A dolphin, a shark and a tuna walk into a bar
Friday. After a week long fighting with the water pump and doubting about the future of Kujira, there is finally light at the end of the tunnel, or at least at the end of the cave. There isn’t much I can do now but wait for a pump to win the amazing race. The two questions are: which one will arrive first and will it fit? While the Polish pump should arrive first, it is being delivered by DHL and by the look ofMonday. DHL makes a move and claims that the pump will be delivered before midday. Meanwhile, Fedex has made no updates in more than 24h. The Polish pump is the winner and by 1pm I am holding the future of Kujira in my hands. At first glance it looks identical and the holes are definitely at the same spacing, but once I start comparing the old one to the new one, I realise a few significant differences: the new one is longer, the base is thicker and it didn’t come with a gasket..
I get sweaty hands. If it’s longer the belt may no longer be properly aligned with the motor and the alternator. If the base is thicker, will the bolts be long enough for me to tighten my precious nuts? I go for a brainstorming session with Marco, our Italian boat neighbour, and conclude to tackle one problem at a time. Applying all my hard learned skills from kindergarten, using an object to draw a shape, then using scissors to cut the shape, I make a new gasket. I then put the pump in place to investigate the alignment. To my crooked eyesight, it looks fine. Finally the nuts. Three of the 6 are too short for me to put a nut and a spring washer. Moreover, being old and a little bit damaged, I am reluctant to tighten them too much. But it looks like Mr. Perkins might live another day after all. I extract myself from my corner of misery to look at the installation from the other side just to discover that it doesn’t sit flesh at all! There is a 2 mm gap which doesn’t require a PhD to understand that the coolant will happily take this exit for a one way trip to the bog of eternal stench.
Why can’t any boat job be an easy job? Maybe I should wait for the Chinese pump, it might be a better fit? Except that by now, Fedex has updated the status of the parcel to “Has arrived at the dispatch centre in Milan”. Something obviously went terribly wrong. As our water supply now reaches critical levels and the time pressure to reach Greece is turning into an unsolvable mathematical exercise, I have no other option than to work with what I have. And there goes my Monday and Tuesday…
Wednesday. Everything is installed, tightened. The liquid gasket from another neighbour hasn’t cured properly but never will and we are pretty much out of water and fed up with eating pizzas. It’s time to resuscitate the whale but as I am just about to turn the key, the “Cheese Guy” walks by the boat.
The “Cheese Guy” is apparently a bit of a legend around the Olbia quay. He comes and goes without anyone being able to predict when he will be seen again. More importantly he sells local cheeses.
“Bonjourno, arrre you interrrrested in some local cheeses?”
“Hum..”
“Ve have goat cheese, cow cheese ..”
“Hum, I think we are O..”
“Donkey cheese, good local cheese”
“.. Did you say donkey cheese?”
“Yes, of courrrrse, donkey cheese, verrrry good”
At this point, he knows he got me but I haven’t realised this yet. Now the only question from his point of view is to know how much he is going to get out of me.
“Ok, 5 minutes, my brrrrother will come with the carrrr”
After a few minutes a small white van pulls over next to Kujira. A chubby young Italian steps out.
“Hi, it’s me, Luigi”
Right, and I guess your brother was Mario? I nearly ask him.
We don’t waste time and start with the donkey cheese. It’s flavourful but not too much. It is aged just properly to be dry but not too dry, it’s simply good. For the sake of it I try a few more but the donkey cheese is by far my favourite.
“I think I’ll take some of the donkey cheese”
“Ok, no prrroblem, ve can vacuum seal it and it will last up to 2 yearrrrs”
“I think it won’t be necessary”
He takes the whole cheese.. the WHOLE cheese! And we are not talking a Camembert size cheese but a big wheel at leat 20cm in diameter and 10cm tall about 2.5kg.
“Whoa , whoa, whoa, I don’t want the whole cheese!”
“Oh… ve only do whole cheese”
“How much is it?”
“55 eurrrros a kilo but if you don’t vant donkey cheese, ve can go with cow, it is cheaperrr”
The bloody macaroni knows exactly what he is doing, probably played that game already a hundred times. He knows I want the donkey one and he knows he is going to get my money.
“Can’t we just cut a piece of it? It’s really too much on the boat, it will get bad.”
He plays hard to get but for me and me alone, he agrees to cut a section. How lucky I am, he just happened to have a wheel of donkey cheese which has already been cut into. As I am about to tell him to cut a nice slice, he cuts a quarter. It’s too late to tell him I wanted less, he already cut it. And just like that I find myself paying 30 euros for a quarter wheel of donkey cheese.
