Greek Odyssey Episode 2.
Saturday 24 August: We rose at 06:00 to prepare the boat for sea. The GPS deduced we were in Cagliari, things looked promising. I set a course for Sicily, due east into the rising sun. In a sea breeze on the flybridge, we watched Sardinia shrinking into the distance.
“Barry, didn’t you think there was something unusual about that place?”.
“Unusual, no, why?”.
“Well, we went sail-about around the docks, then tied up, you went ashore to change money and then off again for the fuel man. After that, I went off had a beer, bought a pizza and returned on the bike in the dark”.
“What’s strange about that?”.
“What about customs, passports, entry permits, ship’s papers, port fees? We didn’t even have an Italian courtesy flag”.
Barry thought for a moment.
“Just nice people I suppose”.
We now had 670Km before we reached the Straits of Messina and entered the Ionian Sea. The day passed without incident, and again I found it strange that we saw no other shipping except a high-speed ferry that crossed our path travelling south on route from Napoli to Palermo.
Sunday: I took my watch early in the dark hours of Sunday morning while sailing through the Lipari Islands. The night sky was filled with bright stars, but an eerie, acrid, sulphurous mist hung close to the surface of the sea. On our starboard bow was the silhouette of a large island with twinkling lights around its base. Suddenly, there was a flash that lit the night with sparks that shot skyward from the island.
“The volcano Stromboli, I could see it for almost the whole of my watch. They call it the lighthouse of the Mediterranean” said Barry.
“And people live on it!” I replied.
We plotted our position on the chart and Barry went to bed, leaving me alone to watch as we slowly distanced ourselves from Stromboli. We sailed on undisturbed until the monotone voice of the GPS instructed us to turn south towards the straits of Messina.
We approached the straits at midnight, shore lights danced across the black water towards us from both sides now, and we felt vulnerable in our little boat among the big ships funneling into the restricted channel.
Monday: Identifying the entrance in the dark was challenging. We tried our antiquated radar, but in the confined space, the reflections were too confusing to interpret, but it did show a large ship ahead of us. Taking a chance that the ship was going through the straits and not into Messina, we stuck directly behind the bright blip on the screen. I didn’t go to bed as there was a hint of dawn in the sky. The day arrived cloudy and sombre, the land on either side passed us grey and uninviting. Our guide during the night had been a large tanker that, now free of the confines of the straits, began to outpace us. We made a course correction to avoid a ferry crossing the shipping lane at right angles heading for Sicily, and then threaded our way through scores of small open boats, line fishing for the morning catch.
Once into open water, Barry went to bed, leaving me on watch. Visibility was poor, so I continually checked the radar. Occasionally, I noticed a faint blip from ahead, it didn’t appear on every sweep of the radar, but it came enough times to know it wasn’t electrical noise, and it was closing fast. Even with binoculars, I couldn’t see anything, then the screen showed more blips spread out in a line behind the ghost echo.
“Barry, get up here quick” I shouted.
As Barry came onto the bridge, the grey conning tower of a submarine passed a few hundred metres to our port, followed on our starboard side by a line of five battle grey US destroyers and a supply ship. Travelling at high speed, they were gone in minutes, and we were left alone on the open sea.
We were out of fresh water, so we headed for Reggio di Calabria where we inadvertently sailed into the restricted military area. This incursion upset an Italian marine drinking coffee in a café above the marina; by the time he came down, shouting and waving a submachine gun about, we were securely tied up against a Marina Militare fast motor torpedo boat. Barry, a military man himself, attempted to pacify the situation with softly spoken abuse; when he was satisfied he had ruined the man’s morning, he said.
“Let’s get out of here, he should be on a charge anyway for swanning off for a coffee”.
We filled up with water and by 11:00 we were back at sea heading for Capo Rizzuto.
By the evening, after running close to the eastern coast of Italy, we entered the Gulf of Taranto where we made our final long leg course change and turned east, across the blue Ionian Sea, towards Greece. The weather remained calm, and apart from encountering one ship and a yacht, there were no incidents.
Tuesday: The GPS made one more attempt to sabotage the trip by demanding we return to Chicago, we were too close to our destination for it to worry us, and so despite its protestations we switched it off. At 15:00 we could see the coast of Corfu. By early evening we rounded the southern tip of the island, entered the channel separating it from the Greek mainland and passed Kavos on the last 35Km of our 1,700Km odyssey.
We decided to tidy up the boat before presenting it to the owner, so we stopped and checked the engines. The fuel tanks were almost empty, but we figured we had enough to reach the city of Corfu, in any event, we had no choice as there was nowhere close to refuel. We cleaned up the boat, and before pressing on, with one person onboard at all times, we each had a swim in the sea. It was in failing evening light that we restarted the engines and continued on at reduced speed to conserve our meagre fuel supply. The green, olive tree clad rocky slopes of the island slipped past us, and we slowly drifted into night. Scattered shore lights began to sparkle into life against the blackness, and at about 23:00, we saw the illuminated outline of Corfu ahead of us. All we had to do now was find the marina, and then we could get a good nights sleep. That proved to be overly optimistic.
We came in close to shore, but at the height of the tourist season, Corfu was ablaze with lights from bars, restaurants, flashing discotheques and streams of traffic cruising the marine drive. We sailed up and down searching for the red and green lights of the marina entrance, but the shore lights created total confusion. At our final destination, we were hopelessly lost. Barry took to the flybridge, and I stayed below reading the depth sounder and shouting out the numbers as we were in very shallow water. “Seven, six, four. Stop! reverse, reverse.”
“I thought I saw boats” shouted Barry.
To our right was a row of pedalos parked on a beach, and ahead was a bar terrace with a few old Greek men sipping ouzo, discussing our unconventional approach for a quick drink.
We reversed out into deeper water, and that’s when the engines cut out.
“Well, that’s it. We might as well drop anchor and stay here until daylight” said Barry.
Shortly after dropping anchor, the boat rocked violently as a black freighter slid past us in the darkness. We were anchored up in the main shipping lane to Corfu’s commercial harbour.
We lifted the floor panels, there was a small amount of fuel in the gauge glass that had drained in from the filters.
“Look.” I said, “The GPS is accurate to a few metres if I program in the coordinates of the marina entrance from the chart, and we have enough fuel for a few more miles, then it should be able to take us in”.
The choice was simple, be run down by a freighter or put our lives in the hands of the silicon chimp! We chose the latter. The delinquent GPS was reinstated, given time to take up a satellite fix and programmed with its final waypoint to the marina entrance. With the engines sucking the last dregs of fuel from the gauge glass, we made our way into the night, blindly following the instructions of the GPS. In ten minutes, to our relief, the GPS uttered the unemotional message “Waypoint arrival”, and we sailed through the entrance of Corfu marina.