As was our custom, we took Tin Hau out of mothballs before departure date in order to check that everything was still as it should be. Crews of other boats were returning and getting themselves ready for the summer. On 18th April we took a number of these people out for a shakedown sail to Corfu Town, round the island of Vidha, and back again. For many of them it was their first experience of junk rig sailing. To make it more memorable, David gave each a line to operate. Junks are notorious for having miles of rope associated with their sails, so there was no shortage of lines for fourteen crew. Each person was given his or her task to carry out at a prearranged whistle command.
Everything went very well. So well that we had one skipper offer (half-seriously) to trade his boat and three landlubbers wanting to join us for part of our journey westwards. Two of these, David and Janey, were wanting to try an out-of-sight-of-land sail. The third, Terry, was a friend of Gill and Geoff of Hui Mar. After some discussion with them, we agreed that we would take all three as far as Sicily. We were essentially ready to go as soon as we had favourable conditions. All three crew moved aboard in anticipation that night.
On the night of the 20th we all went to a restaurant in town as the guests of Christophe on Topqot. After a very merry evening, we returned (three sheets in the wind) to Tin Hau. At quarter past one, with calm seas and a force five forecast, we decided that we should head off to Paxos. Without any more ado, we weighed anchor and made our way out of the bay. Once into the open sea, we raised sail and set course for the headland at Corfu. We had just about reached that point when the wind arrived and headed us. Unfortunately it arrived with a dreadful squall, which included quite large hailstones. One of the visitors was at the wheel at the time and lost control of the steering. The rest of the crew were out on deck trying desperately to reef the sails. I got the engine on again and took over the helm. The scene outside was incredibly dramatic, with lightning illuminating the island and surrounding rocks. Deafening thunder rumbled all around and wind buffeted Tin Hau. It was a scene of which any horror movie director would have been proud. We turned around and went back to Gouvia, tails very much between our legs. No-one on shore was even aware that we had been out.
PART SIX
Beyond Corfu
Lynda Chidell
1. Following the Sun
Four days after our aborted night departure, the right conditions were forecast. Messages were sent to the crew, who had been allowed home on shore leave. All hands reported for duty at 9 a.m. and, by twenty past ten on 24th April, we were once again passing between the buoys marking the entrance to Gouvia. There was little wind to sail by, so we pulled into Lakka on the island of Paxos, called it a day and anchored till better breezes blew.
A light north-easterly arrived at breakfast the following morning. Hoping for the best, we left as soon as it appeared. It fluttered off and on for the first twenty-four hours, so all progress was made with the help of the engine. We had a moderate breeze the following day, which increased to the point where we had to heave-to for a few hours. The crew were not surprised to learn that we were quite close to the Gulf of Squillace – otherwise known as the Gulf of Squalls.
The mini-gale didn’t last long. Once round Cape Spartivento, the wind had backed and dropped considerably. This state of affairs did not continue. The fickle wind veered again and headed us. With engine on, we crawled along the Italian coastline, logging four knots but actually only gaining two miles of ground. We were watching our progress on the radar. When the tidal current was at its strongest, we could see Tin Hau actually moving backward in relation to the coastline. This phenomenon didn’t last too long, thank goodness. We eventually passed through the narrows at the Straits of Messina in the early morning. We did not see any whirlpools, but the water was quite choppy.
We altered course to port once we had passed the north-eastern tip of Sicily. The light airs were very variable so we were motoring once again. Janey expressed a wish to be hoisted to the top of a mast. We sent her up in a bosun’s chair and left her there for a couple of hours. The rest of us were busy dipping buckets into the sea to collect floating jelly. This turned out to be some sort of fish roe. The tiny eggs contained even smaller fry. The babies appeared to be all eyes and not much else.
We tied up at the quay in Milazzo harbour in time for lunch. There were no entry formalities, and no harbour dues. The harbour master moved us, within hours of arrival, to a different part of the quay. What he actually wanted was to get rid of us altogether, but we stubbornly refused to go. The annual festival of the sea and boat-blessing ceremony was due to take place that weekend, and they wanted to be able to get all the boats and ferries into the harbour. No matter that there was nowhere else we could reasonably move to.
