When we first set out we kept a three-hour watch but found that if the person getting up and into warm clothing was slow off the mark, the one retiring sometimes got only two-and-a-half hours’ rest. So we tried a four-hour watch, which was better for the person sleeping, but proved too long for the person on watch. So now we do three-and-a-half, using the half hour as a change-over period.
I take the first one, from 8.30pm until midnight. At 9pm there is a stunning orange sky as a huge golden sun changes to red just before it sinks. By eleven the sky is ablaze with stars. An enormous red moon appears. As it rises it turns deep yellow with pink edges then gradually fades to palest gold. I can see its craters clearly.
I see no other boats all night, although on David’s watch there is one, a tanker, and we are on a collision course with it. Only one other vessel in ten hours in a whole sea and we are on a collision course with it. This is not, of course, surprising when you think about it. Set the GPS to get you from point A to point B by the most direct route and inevitably anyone travelling in the opposite direction will be on the same course as you. This is one of the reasons why you keep a watch.
Potential collisions apart, I wonder sometimes whether I ever really looked at things before. On land there are so many distractions. Alone on an empty sea the eye looks longer and with a more concentrated gaze at whatever turns up. The very absence of stimuli much of the time makes an appearance, when it does come, so much more vivid: whether it is unexpected, like the sudden arrival of turtles; or anticipated, like the return of the sun after a dark night.
Low cloud on the eastern horizon obscures the sun’s rise next morning. When it does begin to force its way through, its radiance is fragmented as if red-hot embers are burning holes in the cloud. When it does finally emerge, it changes from deepest red to butter yellow and hangs above our port bow. At the same time, a gauzy moon glows dull silver over our starboard quarter while Venus, the last star left in the sky, descends into the sea.
By 9.30 we are far enough into Italian waters to tune in to Channel 68 on the VHF and hear the Italian weather forecast. It will be a great relief to be able to get a forecast on demand, despite the fact that this first one bears no relation whatsoever to present conditions nor to those we are destined to encounter in a few hours’ time; but then, the Italian authorities cannot be held responsible for the unpredictability of this summer’s weather.
The Italian weather broadcasting system provides a 24-hour continuous forecast alternately in Italian and in English and delivered in such a way that it is audible even in difficult conditions. Despite being computerised for clarity and consistency, the result is a rich baritone voice with overtones of warm brandy and cigar smoke that resonates through the VHF speaker, slowly and distinctly, so that even the Italian words are easily identifiable to an English ear. There is no verbiage to clutter up the vital core information either, or to cause confusion as to actual meaning. But if you should miss anything, all you have to do is stay tuned and the bit you missed will ultimately come round again. If you are listening in English you will of course have to wait for the Italian version to pass, but since the broadcast follows a very simple formula which is the same in both languages, with a brief jaunt through the meteorological pages of the Cruising Association’s invaluable Yachtsman’s Ten Language Dictionary you can usually get the bit of the broadcast you want from the Italian part without waiting for the English to come round again.
The simple formula consists of a category such as visibility (visibilita), wind (vento) or sea state (mare) followed by a description such as fair (discreto), decreasing (diminuzione) or slight (poco mosso). It is not only supremely practical but also quite beautiful. Each Italian word, with its rolling Rs and every syllable given due weight, becomes a series of musical notes played on a cello. I am captivated.
‘I’ve already got the forecast,’ David will call from the cockpit as I tune in to Channel 68 yet again. And I sink back into the cushions, close my eyes and sigh as the slow, dark, fruity voice transforms a mundane shipping forecast into rhythmic, hypnotic sound. Visibilita: discreto. Vento: diminuzione. Mare: poco mosso. Lentamente (slowly). Sereno (clear sky). Nuvoloso. I particularly like the pulsating roundness of nuvoloso, even if it does mean ‘cloudy’.
At 11.30am we spot what initially looks like a group of large birds on the water ahead of us flapping their wings. It is noteworthy because in nearly 24 hours we have seen no birds at all. As we get closer it becomes apparent that they are fins. It is a family of bottlenose dolphins and they come leaping to our bow like school kids at a new prospect in the playground. There are eight of them, although two stand out because one is larger and paler than the rest and the other smaller and darker. While the remainder of the group take turns to swim ahead of our bows or dive under them, these two embark on some synchronised swimming between our hulls. Then they go freestyle and arc, dive, roll over each other and dodge back and forth between the inside and outside of the hulls. Having exhausted their repertoire, and like the turtles of the previous day, they set off in a westerly direction towards Menorca.
Within an hour there are even more turtles trundling down our hulls than yesterday, all heading west, with David grumbling that they do not seem to understand the International Collision Avoidance Regulations about passing port-to-port. Mainland Italy has a reputation among visiting yachtsmen for officious officials, homicidal fishermen and men with violin cases demanding money with menace for a brief stop at a supposedly-free public quay. Someone who sailed Italy regularly explained the last-mentioned thus: the local mafia, he said, ‘sells’ a section of the dock and the ‘buyer’ makes as much money out of it from visiting boats as he can. But none of that can explain why its marine life appears to be emigrating to Spain.
