Trials and tribulations

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<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Day 1. Tue 31 Jul 2012

Well not exactly Day 1 as we spent that day travelling, or the next as that was spent sorting out various mechanical issues, and the next day too, and the one after that – you kinda get the picture. Anyway I suppose today is <em style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">sailing Day 1. We left Bozburun at about 1200 and headed west...ish. Expecting heavy winds and lee-rails under all started well. A steady 15 knots and Fabiola was in her element. 6.5 knots upwind and full main and genoa in flat seas – perfect. The wind dropped at around 1530 we find ourselves heading into a Turkish anchorage. Greek and Turkish islands are smattered around each other with some being Greek and some Turkish – it all stems from the divisions created by the Treaty of Versailles. We are cleared off the Turkish books anyway so we will be avoiding the customs and immigration as we head into Kargi Koyu (with various dots above the vowels!).

<strong style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;">Day 2. Wed 01 Aug 2012

Today we suffered another setback. The generator worked at first touch of the button but when it came to starting the watermaker all came unstuck when water started leaking from a high pressure joint. It requires a slightly difficult Turkish engineer to come out to see us having been responsible for the servicing of it only 4 days ago. The engineer doesn’t believe he’s responsible – a lot can happen in 4 days when we haven’t even used it since he “serviced” it. Dad is unhappy and we are similarly disappointed. The mileage needs to be eaten into and we have not yet got off the Turkish mainland. We need to get to Sardinia not later than 31 Aug and it is looking like a couple of long sails are needed. Dad also gave us a couple of horror stories of those that have fallen foul of the Straits of Messina (between Italy and Sicily) and talks of the strength of the Meltemi (strong northerly winds that blow during the month of August) to instil fear. It’s not want you want to hear. People always remember the stories of horrendous weather and seldom the ones that pass without incident!

In the meantime we have plotted out a path to Crete to take in Astapalai and Santorini. The latter likely to be pretty striking with its rumours of being the lost city of Atlantis and the other being the more obvious, yet nonetheless amazing, story of an island that literally blew it’s top. After that an overnight 70-mile sail to Crete and Dad’s departure. At this stage this is a pretty sobering thought as there is still much to learn about the boat’s technical aspects that are currently dictating our lives. The sailing is manageable – albeit potentially tiring but without essential kit working properly we will not be able to live from anchorages – being reliant on the watermaker and the generator and not slave to costly marinas.

To compound the issue of issues we now realise that we need Lisa’s computer to take on a chartplotting and gathering data from the wireless systems on board. Hence we are now looking at PC / iPad options to do all this. I hope these are just all small teething problems which we will break through over the next few days. One of these important capabilities is the AIS (Automatic Identification System) which acts a little like radar detecting boats nearby, their name and a calling frequency if they need to be contacted. This is a stipulation from the ARC and is something we must be able to display as working to the inspectors when they visit in the Canaries.

Hopefully the watermaker will be fixed by the Turks (in front of me as I type) and we can get on with encountering the next drama! Out for now.

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