Terry had a good working knowledge of Italian (having spent many years in the ‘rag trade’ in Italy). The local Sicilians were not impressed by that or anything else we could offer. It was our impression that they didn’t want anything to do with us at all. How Terry had the nerve to submit to a cut-throat razor when having a shave at the barber shop, I shall never know. Obtaining money was incredibly difficult. Finding a bank that was open was the first problem. The second was that it also had to be amenable to exchanging foreign currency. The security at the entrances to these establishments was tighter than that protecting the Crown Jewels. Spending money was almost as difficult, in that shopkeepers didn’t seem keen to serve us.
Our three guests wanted to take us out for dinner the night we arrived. It was their final night, as they were leaving the following day to return to Corfu. We wanted an early night and were feeling tired anyway, so asked them to try and find a takeaway meal to eat on board. They returned with the biggest pizza either of us had ever seen. It arrived on a special tray, in a rope cradle, suspended from Dave’s fully extended arm. It overhung the width of the saloon table by about six inches. Surprisingly, we managed to eat the whole thing at one sitting. It was absolutely, lip-smackingly, gorgeous.
David and I remained in Milazzo on the Sunday – St Francesco’s Day – and watched the festivities ashore from the grandstand of our wheelhouse roof. We could not leave till Monday anyway – the bunkering jetty was closed till then.
First thing in the morning we tried to get ourselves lined up for fuel. We found the berth impossible to get into. Finally we tied up to the main quay alongside the fuelling jetty, in very shallow water. We filled up, at three times what it cost in Greece. David went off to pay what we owed. There was much gesturing on both sides in the process of paying the bill. As he was leaving, David realised the surly attendant understood English very well and was just being stroppy. On showing that he had rumbled the Sicilian, he was treated to a mouthful of very English obscenities.
There was no such thing as a weather forecast, so we left without one. Once out of the bay, David set course for Sardinia. The most dramatic of the Aeolian islands, Stromboli, was out of our way. However, our route took us close to the islands of Vulcano, Lipari and Salina. We did not stop at any of these, however, because we were just beginning to enjoy a good sailing breeze. We contented ourselves with seeing steam rising from Lipari and smelling the sulphur from a distance. Some of the rock formations to the north-west were like giant sculptures rising from the sea. Light airs of around force two to three accompanied us all the way to Sardinia. One hundred and ninety miles from Sicily, we recorded having twelve land birds hitching a ride. We had experienced this before, but never a large number at once. Thirty miles further on we noted: ‘birds all over the boat’!
Land showed up on the radar at ten minutes to eight in the evening on 2nd May. Silhouette land formations were visible as the sun set, but there was nothing for the eye to see after it had gone down. A heavy mist descended with the dark. We had to use the radar to make our landfall as there was no sign of the lighthouses which should have been guiding us in.
We dropped anchor in Coda Cavallo at half past one in the morning on 3rd May. We awoke to find ourselves in a be
autiful emerald anchorage. There was little sign of habitation. Later that morning we were visited by three policemen acting as coastguards. They gave our passports a cursory inspection and went on their way. We raised anchor shortly after and moved on to Golfo Aranci to provision.
The next four days were spent bay-hopping along the east and north coast of Sardinia. We visited Cala di Volpe and Porto Cervo before passing through the southern channel of the Bonifacio Strait. This took us between mainland Sardinia and La Maddelena archipelago. The architecture on shore was very different to anything we had seen before in the Mediterranean. Our anchorages on the north coast included Porto Pollo, Isola Rossi and Cala Yacca. At that point, we tried to get a forecast for the onward passage. The best we got was from the supermarket owner, who predicted fine weather. We carried on to the Fornelli passage, where we anchored near Piana island for the night. This was to be our ‘jumping-off’ point for the crossing to the Balearics.
