Sea Change

With the autopilot now going we had an easy ride down to Arbatax. We had to stop the boat and have a mid ocean swim so we didn’t arrive before 3pm when the Italians are at lunch. As it was we hovered outside the harbour for half an hour till 3.30pm till they returned to work and we could come in.

Jane, Alana and Rosie from Wellington and Gillian from Paris were waiting for us after a hair raising single carriage train trip over the hill from Cagliari, where the train even stopped so they could walk up a hill to buy a sandwich for lunch.

We had a night in the marina, showering, dining, showering, provisioning showering before heading out to fuel up before it closed for the afternoon. The woman taking the payment was very excited “touta donni” she said and came out to see us off.

We had a lovely day at anchor in the bay to get the crew acclimatised before the 10 hour trip down the coast to Cala Pira. The book said it was a camping ground but clearly had gone upmarket into holiday houses and a gated community. We had a lovely day swimming, kayaking, going ashore for a drink and cooking up two days worth of food for the crossing the next day. We were the only yacht in the bay and the dinghies and paddle boats passed us often for a good look. While the fishermen and younger ones return a wave the more upmarket Italians do not. It seems you have broken some rule of etiquette in noticing their bald faced staring.

The next day we headed off on the crossing, 139 nautical miles to Marettimo, in the Egardi Islands virtually in a straight line. All went well for the day with changing watches and moderate winds. We passed a turtle and saw several flying fish. At night time we turned on the lights only to find the most important one, the red and green directional light, wasn’t going, despite it working when tested the night before. It was a loose connection but tape itself couldn’t fix but an old fork and spoon seemed to do and it lasted throughout the eventful night. There was much less traffic than we encountered between La Spezia and Elba and we were readily able to work out which direction ships were going and stay well clear. There was no glow in the sky and there is no civilisation near so the stars were very bright. We saw a turtle and a dolphin swung by and had a chat with Alana at one stage.

At around 3.30am I was standing beside Gillian who was on the wheel who said the wind had come up to 14 knots, by the time I got to the winches on the other side of her it was twenty and we were frantically reefing then trying to drop the mainsail as it climbed within two minutes to 34 with enormous crashing seas. Gillian got the boat into the wind to safety but the sails were flapping and the main was wrapped around the spreaders and the kayaks on the front were leaping in the air and crashing down again. We needed two of us to get the foresail in and then Ange, with harness tied on, went up to drag the bottom of the mainsail down. The suddenness and intensity was quite frightening but we slowly were able to move from the centre out to the side of the storm and the wind slowly dropped to 20 knots and the sea was less wild. Then we experienced an enormously hot wind and were looking around as it seemed there must be a fire on the boat but it was the Sirocco wind from Africa, which we think collided with the Mistral from the north to produce a totally unforecast storm. From there we slithered through a tiny gap in a high wall of blackness from sky to water, and rejoined our course into a 20 knot headwind for most of the rest of the trip. The anchorage we had headed for was too rough so we ended up on a harbour on the other side. Although we were tired the med mooring went well with the extra crew despite the three useless dock staff who pranced about bare chested, shouting at us and each other (avant avant!) and unwilling to pull a rope, in contrast to the helpful staff we have found at other marinas.

We were enormously exhausted and pleased to be here tied up safely after 32 hours. We celebrated with a beer and a shot of tequila. That was the only overnight crossing we had to do and seems unlikely we’ll be doing that again for fun.

Marettimo is a lovely village and we were surprised it seemed quite Greek looking until we learned it had been colonised by the Greeks in the 18th century. It seems full of kids running around very freely, swimming, riding bikes and having a wild time. We had a delicious meal last night and have booked a four course one tonight to really sample the fare.