Week 12: Rhodes to Kythera (345nm)

This week, after an initially slow start waiting out the meltemi winds in Rhodes, we made big tracks west. We did an overnight passage from Rhodes to the east side of Crete, and a few days later did a two-nighter from there to the island of Kythera, just off the southern tip of the Peloponnese. But, the most important news from the week is that Alec caught a bluefin tuna! In the Med! We’re still not sure how we’re going to eat it all!

Greece’s strong meltemi winds set in after our arrival to Rhodes, which meant we were land-bound for a few days. Winds were in excess of 25kts (force 6 on the Beaufort scale – aka near gale force) and against us, so we sat tight. This gave us a good excuse to explore Rhodes for a few days.

Rhodes is particularly famous for the Colossus, a statue of the god Helios that once stood over the harbour entrance, which was one of the wonders of the ancient world. Sadly, it was destroyed in an earthquake in 226 BC and nothing remains – where exactly it stood is a matter of debate. But, the ancient town is remarkably intact and a pleasure to walk around. In its heyday, this was clearly at the front lines of clashes with Arabian conquerers, so it was extremely well fortified. The old town is protected by three enormous stone walls and two moats! The town itself was a hodgepodge of classical stone buildings (some with touches of Arabic influence in their decoration) and narrow cobbled streets. But, in contrast to our experience in Dubrovnik, the place retained the charm and feel of an actual town. It hadn’t been “Disney-fied.” We let ourselves get lost in the back streets and enjoyed the contrast of the buildings’ beauty with the realities of modern life (e.g. laundry hanging out of windows to dry).

On our second day there, we were delighted to run into our friends Don and Cindy from Ice Bear, who we’d met in the Gulf of Corinth back in May. They are great fun, so it was serendipitous we’d got stuck in Rhodes and been around when they arrived! They invited us over to play a fun variant on dominos (“trains”), and we had a great time catching up with them and sharing stores about what we’ve all been doing the last couple of months.

Finally, a weather window was forecast for Monday, so we were up early to cast lines to take advantage of it. Travelling west in the Eastern Med at this time of year is tough because westerly winds are common – our weather window was no different, so we knew some parts would be a slog. We hadn’t quite expected just such a big one though!  Even though the forecast suggested we’d get some semi-favourable winds, we mostly found ourselves with it right on the nose. That meant either veering off course or motoring. We did way more motoring than we would have liked (we could only sail for 20% of the journey), but sometimes you get unlucky. That is a fundamental truth for sailing, so you just have to be able to brush it off and make the best you can with the conditions you do have. Otherwise I think you’d give up this sailing thing before long!

Now, despite all that, we had a great trip. Firstly, because the weather was nice and we had fun chilling out. But MORE importantly because, about 20:30 as the sun was setting… our fishing reel went like a shot! Alec shouted, “FISH ON!” and ran to start working the line in. We got more and more excited as he slowly reeled it in… can you believe our surprise when he finally got the fish up on deck and it was a bluefin tuna?? Alec caught a TUNA! And a big one at that – we reckon he was about 15kg. Once on deck, we hastily broke out our fishing book to work out what to do next. It suggested that pouring alcohol into the fish’s gills would calm it down and give it a nice way to go, so we promptly broke out the Gordon’s gin and gave him a good slug. With many thanks to Neptune, we after this proceeded to somewhat recreate a scene from a horror film as we hastily worked out how to fillet it. What a day!!

We are now eating tuna with pretty much every meal, and this may be the norm for the foreseeable future. We have so much fish! Alec has even been eating sashimi for breakfast, but I am yet to go quite that far. Seriously, it is a delight to have a bonanza of such tastiness, and it has been giving us lots of inspiration to make interesting meals.  So far, we’ve had pan-seared tuna steak wraps, Thai yellow fish curry, and of course sashimi. Next up we’ve plans to get the barbeque out for grilled tuna steaks and are also working on a baked parcel idea. We are seeking additional ideas; if you have any favourite fish recipes we’d love to hear them!

The morning after The Tuna, we arrived in the town of Sitia, which is on the north coast of Crete right down at the eastern end. Our usual books and charts didn’t have much to say about it, but we found it a lovely little seaside resort town. We moored alongside the harbour wall and spent the early afternoon napping (always key after an overnight passage). Feeling a bit more human, we then swam over to the beach, explored the town and ate large quantities of ice cream. Our just reward for completing our passage!

The weather has been all over the place, and the next days looked to be more of this. We definitely didn’t have the right weather for another big jump yet, but the following morning it looked like we’d be able to make a few miles and get to an intriguing anchorage about 20nm west on Crete. We ended up having a wonderful sail, flying along at 6+ knots the whole way. Our windvane steering (wind-powered autopilot) was driving, so Alec and I got to sit back and relax for the majority of the trip. The vane has now been dubbed Aeolus, after the Greek wind god (thanks to Sarah Marshall for the suggestion!), though informally we’ll call him Steven (after Steven Tyler of Aerosmith). We’ve taken to nicknaming a lot of equipment after ageing rock stars, and Aerosmith seemed to be an appropriate association for a wind god!

By early afternoon we arrived in Spinalonga. This anchorage has a relatively narrow entrance to a large, well-protected lagoon, the entirety of which is about 3-5m in depth with a mud/sand bottom. This meant we would be well sheltered from the wind and our anchor would set like a rock. A sailors’ paradise! At the entrance to the lagoon, there is a small island entirely covered by a beautiful old Venetian fort. We anchored Serenity just west of this island, near the mainland side of the lagoon. This meant we had fabulous views of the fort, but were also close enough to the local hotel to steal wifi 😊.

