29th October

Still in Cartagena. Today Abi left the boat as scheduled and Richard who joined on Sardinia to help with repairs and make up crew numbers left a little earlier than scheduled.

Prep the boat during the day to set sail avoiding today's headwind and ready for the southerly tomorrow. Plan to set sail 2100 or 2200 tonight non-stop to Gibraltar.

28th October

Still no favourable wind, so the fishing goes on and yesterday's is cooked to make a delicious lunch. Weather forecast is light winds until next monday now. At 0851 local time we crossed the Greenwich Meridian and later more excitement as 20+ dolphins come to play and swim under the bow of the boat. Not sure if the video will upload but here goes ...Arrive Cartagena at 1700 ish pretty tired now after the non-stop night watches. Amazing approach to the town and quite picturesque. Tapas and too much beer into the early hours..... oh dear....

27th October

Still no wind so motor on again to keep to the schedule for other crew.

'Biggles' the bird makes a brief stop for a rest on his way somewhere and in his excitement flies all the way into the boat and through an open hatch where we are stowing spare sails to disappear into the very back of the boat among the steering gear. A very hot half hour is spent chasing him back out again!

News from Louise about being checked out by the doctor and plans are laid for her to rejoin the boat on Gibraltar. :-)

Motor on through long night watches.

25, 26 October

Slip the lines at 0930 and start the 480 mile non-stop run to Cartagena in Spain. Mostly motor sailing in light or no-existent winds.

At last we caught a fish (a dolphin fish) so Barry a happy man & can't wait to get on and cook it.

Later on a school of dolphins 10 or more visits us amid lots of excitement, encouraging them by leaning over the side and banging on the hull of the boat.

Saturday 24th October

Probably the last post for a few days now. The plan is that Louise (better but still not right now the injections are wearing off) will fly home to her parents for some TLC and try to rejoin later (maybe Gib). Colin will rejoin Phoebe B at 1600 today as she has set sail from Porto Corallo for Cagliari to at least make some progess (40 miles) before sheltering from the next forecast gale (this is getting repetitive).

Not easy saying goodbye like this, hard not to miss out and hard to know Louise will be sad at not continuing, but it's for the best.

Friday 23rd October

A day in Cagliari for the two of us, trying to sort out arrangements for Louise to get home for some recovery at her parents, with the hope of coming back to joint the boat again for the later stages of the voyage.

Colin is reluctant to leave Louise to travel home alone after being so ill, but eventually we decide that he will stay here and rejoin the boat tomorrow when it is due to set sail for Cartagena. (The boat has fortunately had to hang around here too for the day due to storms to the south and west of Sardinia, so the option of rejoining it is still available to Colin.)

Thursday 22nd October

In the middle of Wednesday/Thursday night the wind again came round to an unfavourable westerly direction, making the boat slam and crash into the waves, and again the wind speed rose to 30-40 knots (Gale force 8) with a 5m swell. Skipper Matt decided to turn northwards for the sheltered eastern coast of Sardinia instead of continuing to head towards our intended destination of Cagliari.

Finally made it to a small, more easterly safe harbour called Porto Corallo, just to get some respite from the weather (and to give the now very sick Louise some rest).

Today we got news of the other Sail Ionian boat Tranquilizer (which on the original schedule would have set sail a week after us). They had already "lost" two crew to uncontrollable seasickness and had left the boat at the first opportunity in Messina. When they came out of the Messina straits and turned west, they were apparently caught out with too much sail for the wind and in the process of furling the headsail away they had ripped the sail and destroyed the furling gear, leaving the sail to be shredded by the wind. The process of cutting it free required someone to climb the mast in 40 knot gusts of wind to cut the damaged gear away. So maybe we aren't doing so badly after all.

Matt was now concerned about the safety of Louise staying on board and a doctor was called. After a stilted consultation with a doctor who only spoke Italian, an injection was administered - an interesting experience on a bouncing boat!

After some agonising decision making, we decided to leave the boat and head for a hotel and think what to do next.

Wednesday 21st October

Colin saw a beautiful sunrise this morning (while covering the night-watch for the bed-ridden Louise, now on her ninth day of being repeatedly sick).

With the morning light, our crew mate Barry saw the trailing fishing gear caught round our propeller lying in the water behind us, so we had to cut it free and hope that the prop. would survive until we next reached a harbour.

Whilst sitting in the (unfamiliar) sun later that morning, Barry spent some time fishing and Abi saw turtles swimming near the boat.

Louise's condition has now taken a turn for the worse and she cannot even keep rehydration salts or water down, so not a happy sailor! Unfortunately, the weather during the later part of the day and into the early hours of Thursday again deteriorated and we again faced winds of 40 knots (Gale force 8) and wave heights of up to 10m. Yes, really 10m. So not ideal conditions for the poorly sailor, now confined to her cabin.

