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Published: September 14th 2007
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Sun Up In the Med
On route to teh Elba Islands to collect Mark and Elizabeth While it was still dark out the owner Mark & Elizabeth took their dog Dante for his morning constitution, Andy stumbled into the shower laterally at 06:15 he had stayed out on the dock with other cursers until the wee hours of the morning drinking wine, beer and I am sure what ever was going free on the dock. I rolled over in my bunk it felt like I had slept for less than 10 hours in the last 48, which in retrospect was still 50% more than Andy; I was interested to see how the morning would go.
I showered and dressed in my new white Windsong Tee and blue shorts the crew would wear for the time the owners were on board, then it would be board shorts and welcome to Florida vests. Andy was slicing fresh fruit and laying out cereal etc in the main salon for the owners return from their walk, I grabbed a cup of decaf coffee and went for a walk down the dock to take a few photographs and get at least one short glimpse of the Island before leaving
It was a brisk morning especially by the water you know the way the wind is cooled by an additional 15 degrees as its chilled while barely touching the surface with a soft kiss made visible by the tiniest of ripples driven towards you. It really was a beautiful Island one worthy of at least a weeks worth of exploration, there were mountains to climb, historic landmarks to visit and several interesting taverns lining the dock front that were surly worthy of a visit. I walked the full length of the bulkhead peering out over the ocean between two giant rocks that were worn smooth by the many thousands of feet that had climbed over on route to he rocky beach to fish or swim or to share simple food and a bottle of local wine, it brought a smile to my face as I thought about the Monks who had fallen from grace hundreds of years earlier, if only walls or in this case rocks could talk.
I returned back to the boat to see how things were progressing, breakfast had been consumed and coffee was being prepared so Mark & Elizabeth could retire to the cockpit and await our departure, I took another cup of decaf and went to the marina office to collect our boat papers pay the marina bill and get the show on the road.
Now did I mention that we had NO weather on board, you know weather forecasts either via the SSB of the VHF or in desperation the internet, now not to say that the electronics onboard were sophisticated, they are extremely, in fact at last reckoning there had been some $75,000.00 yes I did say seventy five thousand dolor’s spent on the communications for the sole purpose of being able to download weather gribs directly over the electronic maptek charts using a software program specifically designed for such a task called MaxSea.
The basic idea behind the program was using the Chopper whether navigator in MaxSea you could select a oceanographic grib of area of ocean which you could then use a email management program such as Microsoft outlook express to send the request by email via a very expensive global satellite telephone known as a NERA, once the grib request had been received within say 5 minutes a wind direction and wave chart such as NOAA creates for free will be emailed back to you so you can open it and have it overlay your electronic chart so to speak WOW what a concept rather like getting a free NOAA download shoeing long and lat and manually transferring the information in 10 minutes all for FREE!!!. It became obvious very early in the setting up of this state of the art weather wonder some slick salesman Had made a handsome commission, unfortunately the bastard was not here to sort out all of its glitches, no that special project was assigned to yours truly.
Our planned sail that day was a 30 mile sail firstly around the Island so they could observe its beauty from all angles and apparently store it forever in their memory as there was no camera anywhere in site, then on to Corsica, that is the very northern most tip of Corsica and more specifically the small harbor town of Macannagio. We rounded the Island and set a course for Macannagio some 25 miles further, a three hour sail.
The local names for Gales depend upon direction and of course area for example a storm blowing out of the south over the southern section of Italy is known as a Sirocco because it forms in Africa and blows like hell for two to three days and is almost a sandstorm at sea. There again a system that forms over the Italian Alps and blows out of the North east over the Northern part of Italy is known as a Tamontana and so on, the system we will focus on of this story is called a Mistral formed in the French Pironise it blows at up to 50 knots out of the North West and can also last for several days. So now you are educated in the local nomenclature for Gale you really know what it is, a localized storm system that will keep you out of a protected harbor if you don’t have enough engine HP to force your way in all without leaving a ripple on the water, pretty interesting.
So lets all guess what system was waiting for us once we were about two miles off the coats of Corsica, that’s right a Mistral, driving over the spit of land we had chosen as a convenient stepping stone to round the northern most point of the Island and head south down the west side stopping at several places of interest while leisurely meandering our way down to Sardinia and connecting flights back to the US. This meant we would have three weeks to take the boat to Greece before Mark & Elizabeth would rejoin Windsong.
And so on to Bonafacio...................
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