Birvidik

Ah - Summer approaches! The days lengthen, bird song swells and a cruiser’s fancy turns to, well, cruising as it happens.

The Greek for ‘summer’ is Καλοκαίρι, or Kalokairi, which translates literally as ‘good weather’. May is the transition period between the depressions of winter with their associated winds, seas and rain and the strong summer Meltemi wind which pounds the north coast of Crete. It is traditionally the ideal time for boats to leave Crete and head north and west.

So how come we’re still stuck in Agios bloody Nikolaos?

It’s a long story, which is about to be recounted in coma-inducingly tedious detail, so get yourself a drink, grit your teeth and plough on.

We had the boat hauled out at the end of February for its annual bottom clean and general tweaking below the waterline. An uncharacteristic flurry of activity enabled us to complete all the planned jobs and we left her propped up on the hard and flew off to Portugal for an ill-deserved period of recuperation.

After we’d been gone about a fortnight we received an email from one of our fellow yotties in Ag. Nik, informing us that Birvidik had had an altercation with the travel hoist and had, unsurprisingly, lost.

Travel hoists, as has been mentioned in blogs passim, are remarkably functional, if hardly elegant, pieces of engineering. They are also very large, very heavy, and very, very powerful; festooned as they are with a labyrinth of hydraulic piping powered by a diesel engine originally designed to pull a 2 000 tonne freight train. They are also remarkably manoeuvrable, with each of their four wheels independently steerable. Experienced operators can manoeuvre one of these things with balletic grace, even while it is cradling a 25 tonne boat in its arms. They coax it through tortuous paths into spaces only centimetres wider than itself. Not only that, but, as the hoist is so tall the operator has to think in three dimensions while extemporising this mechanical pas de deux.

And this is where our Ag. Nik operator, Rousso, fell down. Apparently, he was moving a large catamaran into the space alongside and behind Birvidik. He was concentrating so closely on the 10 mm gap between the hoist and Birvidik’s hull that he forgot about the 20 cm overhang at the top of the hoist, which snagged on the main mast cap shroud (one of the wires holding the mast up).

The wire in question is eight millimetre 1 x 19 stainless steel. It has a breaking strain of over 5 ½ tonnes. You or I couldn’t help but notice these sorts of forces if we came across them or, more pertinently, they came across us. So would the average family car, which would probably stall if trying to pull that sort of a load. Even a small truck would labour. Not a travel hoist – the engine didn’t even change tone as the hoist pulled the wire back like a bowstring.

Witnesses reported that the mast, appropriately for the last simile, bent over like a bow. Something had to give, and it wasn’t going to be the travel hoist. Nor, as it turned out, was it going to be the wire. What eventually gave was the bottle screw, AKA turnbuckle (see picture). This is a robust chunk of stainless steel which is used to adjust the tension in the wire. It parted with a thunk and the mast sprang back upright with a twang that could be heard halfway across town. Yotties all over the marina poked their heads up and stared around like a clan of startled meerkats.

This news left us in a bit of a quandary. It was impossible to tell at a range of just over three thousand kilometres what ancillary damage might have been done. At worst it could have permanently bent the mast, buggered up the in-mast furling gear, strained and weakened the other rigging wires, loosened the chainplates (which attach the wires to the hull), or even weakened the hull from pressure against the props that held the boat up.

Which, it was generally agreed, would be bad.

We contacted our insurers and pointed out to them that, should such damage become apparent during the forthcoming sailing season, the likely outcome would have been the rapid descent of Birvidik plus crew to the bottom of the Mediterranean. They concurred that such an event would knock a significant hole in their profit and loss account for that year and arranged for a surveyor to nip across to Crete from Athens and give the boat a quick once over.

Which was good.

He reported back:

The cap shrouds had indeed been damaged and strained by the incident, and would need to be replaced, as would their bottle screws. (Bad).

Nothing else seemed to have been damaged. (Good).

The rest of the rigging, although undamaged by the incident, was looking tired and would need to be replaced in its entirety very soon. (Bad).

At our expense. (Badder).


The insurers came back to us. They argued that:

The cap shroud damage was an insured risk. (Good)

We had a £500 deductible on the policy and the total cost of the cap shroud replacement was unlikely to be significantly more than that. So we’d end up paying most, if not all of it. (Bad).

The legal costs section of our policy entitled us to claim assistance in recovering our associated expenditure from the hoist operator. (Good)

We contacted their recommended rigger and arranged for him to come over from Athens and replace all the rigging. He said he could do it for about three thousand quid. (Not bad.) (ish).

But he couldn’t get over to do it until the 9th May, nine days after our winter contract with the marina expired and we had intended to set off sailing. (Bad)

We arrived back on Birvidik at the end of April and he arrived on the ninth of May with two assistants. They knocked the job off in one day and, as they had managed to get another job in the same marina, reduced the price a tad. (Good).

This meant that we would be up and ready to go sailing by the 11th of May. The weather since we had returned had been magnificent; hot clear, sunny days with mild winds from a favourable direction and no significant seas. Perfect. On the 10th of May it turned to shit. We had strong winds from the direction in which we wanted to go, rain, and rough seas. (Bad).

It’s not as if we didn’t try. The forecasts said that there would be a two day weather window on the 16th of May. This would give us a chance to get as far as Rethymnon, where we could hole up and wait for the next bloody depression to go through. So we got ourselves ship-shape, drugged the cat and set off at sparrowfart.

All went fine until about ten miles into the trip when we got out of the sheltered Mirabello Bay and approached Cape Ioannis, which we needed to round in order to set off for the anchorage on the island of Dhia. The swell, waves and wind all built steadily in unison as we approached the cape. By the time we were a couple of miles off, Birvidik was pitching violently up and down and the cat, despite the drugs, was squirting equally violently from both ends. “Perhaps it’s just a local phenomenon around the cape” (the waves, not the cat) we said with no real conviction. A quick scan of the horizon with binoculars put paid to that idea. It was even worse out there. (Bad).

The prospect of another five hours of this, followed by a night in an only partially protected anchorage held little appeal for us and none whatsoever for Einstein. We turned round and skedaddled into Spinalonga lagoon and dropped the hook. Although the water here was relatively calm the wind howled like a banshee through the anchorage, shrieking in the rigging and jangling the nerves. We looked to the forecasts on the internet for comfort, but solace was there none. The weather window had turned into more of a hotel room spyhole with even worse hurtling in from the West. The next morning we slunk back into Ag. Nik marina with our tails between our legs and here we have remained, sitting out the wind and rain.

So we sit here awaiting favourable conditions to head west and north. The forecasts are hardly encouraging, showing a backlog of depressions jostling for pole position to hack in from the West. There might be a short opportunity next Tuesday/Wednesday but we’re not holding our breath. Looking at the synoptic for Europe and the Atlantic, I reckon we’ll be lucky to get away before my birthday (26th for those of you feeling generous).

Still, it could be worse. I could be sandwiched between Michael Gove and a bunch of sullen adolescents.