I think I mentioned previously that Joan and I had moved to Puglia, which is great and we have nearly completed the first phase of our house here. But of course Lothian Sky is sitting quietly in St Raphael in Cyprus. So the next adventure is to get her back to Italy.

COVID – 19

Everybody has their own stories about the virus. I don’t think ours were very exceptional. We got back to Italy in the first week in January both nursing coughs which we put down to our annual Christmas visit to the UK. Our neighbours were also coughing and we don’t know if that was the virus or not. Anyway within a month Italy was in total lockdown and we were stuck in our apartment. We could only get out for the pharmacist or food. Strange times.

Fortunately, the perimeter of our balcony measures about 50 meters so we were able to have a 2k run twice a week which at least kept us a bit active. We also bought some jigsaws and that shows you just how desperate we were!

“But what about the lonely Lothian Sky?” I hear you ask. The plan was to move here in May and I had a crew all lined up but then came lockdown. I have not even seen the boat since October last year. The Lord only knows what condition she will be in when we eventually meet up again. The plan now is to try to make the trip starting 1st September, COVID permitting.

Crew

My usual first Mate, Ruth, will not be able to join us. Her excuse is that she is having a baby in October! Is that reasonable I ask myself? And of course to compound it all Nick, her husband, will also not be able to make it.

Good luck to both of you. I’ll be thinking of you both as we pass through the Corinth Canal!

However, it looks like I will have a crew of at least four for the whole trip. Alistair Cameron, stalwart of previous voyages mentioned in this blog, navigator extraordinaire for the Regatta, and all round great sailor, will be with us for the whole trip. Our good friends Jan and Ben Cooper in Cyprus mentioned it to Jan’s brother John Dixon and it looks like he and his friend will also be able to join us for the whole trip. John is a trans-Atlantic sailor so he would be a great addition to the crew.

I have put the word out for anybody else who might be interested in a cheap Aegean adventure post-COVID. All are welcome and we can arrange for people to join the boat at various points along the route.

So that’s sorted inshallah ………. but there are a couple of little problems yet to be overcome.

Problem 1

Getting into Cyprus from Italy. Cyprus has done really well in controlling the pandemic and obviously they did not relish the thought of people coming from Italy to infest their island. So up until 1st July we in Italy were persona non grata. Now we are in Category B which allows us to go in provided we go through screening on entry So Joan and I can get into Cyprus and we will arrive there on 3rd August.

Problem 2

Getting into Cyprus from the UK. That is altogether a different kettle of fish. The UK is in Category C which, at the time of writing, means that people travelling from the UK will not be able to enter Cyprus unless they go into 14 days of quarantine. Clearly, for our purposes that is a big problem. I am hoping this will change when the situation is reviewed once again in August.

Problem 3

Getting into Greece from Cyprus. The Greeks also have done a great job containing the virus and have very clear rules regarding entry. If we all manage to get into Cyprus my understanding is that there should not be a problem getting into Rhodes. As always when sailing between countries, the trick is to make sure that you have all of the documents you might need and any that you think you might not. You just never know!

The Passage

I expect the trip to take about 14/15 days subject to weather. The Meltemi starts to subside in the Aegean during September so I am hoping for a fair passage. With a bit of luck we might even have some easterlies to help us on our way.

Following in the path of Odysseus. Or at least from Rhodes onwards and we go through the Corinth Canal which in his days had not been built. It took him ten years to get home to Ithaca. I’m hoping to make better progress! I don’t know if the following link will work, but if it does you can get a visual impression of the journey. You should be able to zoom in and out and you can cross-reference with the chart above.

https://boating.page.link/Ajkcazd78Vnbb7r58

Preparations

As always the most important player in the piece is the Lothian Sky. She has been sleeping in her berth for nearly a year and we will have to make sure she is up and ready for the next adventure. I think she could probably sail this passage on her own, certainly Cyprus to Rhodes as she has already done that four times. That leg is the most testing, involving 48 hours of straight sailing.

When I get to Cyprus we need to haul her out, clean off her bottom and make any obvious repairs. Henry, the Regatta skipper (see previous posts), thought he noticed a split in her rudder the last time he was under the keel. So that needs attention. Then we need the usual servicing of the engine and the outboard, have a look at the rigging and the condition of the sails, sheets, ropes and lines. Probably take her out for a test run to check out the navigation instruments. Then we are off!

