So we meet again..
As we leave Hvar behind us, we have very little regret. Croatia has been a tiring and stressful place to sail, it has been stressful to reach it in due time, it has been stressful to deal with all the mad charter boats and it has been frustrating to deal with the locals. As we motor between the islands of Paklinski, the quantity of boats anchored on each side of the channel is absolutely crazy and despite being absolutely beautiful we do not feel tempted to stay another night in the area. Instead we aim for the small island of Vis which, besides being the filming location of Mama Mia 2, is a port of entry/exit into the country. Being on “the edge” of Croatia, small and already a long way away from Split, I was expecting it to be free of mad charter boats. I could not have been more wrong. As we slowly motor sail towards the island I can see an armada of mad cats zooming towards us at full speed. Looking back I can see just as many vessels following us. It looks like we are just about to re-create the battle of Trafalgar. The right of way is of course not being respected by the majority of the charter boats and we suddenly find ourselves dodging vessels in a chaotic ballet of madness.
The east coast of Vis offers a very large bay with plenty of options from anchoring to mooring balls to 2 town quays. Based on the traumatic experience of the past night and the one week crossing we are starting the following day, we opt for the easiest and most comfortable option: the mooring ball. The field is huge and still mostly empty. I pick one ball and we call it home for the day. After a nap and some boat cleaning, I head to the village to register the boat and ask about the procedure to exit the country the next day. The office is small and looks more like a tourist information booth. Inside is a young couple. He obviously has no business here but to keep his girlfriend who works there busy.
“Hi, I need to pay for my boat”
“Hum .. “
“The name is Kujira, your colleague passed by the boat earlier”
“Hum .. ”
Am I dealing with a future Karen?
“I was told to come here to pay”
“I don’t know. What is the name of the boat?”
“Kujira”
She looks at her computer screen.
“I can not find you”
“We are on a mooring ball”
“Hum ..”
I don’t know whether she is playing minesweeper or searching for Kujira in her system but it takes forever.
“Ok”
“How much is it?”
“I don’t know”
Definitely playing minesweeper…
After what must have been a couple more games she finally manages to print an invoice.
“Excuse me, but I have a question. We are leaving the country tomorrow, do you know where we need to go to be checked out?”
“Hum .. I don’t know”
“Do we need to go to the port authorities?”
“I don’t know”
“To the police station to be stamped out”
“I don’t know”
Her boyfriend is getting impatient and she obviously is trying to get rid of me in order to be able to resume doing nothing with him. I leave the building not any wiser.
After a quick visit of the local mini market I head back to the boat to pick up Kim. We have a mission for the afternoon: checking Kujira out of the country before walking to fort George. The checking out part for Kujira goes incredibly smoothly and gives me hope for our check out the next day. A sign outside town indicates the fort to be only 40min away. The place used to be an army base and I guess the signs were made by soldiers as it takes us well over an hour to get there but we are just on time for the sunset. