Angry Sea

The trip from Mykonos to Paros was pretty uneventful.  We were stopping there to spend the night and recharge for the evening.  I slept most of the way there thanks to the Dramamine I took before we left and it was a piece of cake. 

The marina in Paros was nice, and the town itself was a place I could see just hanging out and spending a considerable amount of time.  The shops were funky rather than classy, the cafes that were still open were decent, and there was an internet café that was reasonable and that had American movies and music playing.  I am not sure what the movie actually was, but it was set in the 90s and was a kung fu/black comedy?  No it was not Rush Hour… and may not have been a comedy… I wasn’t really paying attention. 

We only stayed the night and then left the comfort of Paros for a day of sailing that will go down as one of the worse I have ever experienced on board the Pipedream.  (This is where Dad chimes in and says it can always get worse… I am aware of this and hope that doesn’t happen any time soon)

Our destination was Ios.  It is an island that we are going to catch the ferry to Santorini from.  What was supposed to be a 30 mile (6 hour) cruise, ended up being just about 30 hours, but took 10 hours of bouncing around and fighting the elements.

There is a season in the Mediterranean Sea and that season is technically over.  I think I realized why on this sail. 

The weather forecast said we should be experiencing 10-15 knots of wind.  For our boat, 12-17 knots of wind is perfect sailing assuming it comes from the right direction.  When we first left Paros we had high hopes that it would be the day we could actually sail.  Not so much.  I didn’t take a Dramamine because it had made me so drowsy the day before and I didn’t want to sleep the entire day.  I did want to take a short nap and went down below to the v-berth to lie down.  About an hour later I woke up when the bow of the boat began dropping and rolling.  This is that weightless sensation when you are on a roller coaster, but about every 30 seconds.  Then the water started coming up over the hatch above me.  I looked out the side hatch and saw white.  We were heeled over and the foam of the waves was splashing up on the window.  I decided this was a good time to get up and put the giant piece of plastic we have to cover our berth back on to avoid sleeping in a wet bed. 

When I went up on deck the wind hit me like Nerf bat.  We were rolling over some pretty nice sized waves and when I consulted the wind gauge it was sporting 25 knot winds.  Within maybe 30 minutes there were 30 knot sustained winds and gusts that were reaching 38 knots.  That is a lot of wind.  Dad had the main sail up to keep the boat from rocking side to side too much and at that point him and Chuck went up to reef it on the first point.  Judy and I watched from the cockpit as the bow of the boat went up and then down and Dad and Chuck practiced one hand for the boat and one hand for yourself.  When Dad came back he declared that it was time to break out the harnesses, it was noon.  As the gusts continued they left the cockpit to put another reef in the main, and of course, it started raining.  It was just hard enough to be nuisance, but they succeeded and the main sail was the lowest it gets without being completely down.

This is what I woke up to.  Not exactly the sunny, “Good morning!” you would expect.

I went down below to get the harnesses up and came back up with a camera too.  I figured I needed a way to keep my mind off of wanting to throw up.  Dad amused me with this grin.

Dad put out two arm lengths of the stay sail to serve as a balancing storm sail and that worked really well.  It kept the boat from rocking and rolling too much.  We figured the steady height of the swells was probably only 3-4 feet with some bigger ones creeping in there, which isn’t that big at all.  What made it uncomfortable was that they come from every angle.  The Atlantic Ocean has much bigger swells but they are generally all going in the same direction and you just ride up one side and down the other.  These were like, as Dad put it, Lake Michigan.  Choppy waves that are big enough to make things wet and uncomfortable and have absolutely no uniform pattern at all.  Basically the boat is being tossed around like a small toy in the water.

With waves and situations like this comes the clammy uncomfortable spray from the sea.  I was wearing a zip up sweatshirt and it got nice and damp.  Not wet, just damp and sticky.  Your skin gets clammy and salty and my hair was nice and knotted.  It’s amazing how just a constant spray of sea water can change the way your skin feels.

This is the bow of the boat getting a little wet.  People always say to look out at the horizon when you aren’t feeling well, it’s never a good idea to look out over the bow because you just see it going up and down into the waves and without this cover you would also be getting a face full of sea water.

Things continued pretty much like this.  We were going 2 knots at one point because the wind was directly on our nose trying to stop the boat from advancing.  Putting up the stay sail helped and we went between 3 and 4 knots for most of the way.  It was one of those trips where you know you are moving, but it doesn’t seem like you are actually going anywhere.  It’s crazy to hear the engine trying and yet you can feel the wind literally pushing the boat back. 