More to follow when we get to Limassol…………

I promised to add some pictures of the 2018 trip in the Aegean. It turned out to be quite an adventure. We lost the battens in the jib, which had to be replaced. Then we lost the jib altogether when the upper swivel on the furler failed. But all in all it was a month we will never forget. Congratulations and thanks to all crew. Click on the images for larger view and to scroll.

It’s a bit late but I promised some pics from last year’s regatta.

Well perhaps “the slightly adventurous sail around some of the Greek islands” might be more accurate. We will see!

LEAVING LIMASSOL

The plan is to do a circle of the Dodecanes and the Cyclades Islands of the Aegean throughout July, returning to Cyprus via Crete.  We left Limassol on 2 July at 1200, heading for Rhodes, a passage that I estimated to be around 48 hours.  Our initial crew consisted of daughter Ruth, brother-in-law Jon Over and his big buddy David Nicholas, and my friend Paul Leach who agreed to join us at the last minute.

This and the return passage from Crete are the longest and most demanding legs of the tour.  The problem with Cyprus is that it is in a relatively isolated location.  The nearest country is Turkey and even that is a good 24 hours sailing from Limassol.

Lothian Sky had a full makeover for the tour.  My good Cypriot friend Efti and I arranged for the Marina to haul her out, cleaned her bottom and give her a good waxing (top and bottom!).

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Thanks to Stuart Mathieson (our cousin) who helped with the burnishing of the Coppercoat – I told him that this was part of the process of learning the sail – you can see below that he learned quickly! 

Full service of the engine and repairs to the electric toilet and the cams on the Spinlock clutch housing and we were all set to go.  Joan had made sure we were all spick and span inside, bed sheets, quilts, towels were provided in abundance and we were provisioned for the first 48 hours (including a full supply of Haribos – essential for sailing The Sky).

So we were off! ………. well nearly.  Readers of this blog will know that my attention to the detail of getting in and out of ports is not an example to show to young or sensitive people.  The last task was to fill up on diesel – 201 litres plus two jerry cans of 20L each – which should be enough to get to Rhodes, subject to sea state, wind etc.  Anyway, in trying to spring off from the filling station quay I managed to get the Sky stuck on the entrance slipway to the boat lifting area – it’s complicated!  Nearly the whole staffing complement of the St Raphael marina, and a few gloating yacht owners, turned out to free us and they did a terrific job.  So with a word of caution from the marina manager to check the keel bolts for leaks we were on our way  ……. well nearly.

Outside of the marina the crew had a conference about the state of the keel which had touched the bottom.  I had checked the keel bolts and all was dry so I was ready to go – we had only touched the bottom and at a very low speed.  Others were not so confident.  Ruth’s wise counsel was that we should check under the boat – which meant that I would have to dive down!!!!! – a prospect that I was not looking forward to.  Paul also had concerns, Jon and David were more optimistic but it was looking like the skipper was about to get wet.

Our dilemma was solved when Paul received a call from his wife.  The port police were jumping up and down on the quay because I had not completed the exiting formalities for leaving Cyprus.  Look it was an honest mistake.  And it gave us the chance to inspect the keel back in the berth.  All was well and after completion of port police and customs formalities, we were on our way.  Yes, really!

So we came 1st in our class, which was Cruising Class A and we came 11th overall out of a total field of 50+ boats.  See the full divisional results below:

Ioannideia_RESULTS_Offshore_Divisions_2017

and the overall result is here Ioannideia_RESULTS_Offshore_Overall_2017.

For me this is as good as it gets.  Before we started I said to the team that I would be happy with an overall finish in the top third.  In fact we ended up in the top 20% and finishing first in class was just an unexpected but brilliant bonus.

First of all congratulations to the team.  We had a few new faces this year as, sadly, Paul and Hanna could not join us.  Looking from the left, standing – Kay Melville (new), Alistair Cameron, Jon Over, Mike Melville (new), Nick Geary (new), Henry Castledine and his fiancé Phoebe Griffin-Beale (new).  Kneeling are my daughter Ruth and yours truly.  The furry interloper at the bottom right is Cat.  We don’t know him by any other name, but he is now our official mascot!

