.

Through the Corinth Canal

I’ve been putting off this blog posting because I wanted to try uploading a video for the first time and something new always takes a bit of time plus we’ve been really busy. Hence it is out of chronological order from the other postings being a week or so delayed. However, I thought you might like to see what the amazing Corinth Canal looks like. I won’t quote all the stats about it as you can look that all up on the old interweb if you are interested. For me thought it was the first major staging post on the journey. Let me know if the videos work for you. I suspect they may take an age to load.

[Just as an aside Gill's milestones all relate to meeting up with different people, mine are all geographical, Dilek’s are the crossing of various seas and Brian from Alixora only had one – getting his mail from us here in the Ionian!!]

Anyway we arrived with Dilek to the eastern end of the Corinth Canal, spent the night in a blustery anchorage (we actually dragged 20 yards or so in the wind which is most unusual for us) and then set off early the next morning. The pictures tell the story. Boo to the catamaran that jumped in between us and Symina that meant it was hard to photograph each other. At the western end of the Dilek left us to try to get her windlass repaired. We are still waiting for her to catch us up.

Dilek and Deniz on Symina follow us out of the canal  and into the Gulf of Corinth

Looking east back through the canal towards the Aegean and Turkey

Progress Update

We are now around a quarter of the way from Turkey to Gibraltar and an eighth of the way to the Caribbean. Yes Zerrin, there is now a serious hole in that elephant – I think maybe his tail and one leg are gone. After initial problems, due as is often the case to not doing a shakedown cruise before setting off, Petronella is in reasonable shape. The water pump seems to be fixed and then stern gland is behaving itself better for some unknown reason! We’ve had to buy a shiny new 21m long mainsheet (rope) as the replacement blocks (pulleys) we bought when we were back in England were too small for the old rope despite being advertised as adequate. What else has gone wrong? Oh yes, the Pactor modem which worked fine in Turkey no longer works here in Greece so there is work to do there before we hit the Atlantic as this will provide our contact with Emma (The Wombat), our shore support lead. Also giving problems are the direction indicator on the anemometer at the top of the mast and the chain stripper which makes sure the anchor chain runs smoothly back into its locker when we pull it up. At present it doesn’t and is proving hard to fix.

Things that are working well are the new AIS, the solar panels,…. No, I’ll stop there because you can guarantee that if I say it is working well today then tomorrow it will break.

We are OK too now we’ve have had a few days rest here in the Ionian. We have a few more days in these lovely bays before Jen and Marcus fly out to Kefalonia on Saturday. We’ll give them a day to recover and watch the World Cup final before we set off with them for Sardinia via Sicily. This will be a trial run for the Atlantic crossing so we are hoping we all get on with each other!!

A Night Time Intruder

So, it's 4.20am on Sunday 6th July and we're just recovering from having an intruder on board.

For once we have anchored and then tied back to the shore with a couple of shore lines. This for most people is easy peasy but Petronella is pretty hard to manoeuvre in tight places so we tend not to do it preferring to free swing on our anchor which we have done thousands of times. Because this is our preferred approach it means we rarely tie back so we don’t get any better at it. Today though we met up here on Meganisi with Rose & Brian our long time friends from Kas. They have sailed around the bottom of Greece and up to here and we always planned to meet them here in the Ionian. We finally met up a few days at Big Vathi on Ithaca and had a great evening of story swapping. We arrived here today as planned and Rose & Brian came out in their dinghy to meet us and help us tie up. It all went excellently and we must have looked very competent to those watching from other boats in the bay.

We spent the evening with Rose & Brian (Alixora) and Duncan & Julia (Rampage) who R & B had met whilst waiting for good weather to o through the Straits of Gibraltar 5 or 6 years ago. Gilly made one of her famous curries and after a beer or two in the local chill out tavern we returned for chicken macani, basmati rice and all the trimmings. This was followed by an ace fruit salad from Rose & Julia. One of the many subjects that cropped up was rats on board. Brian recounted his story of when a rat got on board and he chased it through the lockers wielding a knife. It finally escaped but not before he had stabbed a hole in one of Rose’s favourite cushions.

Sometime later, around 3am after I had finished the mass of washing up and gone to bed I was lying awake in our cabin looking up at the stars when all of a sudden there’s a rat staring down at me through the open hatch. I jumped up and asked it in no uncertain terms to go away (in fact I think I told it to “bugger off”). It beat a retreat. By now Gill was awake so we donned rat catching gear (T-shirt, shorts and shoes) and armed ourselves with winch handles and knives. Up onto the deck and we gingerly moved everything to try and find him. No luck. Has he gone? Is he below decks? What shall we do? We stood in the dark in the cockpit and quietly discussed our next move. Then we heard a scrabbling from the back of the boat and spotted the bastard sitting on our windvane supports. We moved down either side of the boat keeping the torch burning in his eyes. Once he made a brief bit for freedom but we shooed him back. Finally he launched himself onto one of the lines between boat and shore and scampered rapidly along it back to the shore. A lucky escape as there are numerous stories of rats getting below and happily eating their way through all your electrical cables.

I am now on watch for his return and Gilly has gone back to bed. Tomorrow we will have to build some rat stoppers out of 5l plastic water bottles to stop hime returning for a second visit.

It’s not all bad though. We have just spent a couple of days in Vliho Bay on Lefkada. Often known as Velkro Bay because once you get there it is so hard to leave, Vliho Bay is one of those crossing places where you might just bump into someone you know. So it was though we had not made any plans to meet up with anyone. However, in the next two days we met Dave from Cumbria that Gill used to canoe with, Jim her long time catamaran sailing friend who she sailed from Barrow to Portugal with, Brian & Maggie (who we met when last here 4 years ago), Tony who was in Gagliari, Sardinia when we last passed through there, and numerous friends of friends. On our first night we sat through quite strong winds with boats whizzing past us as their anchors dragged. No serious damage but it did break up our sleep yet again. It meant that the following day in Sam’s Bar all the old hand were recounting their stories of the horrendous storm they had there 3 years ago when the boats were turned over and one person died. The yacht club owner went out to help and rescued a woman from inside her upturned catamaran. Brave man. Finally, as we were leaving a guy in a dinghy came over to us and said “do you remember us?” It was Bob from Burbadik who we had last seen in Marmaris 3 years previously. The long term “liveaboard” cruising community is not very big and this meeting up happens all the time. A long way from home these people become your family and a good night is always guaranteed in these special places.

Oh no, Gill thinks the rat is back……