Slightly annoyed with myself for having fallen for the oldest trick in the book of street vendor, I return to my occupations: bringing Kujira back to life.
I turn the key.
Electricity start running from the battery into the engine, or so I hope.
1 second.
2 seconds.
And suddenly, it jumps to life. Kujira awakens, water starts running through the system, belts are spinning, everything is vibrating but for once it feels great to hear the engine running. Welcome back Mr Perkins, we have been missing you!
To my greatest surprise the Chinese pump also arrives and can be stored in the “spare parts” locker. We never know. I am now eager to leave but a little bit anxious too. We have been here for over 10 days. Have we already forgotten how to handle Kujira?
By the look of our exit, apparently yes. While Kim is on the boat, I start releasing the wrong line from the quay and suddenly find myself trying to hold onto a 14T whale being pushed back by the wind which of course, picked up at the worst time possible. Kim on the other end of the line panics and doesn’t understand my poor instructions. Before we know it, Kujira’s nose is a couple meters away from the quay, the engine is off, we are both holding onto opposite ends of a line and a couple of Germans decide it’s a great time to talk to us about boats and life. We are also drifting backwards towards our friend Marco’s boat. Fortunately, once more he comes to the rescue and we manage to leave with nothing but our egos bruised.
It feels great to be back on the water, the sail is up as soon as we leave the Olbia channel and life suddenly feels a lot brighter. Paradoxically, we are a little bit sad about leaving Olbia. Or is it the first sign of the Stockholm syndrome? The town centre was lovely, clean and charming. The town quay was pretty much free, we met really nice people, the pizzas were great and at 6 euros a pop, a real bargain. We enjoyed refreshing ourselves at the nearby water fountains destined for kids but big enough for 2 idiots to join in. And when the fountains were off, the sprinkler in the park next to the boat did the job too. We also went out for live music a couple times and walked to the supermarket twice a day to get missing ingredients. Kim achieved a lot a sewing jobs while I was battling the pump in the cave and Kujira now has a set of mosquito screens as well as an outboard engine cover. Whether it really is what she did the whole time, I’ll never know, but the mosquito screens look pretty darn spiffy.
As we gently glide towards our anchorage for the night, Kim sees a big plastic bag disappear under the boat, literally a minute before we were planning on turning the engine on. “I didn’t see it come out behind the boat” So of course, as Mr Perkins jumps to life our mind starts playing tricks on us. is it making a different noise? Are the vibrations irregular? What is going on? We turn the engine off and proceed to our first anchoring under sail. Once the anchor is down, I jump in the water to investigate the propeller but everything is normal, it was just a brain fart.
To celebrate our successful departure of Olbia, we decide to treat ourself with a sunset cheese and cured meat platter while listening to some smooth jazz. Kim hasn’t yet tried the donkey cheese but I have been talking about it long enough to rise the expectations. I take a square and slowly put it in my mouth.. It is soft, flavourless and tastes nothing like the cheese I tried earlier! Bloody macaroni! I should have known better not to trust Italian plumbers! To make matters worse, the other cheese we have on the platter is a cheap 12 euros a kilo cheese from the supermarket which actually tastes better…
We had originally planned to meander along the coast of Sardegna before crossing to Sicily or the Strait of Messina, but having been stuck for 10 days means that we are now running behind our already really tight schedule. Mike and Jana are arriving in Athens in just over 2 weeks and we still have a really long way to go. We decide the time has come to cross the Tyrrhenian sea and aim for Messina. The weather forecast is not really in our favour: very little wind changing direction every 6 hours. But we missed the good window last week and we don’t have time to wait for the next one. This part of the Med is famous for having no wind. We spend the day relaxing in Tuvalara and set off for our first multi-day crossing at sunset.
We haven’t really decided how we are going to proceed with the night watches but Kim feeling quite awake, volunteers for the first one from 10pm until 1am. She doesn’t wake me up until 3.30am. She is tired but pretty happy, it has been an uneventful night and with close to no wind she has been motor sailing all along. When I come on deck I am welcomed by a magic sight. The full moon is up, the sea is flat as a mirror and it feels like Kujira is gliding on a pond of mercury. In such conditions, my watch feels like a strange dream. Or maybe it’s the lack of sleep that makes me hallucinate? At 4.30am I can swear I see a ghost ship in the distance. It has the distinct signature of a pirate ship, with it’s multiple masts and gigantic bowsprit. With the binoculars I can just make out the shape. Am I already going crazy? It is going to be a funny ride if that’s the case. It actually turned out to be the Amerigo Vespucci.
