Grace Notes

We took advantage of a break in the weather to head for the Eastern Sporades. The omens looked good, a pod of dolphins escorted us for half an hour on our departure from Skyros. The official forecast was F7 locally F8, but we could see from the GRIBs (localised lies about what the wind might do) that in the afternoon the wind should drop a little and back, giving us a good blast ESE. Here's a picture of Grace in full flight, taken by S/Y Orpheus who were alongside us in Linari. The GRIBs turned out to be spot on for once. 10 hours and 60NM later we tied up in Psara alongside Orpheus and another yacht that had made the same trip. We're now at Kardhamila on the top of Khios. With the prevailing northerlies, its downhill all the way to Marmaris.

Yesterday we were on a collision course with this convoy: That's a tug towing a barge with a crane on it, some sort of tanker, and another tug. Being Greece, none of the vessels showed any of the appropriate day shapes. We were on a collision course for a good half hour, but they didn't show any sign of budging. We had to approach within a mile to see the towing cables. We applied Rule 2 and Rule 17 (which essentially say "even if the other guy isn't behaving, you're not allowed to crash into him"), and Rule 0 (a local special rule - "if its Greek, keep out of its way"), and hove-to to let them pass.

Let me correct my last post about the Meltemi being more about the sea state than the wind. Its definitely about the wind too. This morning we came to Mykonos and had a very windy last couple of hours (F7, gusting F8). Thanks to the assistance of a small army of yachties on the quay, we moored alongside in 35 knots. We've got all our string out.   Its still giving it some out there.

Common wisdom is that its a bad idea to go North up the Cyclades in July or August, due to the regular northerly wind called the "Meltemi". Here's the weather forecast for today, typical Meltemi stuff: SOUTHEAST AEGEAN IKARIO WEST OF 26.00 NORTH NORTHWEST 5 LOCALLY 6 OVER NORTH PART 6 LOCALLY 7 AND EAST OF 26.00 NORTH NORTHWEST 5 LOCALLY 6. MODERATE We wanted to go fifteen miles to the North. "Fine", we thought, "We'll reef and put in a couple of long tacks. We'll end up going 25 miles through the water, but that will only take 4-5 hours". We set off, reefed down, ready for a good sail. To start off we were storming along at 6 knots in the right direction, but about a mile out of the bay, the wind died. The sea state was very confused, with large swells coming from several directions and many white horses. It certainly looked as though there was wind, but there was only 6-7 knots, changing direction through 100 degrees every ten minutes....