17
The Sinis Peninsula
After Sicily, Sardinia is the largest island in the Mediterranean. Although Italian, Sardinia is quite different from mainland Italy thanks to its geographical position – halfway between Europe and Africa – and the various civilisations which have left their mark on it. The earliest known was a native culture called Nuraghic, after the thousands of nuraghe, or stone constructions built between 1500 and 500BC for housing the living and the dead, which are to be found all over the island. The Phoenicians traded and settled here. The Carthaginians, whose capital lay only 150 miles away on the North African coast near modern-day Tunis, then settled on the island until overwhelmed by the Romans in 176BC with a massive loss of life among the islanders.
After the fall of Rome in the 5th century AD, a combination of barbarian incursions, malaria and five centuries of Muslim raids continued to reduce the island’s population and even today it still has little in the way of large cities or heavy industry. The medieval city-states of Pisa and Genoa fought over parts of it, while in 1297 Pope Boniface VIII gave all of it to Spain in exchange for abandoning its claims to Sicily. Following the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–20), Sardinia was ceded first to Austria and then to the Duke of Savoy. Since the Unification of Italy, in 1861, the island has been part of Italy.
We arrive on its eastern side at mid-afternoon, 32 hours after leaving Menorca, and settle in the small exposed anchorage of Capo San Marco off the Sinis Peninsula. The water is incredibly clear and the line of our anchor chain is visible in the sand along its entire length four metres below us. Our thermometer says 94°F (34°C). It is of the old-fashioned type with a glass phial of red liquid and it lies in the shady recesses of a cockpit cubby-hole. It is an English one and accordingly only goes up to 115°F (46°C) on the principle that human life would become extinct beyond that anyway.
Some small pleasure-boat owners and a couple of divers come out to have a look at us. Sardinians do it differently from the Spanish. The latter will observe and discuss your boat among themselves but not make eye contact unless you initiate it. Sardinians look directly at you, and when you smile, their faces light up and they wave and it all becomes very sociable. Unless, of cour
se, they are wearing uniforms.
The senior of the two Carabinieri officers on the boat that arrives alongside ours rests his hand on the black leather holster on his right hip. ‘You have one of these?’
‘No!’ says David.
He’s never been asked about guns before. Not even during his multiple-interrogation by Portuguese customs, police, port authority and marina personnel.
‘A Very pistol?’ the man persists, convinced we must have something resembling a weapon.
‘No,’ says David. ‘Only hand-held flares.’
Unconvinced, the officer carries our ship’s papers, passports and insurance certificate below to record their details. His subordinate holds their green and white motor launch steady against Voyager and stares over our heads. David sighs. Italian bureaucracy is notorious and at such times there is always the fear that if an official gets it into his head that you have something illegal on board – or simply doesn’t like the look of you – he can impound your boat and take it apart. Even drilling holes in all the bulkheads to look for hidden compartments is not unknown.
In the longueur that follows, my glance falls on the copy of a tourist guide to Italy that I have been reading. Both the tourist guide and our cruising guide mention Tharros, the remains of a city variously described as Phoenician, Carthaginian or Punic Roman. I very much want to see it but neither book gives its exact location, nor is it marked on our chart. In the present heat I do not have the energy to waste wandering miles in the wrong direction through deserted hills.
I pick up the guide, left open at the page with Tharros mentioned on it and look across at David. ‘Shall I ask him?’ I say.
‘If you like,’ David replies, without enthusiasm.
‘Signore …’ I venture. I’m always terrified of mispronouncing that final vowel and unwittingly calling an Italian man ‘Madam’. The two words are so dangerously alike and in the present circumstances such a slip could be disastrous. ‘Signore… Tharros, per piacere. Is it far?’ I am keeping to the bare essentials, albeit politely.
He stops scrutinising the sky and lowers his head slowly until his eyes are level with mine. I attribute his lack of response to my faulty pronunciation. I decide to cut to the barest essential of all.
‘Tharros?’ I repeat, politely.
Somewhere behind his very dark glasses I think he may have blinked. I hold the book towards him, open at the relevant page. He makes no move to take it. I point to the word, standing out in bold letters, adding helpfully, ‘Phoenician.’
He glances at the page for a nanosecond then contemplates me again.
‘Tarros,’ he corrects, dropping the ‘h’. Then, looking over the top of his sunglasses with utter contempt, he snaps, ‘Carthaginian!’
The other officer re-emerges and returns our documents. His demeanour has changed. Whether our passports have reassured him that married fifty-somethings are unlikely drug smugglers, or our insurance certificate has confirmed that we are not going to be a financial liability we shall never know. Maybe he is simply pleased at our interest in his heritage for he points east and says, ‘About a mile.’
We thank him. He turns away but as his partner revs their engine he hesitates and looks back.
‘You stay here?’ he asks, indicating the little bay and beach.
‘Ye-es?’ says David, expecting to be told an overnight stay is not allowed.
‘Next bay,’ he says. ‘Better.’
And so it turns out.
Before we can set off for it, however, a second green and white power boat with two officials in it heads towards us. This one says Guardia Civil on the side. David, head first into our big stern locker looking for something, has his back towards it.