Tuesday 20th October

Left Milazzo, again to try the non-stop run to Sardinia, with a good forecast of south-easterly winds. However, the forecast lied to us! Again we hit strong head-on westerly winds. We now know from our pilot book that this area is known as the "Aeolian Triangle", which apparently did for Odysseus and his crew and the weather here has been catching sailors out ever since.

The wind did improve for a time, and we had some fun watching dolphins swimming and jumping around the bow of the boat for a while, which was great.

Later on, while off-watch, we hear sounds of the others reefing the sails and exclaiming that the boat was now making about 10 knots (very fast for this kind of boat).

Little did we know that in the darkness, one of the sets of fishing gear we had been spotting and avoiding all day had become entangled round our propeller, to be discovered tomorrow.

While on night-watch, we saw loads of shooting stars.

Monday 19th October

Left Messina at about 11am after doing a few jobs on board, one of which involved hoisting one of our crew mates, the intrepid Abi, to the top of the mast. Photos from the top to follow at some point. Our intention was to set out for a non-stop sail to Sardinia today, but we headed into a repeat performance of Sunday: after rounding the north-east corner of Sicily we again hit strong westerly headwinds and pounding seas, but this time with the added spice of thunder, lightning and hail. For those of you who thought we were off on a sunny Mediterranean cruise, think again!

Again, we had to think again about our destination, and after several hours of battling the weather again, we admitted defeat and turned in to Milazzo, which had been our original destination the day before. We arrived in Milazzo at about 9pm, very tired and glad of the chance to stop, only to be met by a marina official standing on the quay wildly gesticulating at us and shouting at us to get lost - even with our combined very limited knowledge of Italian we managed to work that out. We moored up anyway and spent a happy hour or so gesticulating back at him until we had negotiated a one night stay.

Sunday 18th October

Good night sailing through the Messina straits, with plenty of traffic to look out for and calm conditions. Both Colin and Louise up on deck to see as much as possible and to really get used to using the radar and chart plotter. Unfortunately, once we rounded the north-eastern corner of Sicily and started to head west along the north coast of Sicily on our way to Milazzo we really began to hit some rough weather. The wind started to pick up to a consistent 20-25 knots (Force 5-6) and eventually rose to gusts of 45 knots (Gale Force 8-9) head on to the boat, with waves of 5-7m and torrential rain. Louise took the helm for a while.

We battled against this headwind for a few hours, but eventually took the decision that we weren't going to get to Milazzo, so our skipper Matt took over the helm again and turned us round to surf the waves back to Messina under a pocket-handkerchief sized Genoa. Arrived in Messina about 4am.

Saturday 17th October

A long day's fairly uneventful sailing across the Ionian Sea with reasonably good weather until we saw our first sight of the heel of Italy in the distance. By about 10.30pm the weather had deteriorated considerably and our skipper had taken the helm, not trusting us amateurs.

Friday 16th October

Set sail at last, with ARC flags flying and a big send off from the Sail Ionian team. Motor sailed round to the south of Lefkas and then raised the sails to take the north-westerly wind past Vasiliki and out into the Ionian Sea. On into the night. Louise not feeling too good and took to her bed to avoid the night watches! Some good night sailing, with speeds of up to 8-9 knots at times and not much traffic.

The team comprises Matt the Sail Ionian skipper, ourselves, the adventurous Abi, a care worker, Iona, an air-hostess, and Barry, a retired Spanish-villa owner (and good cook).

We will sail the boat in turns or watches, especially when sailing the longer day and night passages. Essentially these are 3 hour shifts in pairs 1.5 hours as crew and 1.5 hours as helm. With the number of crew we set out with (until some of the changeover stops) this means we get 4 hours rest in between watches.

News at last

Storm avoidance and Greek legal issues surrounding safety kit have
delayed departure so far, today looks good. Tracking link
http://live.adventuretracking.com/sailionian our boat is Phoebe B. (After our bit of the trip the link will stay live as Phoebe B carries on with a new crew across the Atlantic so don't think we've stayed on ;-) ).


The week has been spent day sailing, and finishing the setup of the boat.


More detail later.

Edit:
Highlights of the week apart from the Greek legal issues were -

• Torrential rain and thunderstorms
• Anchor dragging in Sivota and having to come off the quay and re-anchor twice in the dark at around 0500, before a 180 degree shift in the wind caused havoc with everyone else who had moved and anchored - rather than lift the anchor with potentially crossed chains it was safer to hold the boat steady on the engine if required and stay up until first light.
• Practice sailing in Force 8 winds!
• Sunbathing on a calm day in Dessimi Bay