Telltale 110

On the Rocks
This Telltale will take you from Ayvalik, Turkey to Trogir, Croatia, with some adventures of course.

With all the work on Starlie ongoing, we also still found time to work on Gisela, and the reward was given some blissfull Sunday afternoon when Steffi and I took Gisela out of her berth (we had to be towed as we had no engine, or battery, or blige pump for that matter), raised the sails and sailed through the bay of Ayvalik. The first time in ten years that she had all her sails up and was seriously sailing again. Moments to never forget. Just a pitty that the owner was not there.

Comes Beginning of May and time to leave. One can only imagine how difficult it was to leave Ayvalik this time. The farewell banner at the end of the breakwater said a million words, but a sailor has to go and move on. It has been the theme of my life, now that I consider it. The text was actually written in Dutch and said: "A good voyage with great company and hope to see you soon.!"

So, after I chocked this farewell down my throat we set for some sailing which would take Bryce and Mayanrd through the fearcefull Cyclades, past Athens through the Corinth Channel, the Gulf, The Ionian Sea and onward north into the Adriatic Sea towards the glorious Croatian islands. We had a month for the trip and several people would join Maynard at different stages. Now that I write it down, I realise that most people would take a complte season to do this trip, but we had been there, done it before and would do it again. The arrival in Lesbos, only 15 miles away was less spectacular as we broke the throttle cable right while we were manouvring in port. So, Roland was leaning over the engine down below to throttle up on the commands of Maynard who was still steering outside. We parked the boat without any trouble, found a new throttle cable the next morning and left for the next island. As usual the Cyclades have a surprise up their sleeves. I had wanted to stop in several places, not the least Mykonos where I had spent such a glorious time the year before. But it was not to be. We had such a fantastic following wind that we blasted in 30 hours from lesbos (basically Turkey) to Athens without a single stop of any of the islands. With an average of 9 knots on the log we blasted by Khios, Mykonos, Andros, Tinos and the rest. We dropped the anchor in Poros, well known in the Saronic Gulf, just off Athens. The next day we sailed over to Aegina, to have just another great meal at Hiipocampus.

And as usual Maynard found time to see some more collections of old stones. Always when I look at his pictures afterwards I wonder if I had also been there!!!!


But, on it was the next day and we made for the Corinth Channel. Maynard did not have any (good) memories of his last passage through the Corinth as he got his finger in the winch, as some of you may remember. This time all went well and we sailed through a sunny and glorious Corinth Channel. The tourist boat behind us was not happy with the speed we were making, but hey......



We saild through the Gulf Of Corinth with no wind, stopped hardly and used the autopilot to get us through the Gulf. Reading a book and taking time to ourselves.