Unfortunately, Ann Cameron – a stalwart of last year’s race – was left on the physio’s table with a bad back.  She did however enrol as one of the back-room crew (no pun intended) together with my wife Joan and her sister Isabel Over, without whom nothing would have been achieved.  For reasons not entirely clear to me we do not have a photo at the moment of the girls in the back room.  I’ll put that right later.  Sailing in an average of 35°C, working hard on deck for up to three hours at a time takes a heavy toll, and I cannot tell you how grateful we were for the rolls, water, coke, fruit, crisps, Harobos, whatever supplied on a daily basis by the backroom.  And of course when we got home in the evening dinner was served.  Champion!

So my personal thanks to all of my team mates and everyone involved who made this Regatta a very special time.  We worked hard and had great fun and hardly anybody complained!  My special gratitude once again to Henry, whose exceptional seamanship, extraordinary leadership and all round racing brilliance delivered one of the best weeks of my sailing life.

Finally, a word for the beautiful Lothian Sky.  Once again she did all she was asked, and once again surprised me with her versatility and style.  I am now “cock of the walk” in the marina …… well at least for the next week!

In later posts I will touch on some of the lighter moments of our regatta week and some of the preparations, inspired moments and ‘I wish we could have that one over again’ moments!

It was almost exactly a year ago and I suppose I should have posted something before now, but you know how it goes, places to go people to see.  Anyway we entered the Regatta last year and came in (in my humble opinion) a respectable middle of the table.  I think the ORC (Offshore Racing Congress) were not kind to me with the handicap, but I hear that everyone says that! The problem was the ginnaker – too big, and the jib was a bit small for the light winds that we enjoyed during the three days of racing.  Look I know I am making excuses but I don’t blame me!

First the crew (from the left standing):

Henry Castledine, Race Skipper – sailing since a young whippersnapper in the Channel Islands.  I hard task master but a great sailor.  He taught me to sail so he must have something about him.

Ann and Alistair Cameron, Crew – Alistair was part of the intrepid maiden voyage from Slovenia described elsewhere in this blog.  Alistair did a lot of standing around and technical stuff, Anne perfected the art of stowing the gennaker, which at 160 sq meters was no laughing matter I can tell you.  Although their work was as nothing compared to the foredeckers – me with the hat on and next to me Jon Over my brother-in-law.

Jon and Me, Foredeckers – Duties included setting up and then striking the gennaker, gybing the gennaker, cursing the gennaker ….., hauling out the jib, retracting the jib and lying on our backs exhausted.  Foredeckers ( I am told) are immediately recognisable amongst the crew as they are generally carrying an excess amount of muscle, their arms are normally dragging on the ground, they grunt a lot as opposed to actually articulating words, and they have very large foreheads.  They are usually very fit and strong, which is I suppose why Jon and I, the two oldest members of the crew, got lumbered with the job!  All attempts at protest fell on the skippers deaf ears.

Kneeling are Ruth (introduced in other parts of this blog) and Paul Casterton a mate from our days in Doha.  Paul’s wife Hanna was also with us but we did not have enough space for an additional crew member.  In effect Ruth and Paul substituted for each other as Ruth had to leave the boat on the Sunday before the final race.  Amongst many arduous tasks they had to gather in the gennaker and also operate the main and gennaker sheets.

From a catering point of view everybody piled into our place in Parekklisia and Joan (my wife) and Isabel Over (her sister) handled the catering side.  We also had a few evenings at the bar and dined out at the culinary hotspots of Limassol.  A great crowd of folks and we all had a good old time.

THE RACE

The Famagusta Sailing Club organise the race.  They were originally located at Famagusta ( the clue is in the name!) but they had to decamp (temporarily according to their web site  ) to Limassol after the war of 1974.  2016 was the first year for them to hold an ORC accredited regatta, although they had been organising races for years in the past.  The races took place over three days – Friday (practice), Saturday and Sunday.  We all gathered on the Monday before the race to get in a bit of training and for Henry to whip us into shape.  It took some whipping!  As I said earlier we came in a credible mid-table position and I was proud of that.  Lothian Sky did not let us down and next year with a more experienced crew, who knows?, we may just surprise ourselves.

I can’t really go into the details of the race as Jon and I did not see very much of it, up to our ears in gennaker, grappling with the sail bag etc, but we did get some good photographs and I have added a few below to give you a flavour – and also a short video.

So that was last year.  The 2017 regatta starts on 8th September.

Come back later to find out how we get on.