‘David,’ I say, ‘who’s top dog in Italian officialdom: Carabinieri or Guardia Civil?’
Before he can answer, a hand clamps onto our rail and another pair of very dark sunglasses focus on me. The officer behind them is young and very cocky. I can already see the sawdust rising as an electric drill grinds its way through my few cherished bits of polished wood panelling.
‘Peppers!’ he snaps in sharp, Italian-inflected English.
His boat is smaller and his uniform less impressive than his predecessor, so I take a punt.
‘OK,’ I say, rising from my seat. ‘But the Carabinieri had them not ten minutes ago.’
His hand flies from our rail as if it has suddenly become red-hot.
I have reached the companionway doors by now. ‘I’ll get them.’
‘No!’ he says, backing away and waving a restraining hand. ‘No, no. Is okay. S’okay. Bi-bi.’
Their boat roars away. David backs out from the stern locker and straightens up. ‘Carabinieri,’ he says.
Fortunately, the only other uniform we encounter during our stay in Sardinia is on the public quay at the island’s capital, Cagliari. Immaculate, epauletted and very formal in demeanour, we assume they are port authority officials and nod respectfully whenever they stroll past inspecting the boats. Only just before we leave will we discover that they are car park attendants.
The bay just around the headland which the Carabinieri officer has recommended turns out to be a much more sheltered anchorage than our initial one. It is also Tharros. We have a perfect view of it from our cockpit. The ruined city tumbles down a low hill to the water’s edge: citadel, public baths, houses, roads, temple and amphitheatre.
The Sinis Peninsula had been settled by the Phoenicians around 800BC. Tharros was later occupied and developed by refugees from Carthage fleeing Rome’s destruction of their own city during the Punic Wars which took place between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. The term Punic comes from a Latin word meaning Carthaginian but with reference to its Phoenician ancestry.
Tharros was ultimately absorbed into the Roman Empire just as surely as Carthage had been and the Romans expanded the city, adding a temple and a theatre. The site’s most prominent feature now is two Corinthian columns which is all that remains standing of the Roman temple, built around the first century BC.
You get ashore at the adjacent village of San Giovanni di Sinis. After tying up the dinghy at a tiny wooden jetty, almost hidden among the reeds, the first dwellings you see are made from rushes; walls, roofs, everything. Once fishermen’s houses, they are now holiday homes. The village itself has a church dating from the fifth century. It is simple, cruciform, domed and windowless. It is blissfully cool inside and even on this witheringly hot day manages to smell slightly of damp. The sunlight streaming through its doorway illuminates the unadorned walls, the dome of its small interior and a young priest on his knees before the altar. He is wearing a white baseball cap back-to-front and his cassock tucked up into his belt as he beavers away with a dustpan and brush. The rising dust particles form a shimmering aureole around his head. Wednesday is cleaning day.
The village also contains several bars, a public telephone and a vast quantity of flies – a persistent problem with reed beds – but no shop. We have a cold beer at a bar on the beach. Several mothers and young children are running along the sand oblivious of the blistering heat. Our waitress appears to be in the later stages of exhaustion.
In the evening, after dinner, we sit in our cockpit and reflect that where we are anchored the Phoenicians, some of the ancient world’s greatest sailors, had anchored their ships. Our steel anchor and chain is lying on the seabed where their stone and rope anchors once lay. Voyager must have constantly rested where the boats of ancient peoples once lay. But on this glorious evening, with an enormous red sun setting behind the old city’s two Corinthian columns, we are more sensible of all the lives that have gone before us than at any time before or since.
18
Torre Grande
Next morning the information on Navtex is varied and plentiful. A Swedish boat is overdue between Alicante and Toulon; there is an oceanographic survey in the Adriatic; a gunnery exercise on the Azores coast; a dead black and white cow adrift off Corsica; and a light-buoy is op
erating on reduced power in the Dover Strait. For Sardinia, however, there is nothing, least of all a weather forecast.
Monaco Radio gives its English version only in the mornings and is often so fast and guttural that it is little more intelligible than the French. It is also not broadcast until 9am, which is too late in the day if you want to make a long passage. However, on VHF Channel 68 we have the wonderful, rolling 24-hours-a-day forecast in English and Italian, with that sonorous baritone voice speaking each word slowly and distinctly so that even with major static it is still audible.
Until I went sailing I thought one weather forecast said it all. In reality, it is only someone’s interpretation of the raw data available. Listening to more than one can sometimes be confusing but more often than not you get a better picture of what is happening over time.
We get a VHF forecast for moderate breezes from an easterly direction and set out at seven o’clock for Carloforte, the only town on the Isola di San Pietro, an island lying off the south-western tip of Sardinia and named, like so many places where fishing is or was the major industry, after St Peter the patron saint of fishermen. It is a beautiful sunny day and promises a good sail. However, by 8am the moderate breezes have become strong ones and in no time they reach near gale force. The journey to Carloforte will take about nine hours and it seems foolhardy to continue in a wind which is rapidly approaching gale force. It is also extremely uncomfortable with the sea banging against our beam. The sensible thing to do, we decide, is turn back and head for somewhere sheltered.
Turtles in Our Wake Page 7