Dad checking out the wind finder… we are experiencing how much wind?!  The gusts were pretty incredible and as you can see even with the main sail reefed, would heal the boat over nicely.

Chuck and Judy getting some time to spend close together.  The three of us were huddled under the bimani to stay dry and to stay out of the wind.  Captain Wayno enjoyed being able to spread out behind the helm, but also got more water to the face than we did.

It’s always said in these situations that the boat can take 10 times worse, it’s the crew that is weak.  This was a prime example.  We weren’t in any real danger and it was more frustrating than anything.  I felt pretty nauseous once the adrenalin began to wear down, but the boat just kept chugging away with what we gave her.

This is just another idea of what we were experiencing.  We were all thankful this was happening during the day and not at night, because this at night would be terrifying.  You can see that the waves aren’t huge but they kept running into each other from every direction.

There was one engine scare.  We were actually getting close and were looking to come around a point of Ios when the engine started shifting down on its own.  We all looked at each other and nobody had touched a thing.  Dad went down and sure enough we had sucked the small tank of fuel dry.  This was the engine saying “I need more diesel… get on it!” and Dad was able to open the bigger tank and things were fine.  This apparently happened on the Atlantic crossing too, but the engine simple shut off.  Not a good thing.

Once we got into the channel and we saw the marina we had yet another bit of excitement when a ferry was coming in and sharing the passage with us.  We had just entered, and the ferry was still going about 20 knots when it came in.  You just don’t realized how big a ferry is until it’s about to squish you like a bug.  This thing came storming past and all of the people were looking out the window at the poor sailboat about to get tossed around by the wake.  Dad has enough common sense and knowledge to steer into the wake and take it head on and then ride in behind the ferry so it wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t fun either.

This was what we saw coming towards us.  You can see it’s not a slow ferry and there wasn’t a whole lot of space in this channel.

It was a Highspeed 5… awesome.  I couldn’t get the whole thing in the frame of my point and shoot so I just got the tail end and the wake it was going to create.  

Once we saw the marina, we realized there isn’t much here.  It’s another public marina and another sailboat was about to dock also so we let him go ahead of us while we got the anchor ready and then followed suit behind him.  There was still a substantial amount of wind and we weren’t sure what we were dropping the anchor into.  There was a group of divers working on the other side of the dock there to help catch lines and tie our stern off.  The main problem was the wind was blowing us into the dock and we were sort of off to the side of where the anchor had actually caught.  Dad wanted to move the boat over so he pulled us closer to the dock and I hopped off the back to help rearrange the lines and the boat next to us was trying to do the same thing.  When we did have things beginning to look tied off, one of the Port Police showed up saying we both had to move our boats because of the diving they were doing and he got into a heated Greek discussion with the nice man in the blue and white shirt that helped us dock.  Apparently the man in the blue and white said it didn’t matter and they both went back to the office and the police man came back apologizing and saying he had been told one thing, but it wasn’t the case so we could stay.  We thanked the nice blue and white striped shirt man and he came back with “I have been sailing for 50 years, I would never ask you to move once you have already docked”.  I wanted to hug him, but I was sticky and probably smelled bad so I voted against it and said thank you again.

It took about an hour to figure out a working combination of spring lines, fenders, stern lines, anchor chain, and everything else before we felt that the boat was set.  We went to check in with the Port Police, and I have to say this was the one thing that actually went well for the day.

The officer apologized again and explained he had heard one thing, but it was taken care of and we said it was fine and that he was just doing his job.  They then were super nice about helping Dad fill out the form needed, stamping out transit log (without any comments about how it was folded or how we didn’t have an exit stamp from Corfu which I haven’t talked about much here, but it’s been an issue in other ports) and gave us the number for the fuel and water guys. 

We went to dinner to one of the two restaurants still open, again the season is over so everything is closed, and had some of the best fresh lamb ever.  One difference is the tzatziki we have ordered further south is heavier on the cucumber and had less garlic.  It’s still good, but not quite as good. 

After dinner when we returned to the boat, we saw that the back right fender had been doing a ton of work and that the boat was pretty much running into the dock.  This dock, by the way, is a floating cement slab that would put a nice sized dent in the back of our boat and that would crush our ladder which doesn’t stay up when the gang plank is down.  The man on the boat next to us said he had heard the rubber and checked out our boat and suggested we move it up.  So Dad and Chuck went and took more slack out of the anchor chain while I let the stern lines loose to let it on back.  It seemed to work and aside from some rocking during the night, there wasn’t a single problem.