It looked like we might get favourable weather for our next big hop if we left the following evening, so we had a bit of down time, which was lovely. We read, swam and caught up on some more napping. The next day, as we weren’t going to leave until 17:00, we took the opportunity to get ahead on a few boat jobs. The engine was due its 200-hourly maintenance, so we had fun pulling out the impeller from the water pump for inspection and generally ferreting around in the bilges to test and check various bits. I did make one small boo-boo, which is that I hadn’t brought enough oil on board to allow me to change the transmission oil (as I’m meant to at 200 hours). So, I’ve had to leave that bit until we get to Sicily… but luckily the current oil is in good condition, so it’s no big drama. We also did some more epoxying, and I worked on fixing our steering wheel grips while Alec installed a leech line cleat on the main sail. This was all of course followed by a swim because man does it get hot in the bilges!

Anyway, with a few good jobs ticked, we pulled up the anchor and started off on what is only our second multi-night passage thus far. Our destination was Kythera, which is a small island just south of the SE tip of the Peloponnese. As I’ve perhaps laboured on a bit too much about… the winds are a bit tough for going west. If we had more favourable winds, this would only be a one day passage, but unfortunately we are having to “beat” (sail upwind, taking an indirect route), which adds a lot to the journey time. To be honest though, if we could actually sail most of this one (rather than motor, like our previous passage) we’d be very happy, despite the extra time!

For the majority of the passage, we had consistent winds as predicted, meaning we could get the sails up and let Serenity do her thing. In the end we managed to do 70% of it under sail – much better than our last attempt! It was still an upwind hike, but a much more comfortable ride under sail (and so much more pleasant without the drone of the engine). It was for the most part an uneventful journey, and we pretty much had the sea to ourselves. Every now and then we’d see a big cargo ship or a cruise liner off in the distance. Interestingly I had at least 2 bars of phone signal the entire time, even when we were 30+ miles away from the nearest land. This was handy because it meant we could get updated weather forecasts through 3G rather than having to set up the satellite phone!

I have the first watch (9pm-12am) at night, and on the second of the passage I noticed the moon was oddly red. I didn’t think too much of it (weird cloud maybe?), and was actually grateful for its diminished brightness because it meant that we had a beautiful view of the stars and the Milky Way. We only finally noticed that we had VIP seats to the “blood moon” eclipse when Alec came on watch and noticed that the moon was partially uncovered again. It was incredibly special to have such an uninterrupted view (and no light pollution around) – in the middle of the sea is probably the best spot you could ever hope to watch such an event!

The sea became very sloppy on our final leg towards Kythera, so we were relieved when the island finally came into view. We were just about to start preparing our mooring gear when I noticed on the AIS that there was a vessel simply labelled “British Warship” anchored in the harbour. Alec was disappointed that we didn’t have a British flag to fly, but we hoped we might give them a patriotic wave on our way in. As we got closer, we noticed that what appeared to be the whole crew were lined up at attention on deck in their formal white uniforms. We then spotted a second large warship anchored nearby, this one with a Greek flag, with the crew similarly turned out. The second ship also sported some very snazzy bunting, which looked to be flags of EU nations. We were starting to brainstorm what on earth these ships could be doing in this tiny harbour, when suddenly the Hellenic Coastguard appeared and hailed us on the VHF. We were politely told that we could not enter the harbour and needed to stand off while a “military ceremony” took place. As we were receiving these instructions, a third, smaller naval ship appeared from inside the harbour and motored about ½ a mile out to sea. It then held itself in place while some sort of ceremony clearly took place on the bow. We couldn’t catch the words, but we heard a speech over the tannoy and a bit of music. After about 20 minutes, the smaller vessel did a drive by of the other two ships, with lots of whistling and cheering (a very proper “hip hip hooray” from the British ship). Finally, it drove back into the harbour and moored on the town quay.

We were still holding our position, waiting to be given the all clear by the coast guard, and saw a large wreath float past – throwing this overboard must have been part of the ceremony! We briefly contemplated fishing it out of the sea as a keepsake, but then decided that would definitely be bad luck. Eventually, the coast guard radioed us back and said we could come into the harbour, but that we’d have to anchor off as the military ship (and its various smaller escorts) were taking up the entire town quay. We were a little miffed, as we were tired from our journey and would have much preferred the convenience of the quay. But, nevermind – we dropped anchor near the lovely little beach, made breakfast and took a well-earned nap.

A bit later, after we’d recovered a bit from all the excitement, we dinghied over to shore to have a look at the town. We tied up just as some of the coast guard officers were walking past, who mentioned that the boat on the quay would be leaving in the evening, so we would get our spot after all – win! We went to have a closer look at the docked ship (very, very big guns, best not to mess with I think), and noticed that on the harbour wall next to it had recently been installed a large marble memorial. Reading it explained the ceremony we saw – which was to honour the 722 British soldiers lost when the cruiser HMS Gloucester was sunk near Kythera in WWII by enemy bombers. What are the odds we’d arrive on the right day just at the right time to see it?

The town itself was lovely, with a variety of interesting cafes along a pretty stretch of beach. It’s clear the local people are investing in making it an attractive spot. At the end of the beach we discovered they’d even installed a set of lap lanes in the sea! We also spied a massive castle on the hill, which we’ll definitely be exploring while we’re here. After the military boat left the quay, we parked Serenity up and picked out a restaurant for a relaxed dinner overlooking the bay. Successful passage and wonderful day done, we were ready to get all the sleeps. More about our adventures in Kythera and (hopefully) a successful passage to Sicily next week!