We arrived in the Ionian, stopped in Fiskardo and some more of these great villages which really are a treat if you visit them early in the season. And onward it went to Lefkas, where we would get out through the Channel and back into open waters of the Ionian. After the opening bridge one has to make a sharp to starboard, leaving the sandbar to port. Which we did, unfortunately we did not leave the rocks on starboard free enough and we ran Sylphe aground and on the rocks with 3 knots of speed. Bang and stuck we were. We tried to get her off with full engine power, the dinghy but all to no avail. We asked a passing Italian boat for assistance and he tried to tow us off, only resulting in a cleat being ripped out of Sylphes deck. We left the boat for what it was, it was not gonna go anywhere anyway!!!! We contacted a diver and the Port Police and that last one was the biggest mistake. As you can recall from earlier Telltales I am no friend of the Port Authorities in Greece. And this time it got worse. The Port Police came to visit us to see what was up. And the estimated that since we had run aground, they had to report this to Ahens. Which they did, without mentioning that we were a normal sailing vessel. So, Athens takes out the disaster booklet and goes into full throttle like when an oil tanker had run aground. Oil spills, environmental disasters and crew to be rescued was the scenario that they had in mind. ARRRGGGHHHH, we were just sitting on a rock, had no leaks, but did loose the steering as the rudder was forced hard over and had blown the hydraulic pump. But that was of later concern as for the moment we were not moving at all and had no need for a rudder either.
The friendly diver that had come made an initial assessment and surfaced from his mission with a great surprised face. He mentioned that we were squeezed in between a couple of rocks with the keel. There was no way out. Even if we had wanted to do this on purpose it would have been physically impossible. Bravo for us. We had to wait for high tide....but there is no tide in this part of the Med. The tide is being influenced by wind mostly. So we waited some 24 hours, only disturbed by the occasional visit of the Port Police boat. By this time they were ready to call in a commercial dock to take us out of our position, no way!!!!!!
The diver team came up with a solution and we would try to fit huge underwater balloons and fill them with pressed air, to see if we could lift Sylphe some 10 cm. Miraculously this worked and we were free in 30 minutes of hard stopping efforts. Since the rudder did not work we returned to port, where we were welcomed by the Port Police, only to have our boat papers confiscated. THERE, now we were really stuck. It took 4 days of negotiating with Port Authorities, Consulates, divers, surveyors and more to get clearance to sail out again. By this time we had replaced the hydraulic pump and we happily sneaked out of port in a late evening, after having recovered the papers. We sailed over to Corfu, again through the channel, but this time keeping more to port.



The sail from Corfu to Croatia, takes one directly North onto 200 miles of open water. To port Italy, on starboard first Albania, later Montenegro and Croatia. With a predicted southerly wind this would be a fun trip. However we somehow never were able to sail directly north. We ended up going all the way to Italy and tacking there again on a course for Croatia. The weather had everything, from no wind, too much wind, rain, clouds, sun and every point of the compass was used. The last 70 miles were done under horrible conditions. The waves were coming from all directions making it really uncomfortable, nothing but dangerous. As usual Willy, Maynard and I just continued and made the best out of it, including a 9 o'Clock in the morning beer to celebrate the ending of a horrible night. We blasted with 9,5 knots between the islands of Sipan and the main land and arrived in calmer waters.



The Croatian islands had not been visited in three years, but as usual, the moment we showed up our friends recognised us and we had some very warm welcome in these great places. Lukas Taverna in Kobas remains one of those mystical great spots. Just imagine waking up here:


Or having diner here in Polace, with our friend Victor. The boom in the picture above the bar still has some remarkable stories to tell.


Cruising through all these islands and slowly making our way further north. An afternoon drink, with a borrowed guitar from the local bar owner makes an unforgettable impression. Not to mention the BBQ we had later on the boat in this most exquisite lonely place, just around the corner.


And to be honest, if you do have to make landfall and visit the civilized world for culture, shopping or whatever other reason these villages are just to neat to be true. Here the market square of Hvar, where the boat is docked right in front. The problem with these places is that they get too crowded, and even now in early June the crowd was up and ready, so we quickly left again.

Still there remains soo much to see and explore. Here the local equivalent of the Chinese wall, which was effectively closing off a complete peninsula in times of war, making an excellent defense structure. It withstood ages and many conquerors.


Andre joined us on the boat and although the whole of Europe has a non-smoking policy, Sylphe remains that exception. We had picked up Andre in Dubrovnik town and had left the moment he stepped out of the taxi, of course without paying the port or doing any of the formalities needed in Croatia. It almost got us into trouble some 5 days later wen we were checked by the Coast Guard, but hey...you only live once. Together we visited the island of Vis again and the lovely place of KUT (now the Dutch readers will start laughing, but the place is really called KUT).



We did little sailing, but Andre proofed to be a crack at helming Sylphe in the most leisurely way I have seen a novice helmsman on Sylphe do it. A hard day at the office, Andre??



And Maynard....he had just spend another month on board and enjoyed it thoroughly, I guess


Roland
www.sail-in-style.com