In theory this section of the blog should be relatively short; the crossing from Syracuse to Zakinthos is just under three hundred miles and should take two days. However, for one reason and another it became quite protracted.
Susan arrived with us for a week to do the crossing, much easier with three people. We planned on having one or two days for her to see Syracuse and then leave. We did a bit of sightseeing, eating, drinking and generally taking it easy.
Sunset at Lakkios, Syracuse
Nicalos, Jim & Susan
Well I say easy but there’s no such thing a a free ride on Camira. The fenders needed cleaning so the crew were put to work, well; at least I think she’s cleaning them? and then me.
Anyway, the day comes for us to leave so it’s all go. I went for my morning run and came back to help get the boat ready for the off only to be told by Susan that Gordon had gone to the dentist. He’d been having trouble for a while and had now flared up. He thought he’d prefer an Italian dentist to a Greek one.
Susan and I were sitting there, sail cover off, instruments on, ready to slip the lines on his return. Ha! He informs us that after five injections and a fair amount of pain he has to go back on the Thursday. Instruments off, sail cover back on. He needed root treatment which in the end couldn’t be done easily or quickly so the tooth was to be extracted but it broke when being pulled and had to be drilled out and his gum stitched. The long and the short of it was that poor Susan had come out to go to Greece and ended up spending the whole ten days in Sicily.
I think she still enjoyed it though. We hired a car, which Susan had to drive as Gordon and I can’t see too well in the dark, we found this out on an earlier car hire escapade. Anyway, we didn’t weary, had a few evenings out with friends Jim and Jean who incidentally come from where Susan comes from and they know some of the same people. We went for pizza with our friend Nicolas from France and obviously did the aperitif bit on each of the boats most evenings. We did manage a day sail round to Grand Harbour but any further sailing we planned was put paid to by the weather, but that’s how it goes with boats.
The woman means business
Sailing around the Grand Harbour
Marzamemi
Fontaine Bianchi – brave woman went for swim
Noto
Madaonna di La Crime
Parc Paulo Orsini and very old anchors
“Space 1994” as Gordon calls it
One of our outings with Susan was lunch in Del Forrestier, a wee restaurant in a completely non tourist part of Syracuse. Gordon and I had eaten here many times without incident. You could see it from the balcony of the appartment we stayed in in the winter.
Our billet for the winter
We went in, sat down and next thing this man from the next table tips his cap at Susan and I, we exchange smiles and greetings etc, then he wants to join us! He loves the fact we’re from Scotland and we clink glasses with him quite a few times. He had obviously been clinking his glass quite a bit during the day and was a tad tipsy. Next thing out he goes, but he’s coming back he tells us. Lo and behold he returns with a bottle of Cava and a lovely cake from the bakers. By this point everyone else in the restaurant is looking at our table and we’re not sure how the restaurant owner is taking all this when our benefactor asks for new glasses, cake plates and cutlery for us all! I was so stressed with everyone looking at us I nearly ended up in same state as him necking the Cava. All of this took with him not speaking a word of English and us not speaking Italian, it was incredible! He seemed to take a particular shine to Susan and wanted to exchange addresses. His name was Peter, his kindness and generosity was lovely and is something I‘m sure we will all remember.
Peter
We returned to Del Forestier with Jim, Jean and Susan a few nights later but Peter wasn’t there this time. I think I’ll send him a postcard tomorrow and sign it “Susan”.
Back again with Jim & Jean
Lakkios
It was great having Susan here but we’ve decided that future visits should take place a bit later in the sailing season once we’re well and truly under way. Maybe then she will actually get some sailing in.
We had a good weather window to go after Susan went home so, once again I readied the boat and we were leaving within the half hour. Or maybe not! Just ready to go and I thought “I’ll nip to the heads (toilet) before we cast off” Hmmm! toilet won’t flush, you couldn’t pump the flush as the pressure behind it was too great………blocked! We tried everything with the hope of still getting away but to no avail. We couldn’t leave for a fifty-five hour sail with blocked heads. Yip, you’ve guessed…..instruments off, sail cover back on. You get the feeling we’re not meant to go to Zakinthos for some strange reason!!!!!
The heads thing delayed us by a day. We had a chat with the lady in the chandlers and she suggested taking the toilet pipes out and banging them to break up the calcium that builds up in them. No easy task on a Moody, there are four meters of pipe which runs behind all the furniture and fittings which need to come out to get at it. Anyway, we did that and took the pipe up to a wall and battered nine bells out of it against the wall, stuck this twisty spring think through it, ran copious amounts of water, cleaning agents etc and et voila! it did the jobby! Oops, sorry, the job. See, it’s not all G & T’s and lounging about.
Next two days we spent at sea, mostly motor sailing as we’d missed the good wind the first day over to Zakinthos. The start of our summer cruise.
Cold two night crossing to Zakyntos
When we arrived in Zakinthos, our friend Nicolas was there. He’d had a bad trip over, his fuel pump gave up on him and there was little wind, it took him eighty hours! He has a cat – thought he might have eaten him !
Dawn 2nd day Zakyntos in the distance
Zakinthos is where we suffered damage to the boat last year so we were being extra cautious to stay off the quay as far as we could to avoid the ledge that protrudes under the water. There was some bad weather forecast so we moved the boat to keep us well of. All in vain! The storm was worse than expected and the French boat next to us anchor slipped and he came hurtling into us…..not once but twice! He had footered with his anchor so much I think he lifted it. On his second attempt at causing us damage he succeeded, he panicked, gunned his engine while up against us, caught our rigging on his dinghy davits and then caught our guard wires and completely snapped two of our stanchions. As you can imagine there were a few choice words at his complete madness and total idiocy. He seemed to be in a world of his own.
While all this was going on we were getting pushed onto the big motor boat at the other side whose stern line was catching our life raft. It had already knocked the danbuoy off and we had to remove the life raft and solar panel before they were taken out as well. Most boats had their engines on holding them off the quay, us included. But the wind was so strong you couldn’t hear the engine and didn’t realise we had stalled. With effect, we went back and bounced off the ledge under the water. We had stalled because we now had a rope round the prop, not one of ours but one that was unused and had fallen in the water. Gordon had to go in after it had calmed down to get it off, but that was once it was pitch black and couldn’t see a thing, poor soul. Honestly, it was horrendous, the wind was shrieking, the water was coming up over the boat battering us in the face, we were exhausted trying to fend the crash boat off us and trying to fend ourselves off the three big stern lines on the starboard side of the motor boat. Into the bargain when Gordon went down to free the prop, he felt the rudder and knew we had suffered damage that had to be repaired before we could move on. Maybe this was why we weren’t meant to get to Zakinthos???
There we were, just back in the water about three or four weeks and had to be lifted out again. Kostas, the guy who looked after the motor boat was really helpful and arranged for us to be lifted out and for the repair to the rudder to be done. Yiannis, a man whose boat was out on the hard lent us his ladder for the four days we were there and helped us out with translation. Neither Zissis the crane driver nor Andreas the rudder repair man spoke any English but they were so nice and so helpful. The night before we went back in the water, Zissis and his wife Zena came and asked us to go out for dinner with them which was lovely. We couldn’t get replacement stanchions but we did find a guy who managed to weld them as a temporary measure to at least allow us to get going again. So even although Zakinthos has been bad luck for us on two occasions, the people are great and couldn’t help us enough. Also, I won a lucky dip on the Lotto, so not all bad.
Lift out and damaged rudder
Post repair
Zakynthos Harbour
Yannis & Zissis
Going back in
We left Zakinthos on 19 May at 07.30 heading for Kipirissia.
