A mad dash north! by Craig
Cocktail hour on a yacht is a great time to reflect on your journey and share refelctions with your sailing partner. On Friday night, Janine was sharing with me how she was enjoying the shorter sails this year as it allowed her time to explore the quaint villages and towns along this exotic coastine with their own character and quirks.
Like all good life partners, I feigned interest in her story and I pretended to understand her needs as I waited to insert my alternative idea into our conversation. “That’s great Janine but what about if we did a mad dash north of about 300 nm (555 km) over the next 5 days instead”. Like all sailors I am becoming better at navigating around hazards and can quickly steer to the starboard to avoid the look of “I’m sure you never listen to me” by explaining that we had a great weather window to head to Istanbul if the weather gods held out and we pushed pretty hard. As I watched her mind kick into gear as she looked through the route, I wondered whether I could see if I had given that hazard just enough clearance.
Ten minutes later Janine is in planning mode, with bookings, routes, provisions and weather checks. If you have never been to Istanbul I can strongly recommend it, it is one of the grand cities of the world and the largest in Europe with over 15 millions souls. A quick trip into town to top up some provisions and pop over to our neighbours Ian and Malia on Longo Mai. This would be a journey for the ages, a boys own adventure as we headed north to a city with so much history and places to see.
The next morning we had a call from Ian and Malia, after telling them about our plans, that they had also looked at the weather window and agreed it might be as good a time as any to head north and wanted to know if it would be OK if they tagged along.
About 4 miles out the engine gave a heave, started to vibrate heavily and we lost all power as a large piece of clear plastic sheeting had wrapped around our folding prop. Ian and Malia came over in Longo Mia to help, Ian quickly offering to put on his new diving, yes please. While Ian was getting ready I started to free dive on the prop to cut away the offending plastic as I tried to keep up with the disabled yacht and the wind pushed her away from me, that was the moment I realised that I should have invested on new snorkelling gear as one flipper snapped followed by the second. Janine quickly arranged a rope around the mid cleat that allowed me to stay next to the drifting Inelsamo, diving down to cut away the plastic successfully before starting our journey again with no apparent damage to our propeller system. Phew.
That afternoon as we navigated along the Turkish and Greek border North while watching closely the several thunderstorms in our path. As we watched the storms, we were constantly discussing if we should push on or find a safe anchorage to wait out lightening and heavy rain. Modern technology these days allows us to track thunder storms with some accuracy and we were about to head North by adjusting our speed and path before arriving in a secluded anchorage for the night.
Day 2 saw us push nervously out into the northerly winds which can be intimidating along this coastline, but today behaved themselves and had us motoring directly into 15 knots and half a meter seas for 4 hours of our 8 hour journey. At one point a massive Manta-ray did a backwards summersault right beside Inelsamo to day hello, and as Janine and I looked at each other and thought did we just see what we thought we saw, our new friend did another backwards summersault to say “goodbye my friends, well met and enjoy your journey”. That night we tied up stern to alone the wall in Bozcaada, a charming little town that some say is more Greek than Greece itself.
Day 3 saw us getting up before the sun and head towards the Çanakkale Strait. I must admit that I had some trepidation about this part of the journey, with strong winds, dangerous tides and heavy commercial traffic, the dangerous reputation of this passage is well founded. The weather gods once again were with us and we made our way through this passage with calm seas and watchful eyes as we navigated around the commerce of the world in real time before pushing on into the Sea of Marmaris and anchoring at Sarkoy.
Day 4 saw us push along the north coast of the sea of Marmaris with more dolphins shadowing us than I have seen in once place during my sailing journeys. Lots of fishing just outside each village would indicated that there must be a good herring or some other schooling fish.
Day 5 currently sees us on the longest day of the year making the last push to Istanbul, and our next adventure.
A special thank you to the gods of the four winds.....they were gentle on us.
