The Calm...

We left Reposto on the 21^st of September.  We bid farewell to land that night and spent 3 days and 3 nights at sea making our way across the Mediterranean Sea to the country of Greece.

To prepare for 3 days at sea Dad and I both applied prescription grade sea sickness patches.  As far as I know they made us invincible.  I didn't feel the faintest hint of nausea.  

By this point (the 26^th) the days and nights just seem like one long chunk of sailing.  I finished “The Right Stuff”, by Tom Wolfe that I had started on the plane to Rome and then read “The Great Gatsby”, by F. Scott Fitzgerald.  I hadn’t read that one since school and wanted to read it again, everything ends the same.  I started “Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” and am still working on that one but am towards the end.

 We sadly had to motor most of the way the first day because there was absolutely no wind.  Not an ideal situation because well fuel costs money and it wasn’t the idea to motor-sail to Greece.  Also when there is no wind like that and the air is still, the fumes from the diesel start to creep up into the cockpit and that fresh sea air… isn’t so fresh.

The other two days we did manage to sail.  We were actually cooking on the third day, heeled over and going I think about 5 or 6 knots without having to do anything too off course which was awesome.  But like the winds of the Med have proven to be, we went from 13-15 knots to absolutely nothing.

We had leftover pasta one night, chicken with a homemade lemon sauce, mashed potatoes, and a fresh salad the second night, and ate whatever was on the verge of turning the next… it was like a buffet… salami, cheese, fruit, and probably some crackers and beer.  We were expected to reach port that night and was close to land so we didn’t want to disrupt watches by cooking anything.

Staying awake didn’t get any easier, but I discovered that Dad had been holding out on me.  He had TV shows and movies on his iPod.  So my last alone night shift was spent watching Boston Legal.  We worked about 3 hour shifts which was just enough time to get some sleep and not too long for the person on watch.  It worked out.  I am still determined to get through “The Da Vinici Code” but I think I’ll try it during the day or before I go to bed at night. 

During the second night, I learned how to read rain clouds on the radar.  I also learned that my heavy weather gear fits well.  When the sun began to set I could see lightening off in the distance.  By the time I woke up from my 3 hours of sleep after dinner, Dad told me to go ahead and put on my rain gear before I came up and that he would be sleeping on the deck in case anything turned sour.  When I got on deck, there was lightening in the distance to the right and still behind us.  The rain clouds on the radar showed up nice and dark and we were actually able to avoid them and stay dry which was a nice treat. 

This was when we were able to open the hatches and let some air in.  This is on the top hatches and masyou can see right up the mast.  I thought it was a cool view.

It was fun to see all sorts of new fun things out on the water… well things being ships or random lights.  The night I saw the lightening I also saw an entire cluster of flashing red lights super close to the water.  We weren’t close enough to land to see anything land related, and the radar didn’t show any ships nearby so I have no idea what they were.  We think maybe fishing nets or some sort of wreck or something to watch out for.  What was confusing was why they were all flashing like that.  It almost looked like a submarine, but wasn’t.  The other cool thing that stands out in my mind was the giant military ship we saw.  Big, gray, clearly moving 20 knots or faster, scary, and didn’t show a dot on the radar.  It was in plain sight to us, yet was invisible according to the computer.  You stealth like military people!  We saw our fair share of ferries and cruise ships lit up at night like the Griswold house at Christmas.  No super wildlife to report yet.  We have seen our fair share of birds, flies, jellyfish, and mosquitoes, but not very much marine activity.

Actual boredom began to kick in.  By that third day I was ready for something to happen or to do something different.  There is the term, “The calm before the storm” and this was the calm for sure.  It is also said that sailing can be long drawn out periods of time of nothing to do or report, all building up to a few moments of sheer terror… yep that too.