2. Islas Baleares
Wind. Not nearly enough, or a full blown gale. That is the lot of yotties sailing outside the trades. We had no immediate deadline to meet in Menorca, but the sooner we arrived there, the longer we would have to enjoy the island. Like most early mornings since Messina, 8th May was bright and breathless. As soon as breakfast had been cleared away, we completed the Fornelli passage between two tiny islands; Piana, and Asinara. The beacon system marking the route over the shallows was very good and we recorded a minimum depth of three metres. There was an adverse current of one to two knots.
The breeze that day got up to a force two– we were going so slowly we were actually overtaken by a bumblebee. The evening log shows we were still taking birds aboard, with at least four swallows and one other visitor seeking perches for the night. At midnight, five swallows were roosting in the rigging and a little brown job was snuggled into the port docking line. Rarely did any of our avian passengers live to see land again. By mid-afternoon on the 9th, we had lost all the swallows. The LBJ took off from the stern rail and was swooped upon by a gull.
We were within range of the lighthouses on Menorca by eight in the evening. We entered Puerto de Mahon in the moonlight at half past midnight. There was enough gentle breeze for us to ghost along the entire length of the fjord-like natural harbour under full sail. Passing the naval base on Isla Pinto near the far end of the inlet, we dropped sail and turned on the motor. There were not many spaces along the quay, especially one big enough for Tin Hau. We eventually found one and managed to tuck ourselves into it neatly and without fuss. We didn’t plan to stay long, just needing sufficient time to effect clearance, visit Poste Restante, fill water tanks, and buy fresh food.
Mahon was a huge harbour with many different parts, each like a small harbour in its own right. The main quay is an extension of the promenade. The yacht club and marina were based at the entrance to Cala Figuera. We wanted to move away from the hustle and bustle of town and anchor at Cala Teulera, between La Mola and Isla del Lazareto.
As we got ready to move, a stiff breeze sprang up, blowing us onto the quay. Tin Hau’s tonnage and windage made hard work of leaving such a berth. The direction of the wind in this instance dictated that we should spring out the stern. I had released the stern mooring lines in preparation and slipped a short spring line onto a bollard at the bow. David did his stuff at the wheel and got the stern out nicely. I slipped the bow line and signalled David to take her out. To my horror, instead of gliding out backwards, we dived forwards and hit a submerged obstruction! I looped a spring line over the bollard again, tied off and went forward to assess damage. I gulped and swallowed hard on seeing a multitude of bubbles rising from the stem area. I thought we must have been holed. Closer inspection revealed we had hit a concrete ramp several feet under. A chunk of concrete had broken off and this was where the bubbles were coming from. Poor David was dumbstruck. He had somehow confused ahead and astern on the engine controls. Relieved that we had sustained no obvious damage, we repeated the exercise correctly and pulled smoothly away from the quay.
The stiff breeze hampered our next job too. We motored down to Cala Figuera to take on fuel. We had no option but to berth alongside, though there was little room to manoeuvre. We got in without any hitches, but held up a number of trawlers when we left as we hadn’t the room to spring out. We had to tie two mooring lines together, fastening one end to the bitt on the fore-deck. David then walked the other end several hundred metres along the shore to a bollard. Our own muscle power was used to pull Tin Hau round. Quite hard work.
Cala Teulera was glorious. Five days in such a well sheltered anchorage was bliss. Sometimes we had the place to ourselves, at others there were one or two yachts for company. The local gin factory ran cruises around the harbour, and these occasionally intruded on our peaceful existence. One afternoon, while dozing in one of the hammocks, I awoke to hear ‘Jack-eye, the Captain’s Parrot’ pointing us out to her charterers. As the days went by, we acquired the most marvellous fictional history; pure invention on the part of the courier, Jacqui. It gave us, and those who knew us, a real giggle.
On Friday, 18th May, we raised anchor and sailed out of Mahon and up the east coast to Cala Mesquida. We had promised to be anchored off the village of Es Grau when David’s mum arrived to stay in her nearby villa. We had met up with St Combs on one of our dinghy forays into Mahon. The crew arranged to follow us to Cala Mesquida. It was pleasing to be able to raft up and spend some time with Alan and Gwen, whom we hadn’t seen since Larnaca. Alan kindly offered to take our sailing generator on ahead to Gibraltar for us. It had stopped working between Sardinia and Menorca. This would save us a bit of time later.