A few hours later, as the temperature rises under the scorching sun and the motoring starts becoming really annoying, I emit the hypothesis of a swim. The water is of such inviting deep blue, the sun is so hot, the water is perfectly still. As I am about to jump in, Kim points at a big floating thing no more than a couple hundred meters from the boat. She reaches for the binoculars but concludes that it’s probably a piece of garbage. I jump on the roof of the boat and have a second look. If it is a piece of garbage, why are there fins frenetically moving around it?
Fins..
Fins?
Sharks?
Sharks!
What first appeared as a piece of garbage is actually a dead dolphin and we just stumbled upon 4 blue sharks having lunch. Curiously we turn the boat toward the carcass and kill the engine to slowly glide towards it. Once we are less than a hundred meters from them, the sharks become more interested by the new kids in town than their meal. They gently and inquisitively swim around Kujira, only centimetres from the surface, before diving and reappearing on the other side. They stay with us for well over half an hour and only once we start the engine do they return to their meal. One thing is for sure. I am not going to jump off the back of the boat anytime today. Instead I have to satisfy myself with the salt water bucket challenge.
A few hours later Kim wakes me with excitement,
“We got a fish, we got a fish!”
“Wait, what? Who am I? Why am I sleeping against a wall?”
Kujira is racing at a steady 6+ knots and what appears to be a fairly large fish is vigorously trying to free itself from our lure. Kim is in underwear and I am fully naked, a winning team!
I quickly put some pants on and a life jacket and start winding in the line around a very flimsy wheel. Meanwhile Kim is trying to slow down the whale but the bastard is having way too much fun to respond to any of her commands. She eases the main and turns away from the wind, but the bastard keeps racing at 6 knots crushing the swell which has suddenly appeared. After a bit more persuasion she manages to reduce our speed to 4 knots which will have to do. At the back of the boat I am still slowly bringing the fish closer to us. It is big but hopefully should be manageable. We don’t have a gaffer nor a net so once Johnny the fish is within reach I grab it by the gills and bring it on deck. It’s a beautiful little yellow fine tuna and when I say little, it is to tuna standards. It is a good 5kg, probably the biggest size I ever want to deal with. I was expecting a hard battle but Johnny seems to know it’s over and makes it easier for me by not fighting back.
During our first 7 weeks of COVID lockdown, I graduated from YouTube university with a major in python, the programming language, and a minor in Ikejime, the Japanese traditional art of killing a fish. Remembering my qualifications, I do not waste time and stab the fish in the head before slicing the spine. Thick red blood is flowing everywhere and the fish smell becomes overpowering but I need to work fast. Not only the back of the boat is bouncing up and down but I am also wrongfully concerned about the meat getting bad in this heat. Next is gutting it. The smell becomes more prevalent.
Kim gets a bucket and a couple of big bowls to put the various pieces of the fish in. Johnny shall not have died in vain and we are wanting to keep every bit and piece, including the head with his big eyes looking at us wondering how he got caught by 2 idiots riding a whale.
Once Johnny has been sliced in more manageable chunks I move to the kitchen to do the filleting and removing the thick leathery skin. Meanwhile Kim tries to clean any evidence off the boat of the massacre that just took place.
I put the head and all the bony bits and pieces in the pressure cooker to make some kind of fish soup or curry, I do a plate of sashimis, a poke bowl and 3 entire containers of fillets and steaks. The fish juice runs all over the kitchen bench, the sink and into the drain. The fish smell becomes so overpowering that Kim becomes a bit nauseated and can not face eating any of it right now. As for me, my sashimi has a bitter sweet taste. I feel terrible about killing Johnny.
Kim’s nausea doesn’t improve and having steamed the entire boat with fish head soup doesn’t help her condition. I pour white vinegar down the drain to try to remove the smell from the pipes but we are heeling on the wrong side and it doesn’t drain properly. Now it stinks of fish and vinegar which doesn’t help Kim in anyway.
During my nightshift I start having a philosophical debate with myself about the evolution of our species and our attitude towards other living creatures. If we are so smart, why can’t we feed ourself without killing animals or becoming annoying vegans? While I will not turn vegetarian today, who knows what kind of thoughts I might have after 3 weeks of nightshifts.
The next day is quite a magical experience, with no wind and no swell, the boundary between the sea and the sky soon disappears, the fish smell in the boat however doesn’t. I take a rest in the morning and when I wake up around lunchtime, I learn that Kim has been really unwell on her watch and dry-heaving over the side of the boat. She’s relieved to finish her watch and with ice packs, tiny sips of water and a good nap she starts to recover. We spend the entire afternoon on the spot with no sails and no engine, just snoozing in a timeless space and time.
To this day, we have had more than a dozen meals with Johnny the fish and we still have a few leftovers in the freezer. Thanks for providing for us Johnny.
Kim has another wonderful dolphin encounter at night. Under the stars and moonlight, dolphins play at the front of the boat, dancing around the flashlight she is shining out while tethered to the front of the boat. She attempts to catch it on camera, but only has evidence of the swarms of jellyfish passing by the boat.
After 4 days at sea we finally reach the Aeolian islands. As the sun rises over the horizon, the outline of the famous Stromboli volcano starts appearing in front of me. While active, we are not fortunate enough to be welcomed by bursts of lava. Nevertheless, it is a beautiful sight after a long crossing.
Anchoring in the Aeolian islands is a bit tricky for 2 reasons. Firstly the Italian regulations forbid any sail boat to anchor closer than 300m from a beach and while the Italians seem to have very little consideration for this law, once in a while a poor bugger is being fined 300 to 500 euros. With my luck, if we tried to pull this stunt I am pretty certain that we would get fined. Secondly, they are actually underwater volcanos with only a third of them above the surface. As a result it is steep and 300m from the shore you easily have a depth of 100m, not really ideal for anchoring unless you are the Queen Mary 2. For these reasons we decide to go with the crazy expensive mooring buoy by the village. We try to reach them by VHF beforehand but with no success so I end up calling them with my phone and let them know we will be there in 30 minutes.
“Ok ok, no problem, just call me on the VHF once you are here.”
Approaching the island is pretty magical and I was absolutely unaware of such place in the Med. It looks like the images I have of adventurers reaching remote islands in the middle of the oceans. A small village nestled on the side of an active volcano, surrounded by crystal clear water. Welcoming and menacing at the same time.
“Ok ok, I’ll be there in 10 minutes”
With nothing else to do we decide to get closer to the buoys, much closer, basically within arms reach. After a few minutes we see a guy coming out on a dingy. It must be him. But he stops half way to our boat, gets up and starts looking towards the beach. Oh no, I think we are dealing with an island idiot…
Kim starts waving at him but he is basically facing the other way, looking towards the beach, where he just came from with binoculars…
I try to call him on the VHF but of course he doesn’t reply. However he calls me on my phone.
“Where are you?”
“We are right here”
“Are you in Stromboli?”
Yes you moron, I think out loud, “we are right behind you!”
He keeps looking towards the beach and he is so unaware of the 14 tonnes whale creeping right behind him that I start having doubts whether it really is the right person.
“We are right by the buoy, are you in white t-shirt and red shorts?”
“But where are you?”
He turns to the side and seems to spot a boat in the distance.
“I think I can see you”
“Noooo, that’s not us. Behind you, we are here already!”
Finally he spots us but doesn’t seem the least bit surprised that he missed seeing us. He is friendly though and gives us a hand with the mooring. Before leaving he tells us that if we need anything, we can just call him on the VHF. Right…
Ever since we left La Grande Motte, we have been racing towards Greece to arrive in Athens just on time to welcome our good friends, Mike and Jana. The water pump set back has now put us under extreme pressure. It might still be doable but at what cost? On top of that, it is still uncertain whether the Corinth canal will reopen in July as originally planned, which could become a major issue as we need to be in Croatia by the end of July. With remorse, I ask Mike and Jana whether they could meet us in Patras, on the Ionian side of Greece. They agree which lifts a huge burden off my shoulders and moreover gives us a little bit of time to explore some of the 7 Aeolian islands. They are all beautiful and well worth our time. We enjoy exploring the little villages, swimming in warm turquoise water and dining out for sampling more pizzas.
I start giving her instructions of how to put the sling on, but she is just holding the rope and pulling herself back to the boat.
“Get me back in, get me back in” she shouts as I manoeuvre the boat around her. Once back on board we realise that the rescue sling snapped, just like every bloody piece of kit left behind by the previous bloody owner. I guess we’ll add it to the never ending shopping list.
After 6 days in this corner of paradise the time has come to resume our race towards Greece and leave Sicily behind us. On the 26th of June, we pull up our anchor just after sunrise and start our journey towards the Messina Strait wondering what trick Kujira is going to play on us next…
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