No, The Lothian Sky has not been taken over by MI6.  A Code 0 is a particular type of sail that is officially designated as a downwind sail but performs really well between 40 and 70 degrees off the wind in light winds.  It was developed initially in the Volvo Ocean Race  and has now been adopted as a standard for even casual sailors.  In theory it should work well with the gennaker which is a downwind sail that can be deployed effectively between 80 and 150 degrees off the wind.  In heavier winds the self-tacking jib should come into its own.

The ideal solution would have been to have a 130% genoa but the maximum that Hanse will do is 105% and, as Henry said, that would make little difference to the performance. Its all to do with the rigging.  The shrouds are attached amidships at the gunnels which means that any upwind sail that passes the shrouds could not be fully sheeted in.  Hanse don’t point that out when they market the yacht.

You might recall my complaining about the handicap in last year’s race.  I was penalised for the gennaker and the self-tacking jib was not powerful enough in the lighter winds that we experienced.  So bringing a Code 0 on board might help with that problem …. in theory, which by the way I do not understand!  It will be deliver on 5th September, so we are cutting it fine.  Training starts on 4th September.

The other modification that I have added is a top down furler for the gennaker.  You may recall my moaning about the effort of hoisting and gybing the gennaker in the last post.  I am hoping the furler will reduce the effort and make gybing smoother.  Ann will be happy about that.  No doubt Henry will want to take the purist position and stick to the old format.  We will see!

Anyway see below the design of the new sail.  I have tried to create a stylised representation of the Scottish Saltire.  It sort of works …

Code 0

If you would like to see the furler in action go here.

As I mentioned before, the passage to Cyprus was uneventful.  The sea was empty, the winds were kind and the sun was in its sky.  It was with great excitement that we first sighted land at 1820 on 12th November but we still had a full night of sailing ahead of us.  The lights of Pafos came into view just before dawn on the 13th and it was looking good for an early morning arrival in St Raphael Marina in Limassol.  I sent SMS messages to Joan and Isabel, Jon’s wife, so that the reception party could be organised.  Joan suggested we go around again as they were not ready!

The actual length of the trip had been a matter of discussion for the crew.  We organised a sweep steak to guess the number of miles we would have covered by the time we moored in the final marina.  We each put in €10.  My estimate was 1303, which was way out.  Jon Over’s bid was the nearest to the actual mileage – and he won.  Now I am not one to cast aspersions on the integrity of a fellow crew member but I would only say that Jon was on the helm in the final stretch from Pafos to Akrotiri while the rest of us were sleeping below, and I am sure I sensed the boat doing a full 360 turn on a couple of occasions just off Aphrodite’s Rock.  Jon will have to live with his conscience.

Some stats:

• 1362 miles covered
• Departed Portoroz 30th October, arrived Limassol 13th November – 14 days
• Average miles per day (24 hours) – 97 (includes time in port)
• Number of days at sea – 9.3
• Fuel consumption (approx) – 2.3 miles/litre
• Fuel consumed (approx) – 585 litres
• Fresh water used (approx) – 1775 litres (includes the full tank that emptied into the bilges on the first night)

For me an epic journey indeed but probably modest in the general run of ocean passages.  As John Campbell said, we learned a lot more about sailing and probably even more about ourselves.  Certainly for my part I owe a great debt to those who gave up their time to help me bring my beautiful boat from Portoroz to Limassol.

John Campbell, still a working man unlike we retired gentlemen, and yet a man with a big heart and a joy to be with.  I am hoping that we will be able to do some sailing on the Clyde on his Bavaria.  I have heard that it is good there, but my concern is that I am a fair weather sailor.  It is to John that I now owe my addiction to Hariboos.  It’s OK John, I’m getting help and support.

Alistair Campbell joined us in Athens and immediately added a new dimension to the team, nothing to do with his intellect as I mentioned earlier, but he called the fault with Mr Bean correctly.  He also noticed that the boat did not have cupholders at the helm stations and so when he got home he ran up two on his 3D Printer.  They are too small to take a cup or a coke can but they do fit on the rails perfectly!  Now every time I am looking for a place to put my drink down I will think of Alistair.

What can I say about my brother-in-law, Jon Over?  Well nothing that I could put on this blog!  Jon is a great mate and a man you want to have around in a crisis.  His struggle with the water hose over a period of two weeks was enough to try most men’s soles, but did he give up?  …. well yes he did but that’s a mere technicality.  He won the sweep steak … hmmm. And he managed to clutter up the main saloon after he decamped when Ruth came on board.  But, actually, I am not sure the trip would even have been possible without Jon.  It was his connection with Alan O’Boyle that secured us a great passage director, and through Alan, John came on board.  I really owe Jon, and I am already paying for it!

