Crossing the Med - bliss to upwind blast.

Croatia to Spain- how far do you think? Since starting to cross Oceans I had always thought of the Mediterranean as quiet cushy sailing, short distances, nice sheltered bays, great food, and varied cultures to discover. Greece and Croatia certainly lived up to expectations.

It wasn’t until I started to measure how far we had to track westbound to get to Spain / Gibraltar it hit home that the Med is rather large and there are no reliable trade winds to aid this passage – Croatia to Spain via northern Italy … 1600 miles!.

Our last week In Croatia was a fun-packed week with Johns’s Sister and family ( the Hutton Penman – hence forth known as the HPs). Thanks to some unusual weather their three-hour flight from London to Zadar turned into a 24-hour travel challenge as Ryanair dropped them off in the middle of the night in Zagreb and left them to their own devices to find their way to their planned destination.

Rather frazzled wet and hungry they climbed aboard Joline for some R&R. Within 24 hours it was fabulous to see a family soaking up clear waters, and sun enjoying the to get a feel benefits of catamaran life. The HPs boys are very competitive sailors and with a Feva and Aero junior world champion on board, it was great to see them put Joline through her paces and even better to see they were impressed by our old lady.

Whoever was at the helm was constantly provided feedback on their performance, but it was Dad that stole the day with an exemplary beat to windward, smiling from ear to ear and looking really relaxed as he clawed to windward.

After dropping off the HPs it was time to head west. As anyone knows who sails in the med – you have to choose your weather. We were lucky enough to have a good window of opportunity to get to Sicily, a few hours of motoring, and then the sails were hoisted and we were off for a great sail. Two days later we took the sails down at 3 am in the morning anchoring off the port of Catania. Mid-morning we were woken by some impressive rocking and we could not get into the shelter of the harbor soon enough.

The marina was chock a block, but thankfully the local club manager Sc…. was determined to find us a spot. Four of his mates came to help us maneuver into a tricky but very cozy sheltered spot next to the marina office. A really friendly and helpful team.

We had popped into Catania to go up Mt Etna and that is exactly what we did, along with making the most of the beautiful local markets and of course – Pizza and Italian wine!.

Yachty friends had told us to head to the Eoilie island so off we poddled through the Messina Straights with the tide pushing us along at 11 knots. Unfortunately, the weather was pants and we spent the whole time on board sheltering from the wild westerly minstrel winds. Fortunately, we could see Stomboli lighting up the night sky with its regular eruptions – impressive. After our third day on board due to bad weather, we spotted a possible weather window and hatched a plan to pick our way westbound to Spain.

We knew we were up for a day of robust windward sailing then hopefully a fetch and once past Sardinia a downwind cruise to Spain. Umm, - give me Atlantic rollers any day, due to the Minstrel which had been blowing for four days the sea was a lumpy mess. The only safe place to sit on the boat was low down on the bean bag, poor Joline, was taking a hammering. Saltwater was everywhere and I sat on the night shift wondering how the heck the boat withstood the twisting and dipping and diving I could not wait for my watch to be over and to get to bed.

As dawn broke we eased off and started to head downwind. It was blowing at least a force 8 as I was woken by John who had heard a Mayday call close by. A yacht was sinking!

The Italian Coastguard asked us to go to the yacht’s position – upwind 6 miles away!. As we turned Joline around we got a bit of a taste of how Pete Goss felt turning around to rescue Bulliomore. It was blowing 30 + knots, flippen lumpy and we were more like a submarine than a boat. The chair catapultier down the stairs, the coffee machine lept to the floor, and nothing was left upright as Joline sailed her heart out.

Fortunately, a large oil tanker was also diverted to attend and he arrived just before us positioning himself to shelter the sinking yacht with the four French crew who were ready to abandon ship. Thank goodness the Italians had dispatched a large lifeboat that was arriving soon so we were on standby and we had been asked to attend in case the yacht sunk before they got there. We stood by watching the half-submerged lovely looking race yacht ready to jump into action but hoping we didn’t have to as getting those folk aboard Joline in this horrible weather would have been really difficult.

The lifeboat arrived, the French crew were taken off, we were thanked and we sailed back on course – those poor sailors, they said they had no idea where the water was coming from, no liferaft and now no boat. However, they were now safe and didnt have to suffer our “ yellow rope” plan – our plan to get them on board.

For the next 9 hours, we sailed with just our fully reefed main. Thank goodness the following morning the wind and waves abated and we started the cleanup, first the boat then ourselves – caked on salt everywhere. To cap things off the fishing line reeled out at dusk and a fine wee tuna for dinner!

The following day, south west of Sardinia we finally eased out of the tricky winds into a beautiful downwind sail into the setting sun north of the Algerian coast. The seas flattened out and our appetite for boat jobs returned. The 450 miles of lumpy bumpy yuck weather was over – now 450 miles of downwind bliss. Those horrid lumpy windy days make the good days even better.

Next – Almerimar Spain – and new Nav gear :)