Yesterday we went through our normal “get ready to go to sea” routine and pulled out at 1600 (4:00 pm). While we were getting ready, Stratos, one of the helpful guys who works at the marina, asked us if we were sure we wanted to go out in these conditions. Eric said he didn’t think it would be too bad. Famous last words. Continue reading
By sunrise, we were in more protected waters and the seas calmed down significantly, becoming a pleasant ride. At 0645, we rolled up 3,333 hours. We left San Diego with 333 hours, so we have done exactly 3,000 hours at sea since leaving home. We are at 17,875 miles, so our average speed has been 5.96 knots. We are averaging 1,375 miles a month. We have been seriously moving.
We neared our destination, the town of Agios Nikolaos on the island of Crete around 0700. From the distance, it looks just like all the photos you see of the Med, with blocky buildings nestled in tall hills along the shoreline.
We pulled into the marina, where someone was waiting to assist us. We backed into our spot and threw him two lines, which he tied to the sea wall. Then he handed us each a mooring line, which we pulled up to the front of the boat, securely fastening each side on a separate mooring. No dropping the anchor, which was good. We were snugly tied up between two very large yachts. Within a few minutes, the marina guy, Stratos, Continue reading
Day 1
It felt good to be moving on the sea. By morning, the wave speed had slowed down. There was little wind chop, and it was an overall pleasant ride. Wind has varied from 8 knots to 16 knots. What makes it an even nicer ride is that we are running at a normal RPM and speed for a change. Kosmos is happier running in her sweet spot than she is running flat out, the ride is smoother for us, and fuel consumption is much, much better.
We crossed near the 31N by 31E line, which we thought was an interesting numerical moment. We had a beautiful sunset, with the sun especially red.
It is much cooler here. We actually have to shut the windows at night and wear blankets when we sleep. We almost forgot what that was like aboard, since we have been so used to the heat of the tropics and desert.
There has been a ton of traffic on the radio ever since we left Egypt, mostly from warships calling every vessel that pops up on their radar. So far we have heard ships from Canada, NATO, and Israel. We have never heard so many military groups in one place before. The war ships will Continue reading
This morning we were up early to get ready to go. Here is sunrise over Suez.
Normally, small yachts transit half the canal one day, spend the night in a town called Ismalia, then transit the second half of the canal the next day. We had committed to being in Greece in 4 days, and the only way to make it on time was to do a one day transit. For it to happen, several pieces needed to come together. First off, we needed to leave by 0700, because if we didn’t make it to Ismalia by 1300 (1:00 pm), they would make us stay in Ismalia for the night.
We paced around nervously waiting for the pilot. Meanwhile, Heebe finally told us what our transit fees were. The trawler that we had mentioned seeing in Port Ghalib had been charged USD$485, and we expected our fee to be the same. Ours was USD$540. Heebe never showed us any government paperwork to verify the fees, so we suspect he upped the fee and kept the difference. He also charged us an extra fee of $70 for the quick transit and we are not sure if it goes to him or is a government fee, but we suspect it goes to him. Unfortunately, we were not in a position to argue with him over the fees, both because we were out of time and because we were afraid if we made him mad that he might sabotage our effort for the one day transit and charge more.
Heebe took care of our exit stamps on our passport before we left and promised that our boat clearance would be waiting for us in Ismalia. We were irritated that he hadn’t taken care of the boat clearance yesterday.
The pilot arrived at 0815 and Continue reading
By midnight last night, the wind was back up to 25 30 and we were being brutally bounced around. We had to slow down even more because we were getting beaten up too much at the higher speeds. We were hobby horsing like crazy, with the occasional wave making such a hard smack that you wince and wonder how much more the boat can take.
It seemed to us that since the gulf was small, it couldn’t be much longer before the fetch from the seas died off. We were Continue reading