Margaret hailed us from the shore when she drove in. David rowed over to fetch her. We had prepared a seafood meal, on board, which she shared with us before we all went to spend the night in the villa. On our return in the morning, we discovered that our dinghy had been stolen. It turned out, in fact, to have been borrowed; used by some children to get from one side of the bay to the other. We were glad to have it back, though rather annoyed at this cavalier attitude towards other people’s property, which we were meeting for the first time. Margaret joined us aboard to return Tin Hau to Mahon. The mosquitoes of Mesquida were too much for comfort. The sail back was great, with a beam reach virtually all the way.
We had a week left in Menorca before we were due to meet Don Durham. He was flying in from South Africa to join us for the sail to Gibraltar via the Balearics. David used this time trying to locate a highly recommended Swiss doctor in yet another effort to do something about his back. José Jorge was finally run to earth in Villa Carlos. He turned out not to be a doctor at all, but a Swiss physiotherapist specialising in sports injuries. He did his level best to help David, giving him massage and exercises to relieve pain. When he heard what we were doing, he would take no payment for his work, but accepted an invitation to spend an afternoon aboard Tin Hau with his French wife Françoise. It was the first time we had ever come across land people who saw, without being told, the difficulties inherent in our lifestyle. They noticed we hadn’t a washing machine and offered to do our laundry for us. They saw the problem of provisioning without a motor vehicle and offered to take us to the out-of-town supermarket. They cottoned onto the fact that we had no hot water or bath and insisted that David, at least, should have a good hot soak at their home prior to a thorough massage.
Don and his wife arrived on 27th May. Audrey was not a sailor. After a couple of nights aboard she was going on to England by plane. José and Françoise had arranged a farewell fondue party for us on the night of the 28th. We had an unforgettable evening with these incredibly warm, hospitable people. They did not stop at that, either. José had, supposedly, been helping David to find a pair of pearl earrings to match my necklace. This was to have been a birthday present from David. When it came down to it, David was not allowed to buy them. The Jorges did that and presented them to me as an early birthday-cum-parting gift. Their generosity was overwhelming. It wa
s with heavy hearts that we waved farewell to them from the deck of Tin Hau as we sailed by Punta de St Carlos. We sailed south, then altered course to the south-west to pass between the main island and Illa de L’Aire. Our first stop on the south coast was at Binibeca.
We had given ourselves a month to make the passage from Mahon to Gibraltar. This would not allow extensive exploring, but would give a taste of each of the Balearic islands and a little of the Spanish mainland coast. We were sailing south about Menorca. A gentle north-easterly enabled us to cruise close to the shore. We made a number of stops, visiting most of the tiny coves en route to Cala Turqueta. The eastern part of this coast was quite steep-to and each of the coves was surrounded by high ground. Cala Covas, with its prehistoric caves occupied by modern cave dwellers, was very beautiful. Don was fascinated by these hippy-like people. Other coves also had occupied caves, but not on the scale that existed here.
After a night anchored in Cala Turqueta, we made a leisurely start from Menorca with a light following wind. Nine and a quarter hours later, we were anchored at Cala de San Geroni on Mallorca. We had little sleep that night in the increasingly rolly anchorage. There was nowhere more suitable to go, so we stayed put till dawn. The place we were aiming for was Porto Colom, about eighteen miles south-south-west. We didn’t call at any of the places in between, most of them offering no more shelter than San Geroni. A lot of the visible development along that coast was quite hideous to our eyes. Mostly multi-storey buildings with little to recommend them that we could see. Porto Colom was quite built-up, but still retained a native charm.
On 2nd June we left Porto Colom and sailed to Cabrera island just off the southern tip of Mallorca. We were having such a good sail that we prolonged it by circumnavigating the island before dropping the hook in the main harbour. There were more boats at anchor than we had seen for a while. We had to move when a traditional Spanish boat, under charter, anchored too close and threatened to cause problems in the night.
Cutting the Dragon's Tail Page 35