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Published: July 15th 2008
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I love seeing land!!
Sunset over the Italian coast. I am incredibly exhausted!!!! I have never experienced anything like this two day, two night passage to Italy.
We left Ithaca Friday morning around 9am, and planned on reaching Reggio Calabria, Italy, on Sunday morning around 10 or 11.
Our first day and night were uneventful. It was just trying to get into the swing of things. Learning the responsibilities of being on watch, how to use the navigation equipment, how to fill out the log book, etc…
Our watch schedule as follows-
12pm-2pm-Kaela
2pm-4pm-Randi Jo
4pm-6pm-Lois
6pm-9pm- Kaela and Gunter
9pm-12am- Lois and Randi Jo
12am-3am- Kaela and Gunter
3am-6am- Lois and Randi Jo
6am-9am- Kaela and Gunter
9am-12pm- Lois and Randi Jo
And then the cycle repeats itself. I must say that it is very grueling to only sleep in three hour chunks. And you have to be alert when on watch to make sure we are on course for one, but also to make sure we don’t collide with any other boats. This was not too much of a problem the first night as we were not anywhere near land and traffic was very minimal. So few boats in fact that you almost wish you would
Me at the bow
with Sicily in the background, nearing the end of our passage see one, and when you do they automatically become “our friend” over there.
So the first day and night were fine, and went smoothly, so did the second day. But as we were approaching the coast of Italy Saturday evening, traffic increased quite a bit, fishing boats, sailing vessels, cargo ships, ferries, anything and everything. It was lovely to see the Italian coast at sunset though, very beautiful.
Gunter and I went on watch Saturday night at 12, so technically Sunday morning, but whatever. Lois and Randi Jo said there had been a large amount of traffic and had to so we needed to be very cautious.
Around 2am, something felt funny, and then we looked at the speed and saw it had decreased from 5 knots to 1, then to 0. We were dead in the water, in the middle of the night. Gunter checked some dials and what not; then we looked over the starboard side of the boat.
We were stuck in a fishing net!!!!!!!! It was stuck on the dagger board, and so Gunter raised it up, it didn’t come loose. Then we couldn’t get the dagger board to go back down, the net had somehow got wedged into it, which I must say is a very difficult thing to do and not a kind thing to do. Lois woke up from all our commotion and we all tried forcing the board down and lifting the net up with the boat hook, and some other things that I can’t remember because I was so tired. The frustrating thing was that the net was not marked by the usual blinking lights/flags, and therefore we had no chance of avoiding it. Lois tried radioing for help but no fishing boats came to cut the net loose, so our only other option was to wait until morning then dive down and cut the net ourselves.
Around this time in our thinking, Randi Jo came up on deck from sleeping because I think it was around the time for her to go on watch, so around 3am. Gunter decided we should try to force the dagger board down one last time before leaving it until morning. No one wanted to wait until morning because we still would have had to stay up on watch all night to make sure we didn’t drift over the net even more or towards land either.
We all grabbed the dagger board, prayed that it would go down, and after some heaving, pulling and pushing, it budged a little, and then went down. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We couldn’t believe it, it was a direct answer to prayer.
We were still stuck in the net however, but after some skillful maneuvering we eventually pulled free. Finally!!!!
Now that we finally had a chance to look up from the water, we saw that we were basically surrounded by over 20 fishing boats, which meant more fishing nets, possibly unmarked also.
Gunter Hooked up a search light, which I held at the front of the boat to scan the water, and Randi Jo and I had to keep a look out for more nets. It was a good thing too, because we had to yell, “STOP,” three times as we were about to run into another net. It was so frustrating!!!!!!!!! I think we all have more compassion for fish now, because we felt like a giant fish, trapped in this maze of nets, unable to find a way out.
Finally, after what felt like years we managed to slowly maneuver away from the area. By the time it was all over and done with it was somewhere around 4:30 am, an hour and a half past my watch time, but in that kind of situation schedules go out the window.
I have never been in such a stressful situation before in my life. The tension, stress, adrenaline rush, it was crazy!!! (But I kind of had fun too, which sounds awful, but it was a pretty exciting).
I fell on the bed and slept, and then woke up again at 6am for our 6am-9am watch. At that point it wasn’t exciting anymore, I was dead tired!!!
After such and interesting night we arrived today in Reggio to find out there was no room in the marina, so we had to dock in the commercial harbor. (Not very nice, Gunter was pretty bummed).
We thought we were going to spend more time in Reggio, but since it isn’t very agreeable we are leaving in the morning for Tropea, a city up the coast on the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The one nice thing about Reggio, the redeeming quality, is that the two Coast Guard guys who helped us dock have been very friendly and helpful and have come and checked on us several times to make sure everything is ok, and they even brought us a weather bulletin for tomorrow. They are very nice young men and were a very good introduction to the Italian people.
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