Alan is the consummate professional and a seaman and educator of remarkable quality.  Although I was nominally the skipper there was no doubt who was in charge on the boat.  The relationship between the owner and the “skipper” can be tense but once we had our “clearing of the air” chat a couple of days into the trip I think we all settled down.  I am truly grateful to Alan for delivering my boat and its crew safe and sound into the St Raphael.  I shall try to forget his many anecdotes and “wee stories”, but I will always know where the expression “he is on the fiddle” came from (Google it).  I had underestimated the enormity of what we were undertaking and it is no exaggeration to say that if Alan had not been there on that first awful night it could have been a very sad ending almost before it had begun.  Thank you Alan and may you continue to sail safely.

Of course the real owner of the boat is my daughter Ruth!  Jenny, the other daughter, gets the jewellery.  Well at least that’s what they tell each other.  It was such a joy to welcome Ruth on board at Kefalonia.  For one thing she doesn’t snore, unlike her uncle Jon whose place she took in the forward cabin, but also she is such a supportive person.  I think it is something to do with her bedside manner as a doctor.  Anyway the quality of photography improved immeasurably when she arrived as she had her Sony Gopro, but also the manners of the rest of the crew also took a turn for the better.  In fairness I did say to them that what happened on the boat stayed on the boat and give them their due they have respected that.  For Ruth this is just the beginning of her sailing life.  She is already confident and skilled and I look forward to her lugging me about the eastern Mediterranean for a few years to come.  Hopefully we can get the rest of the family involved a bit more also.

“So’, I hear you ask, “what about Mr Bean?”  Well when we got to Limassol he had to go into hospital (trouble with his plumbing) but I am pleased to report that all his troubles are over and he is now performing in the way all good autopilots should; quietly and confidently.  If he keeps going like this I might even change his name.

A great trip, a great crew and a magnificent boat.  I would not have missed it for the world.  Would I do it again?  Not on your life!

…. or?

To anyone who has managed to get this far may I take this opportunity to wish you and yours a Merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

As we emerged from Rhodes Harbour we had the first intimation of the tragedy of human despair that we knew was going on all around us.  A patrol ship passed us on the way into Rhodes and at first we thought we saw people on its deck but we were mistaken.

Rhodes is only 11 miles from Turkey at its nearest point and we were surprised, but also very relieved, that we did not see any evidence of small vessels in the water.  Having said that I for one would not like to have made even that short trip in a dinghy.

But it was time to turn our attention to the final lap of the journey.  The guy in Rhodes had advised us to wait until the following morning to set off as he said there were high winds on the route to Cyprus.  Alan had assessed that we were following the bad weather south but he reasoned, correctly as it turned out, that we would not catch it up. It seemed that those gods of the wind who had treated us so badly in the northern Adriatic had undergone a change of heart and started to smile down on us.  Throughout the first day we had cool breezes and bright sunshine.  As the mountains of Turkey started to recede behind us we moved further and further into the empty sea.  Throughout the first night as we started to clear Turkish waters we had encountered a couple of ferries ploughing their way northwards to Rhodes and a one tanker which looked as if it was heading for Brindisi in Italy.  In the morning, for the first time in the whole passage, we finally lost sight of land.  There was nothing between us and Cyprus; we encountered not one single vessel.

Looking around us it was easy to see how ancient sailors would regard this area as the end of the world.  The early Crusaders were unable to take this more direct route to the Holy Land because they had no way of navigating in the open sea, they didn’t know where the Holy Land was!  They had to follow the coastline, which was much longer and very much more hazardous because it meant they had to fight their way through many hostile countries.  When they got to the Middle East they found that the barbarians and primitive heathens that they had come to conquer had already invented the astrolabe which enabled them to navigate with considerable skill using the stars and the position of the sun and moon.  These navigation skills had taken the Arabs and the Pheonecians as far as the west coast Ireland long before christianity had visited those shores.

By the time of Richard the Lionheart western mariners had caught up and we read about Richard capturing the island of Cyprus on his was to fight Sala’adin and gifting it to the Knights Templar who had been expelled from their castles around Acre.

The passage to Cyprus was uneventful.  We sailed, we ate and we slept, some more than others.  I mentioned the sunrises and sunsets in an earlier blog.  Words cannot really do it justice so I thought pictures would tell the story.