Telltale 103

Part 2 of the voyage up North towards Ayvalik from Symi. We stayed another day on Arki and copied some of Manolos music. You will have to come on the boat yourselves to be able to enjoy this. I keep this secret limited, but indeed it remains special music. Limited edition, in a real sense.

The next day we also spend some time walking over the island. Not much there, except of course your obligatory greek orthodox chapel, even in the most remote places. The churches are open and inside sometimes hide jewels and real beauty.



The anchorage (or Port Augusta as the Greeks call it..... ) on Arki.....

For the longer wintermonths I bought a fresh plant for inside the boat, this time with some color.

Within the same day we had sunshine, rain, no wind at all, 55 knots of it (force 10 Beaufort), rainbows, black skies, blue skies and finally red skies. It was all there in one day. The following 7 pictures were all taken on that same day... believe us........



The above picture was taken after the first squall had given us a taste of what was to come....

Two hours later we watched the following one coming.....  anxiously. But this one was going to be nasty...giving us 55 knots of wind and NO visibilty at all...the sea flattened out by the strength of the wind...it lasted for an hour and than the rainbows came....... Mother nature... YOU WIN, on al accounts. What beauty!!!!!!
However this black curtain approaching is not predicting ANYTHING good:


When it finally hits us, the seas are flattened by the strength of the wind (picture taken at full strength of the squall by a brave Steph, she definately risked her camera, which is not waterproof)


But when it all passed the rainbows come out, at some stage we saw two at the same time, one reaching from horizon to horizon..


So, Sylphe continues, wet but not beaten.......



And at the end of the afternoon and sitting in full sunshine, we see the Turkish Coast approaching after an eventfull day at sea, with most of the time that typical skyline; with clouds (some pitchblack) and spots of clear, blue, open sky. Like the one in the picture. Threatening and comforting at the same time.

 Rounding the Cape and turning into Cesme we look back once more and get greeted by the sun for the last time that day:
 


We stayed four days in Cesme, nicely tied up onto the quay, electricity on and the heater on. The weather changed again, this time for the better part. Sunshine was back, the skies cleared and the temperatures dropped dramatically with it. Rather logical if Northerly winds bring cold air all the way from the Black Sea. We met up with Kenan's father, who lives here in Cesme and we had nice diners at his house and on Sylphe. On the third day a lonely sailboat sailed in....for sure: a Dutchman sailing in this time of the year. More surprising was the size of his boat: 6.80 meters, which is somewhere around 20 feet. He came sailing down the rivers, all the way from Holland, ended up in the Black Sea and was now making his way further south. Compliments to Jan, I admire you.

The next day Steph and I sailed out towards Oinoussa, a small Greek island. It was almost a perfect sunny day, but with 20-25 knots of wind directly in our faces also bitterly cold. We tied up in Oinoussa town and closed the boat, put the heater one position higher and watched TV. The great thing about sailing in these waters in this time of the year is the complete absence of any other yachties. The ports are empty, so most of the times we can put Sylphe alongside, which is unique. Out, at sea, it is even more empty and the last time we saw another yacht was more than three weeks ago when we left Symi the first day. We have not seen any others since. Yes, we met Jan, but that was in port and the only one for that matter.

We got up early the next morning and sailed out of Oinoussa, to round the island and make the last big crossing for this eason, 40 miles across to Lesbos. No wind, sunshine, no swell...mirror flat. This would be a long day on engine. However we had not covered 1.5 mile when Roland ran Sylphe AGROUND AT FULL SPEED. A rocky patch in the middle of open water was only 1 meter below the waterline. And Sylphe draws 2,5 meter so that clearly did not fit!!!. Unfortunately we did it with 7 knots of speed, so quite a bump and a rather abrupt way to come to a standstill. When we had stopped...... Steph and I looked at each other...shocked and a little scared. This had been quite a bang.
Sylphe was hard aground and hanging over to starboard at some 5 degrees. I checked under the floors to see if water was coming in, but no...thanks for that. I realised that because of the speed and the force of the collision I would not be able to get Sylphe off these rocks without help. I tried the VHF for the Greek Coast Guard, but -for sure- no response on Channel 16 (NOT to my surprise, but hey....). Now I cursed the emptiness of these waters.....
We took another coffee, cigarette and had a look around the boat. Everywhere were rocks, and under the bow clearly less than a meter. At the port stern there seemed to be a little more depth than on starboard. But how to take advantage of this. The waterline of Sylphes hull, was some 4 inches higher than the waterlevel. We were seriously aground and had lifted ourselves out of the water.

We kept the engine running in full reverse. Who knows it may help, but I was little hopefull. We put the dinghy outboard on and pushed and pulled with the dinghy, but to no avail either. Nice try...... than the outboard stopped running.. Ahh, great, just add to the misery.
Sitting in the dinghy I took the outboard apart and whilst I was doing this Sylphe suddenly passed me...in full reverse. A little wind had helped her and she was afloat again. The whole process lasted more than an hour, plenty of time to take some pictures, but we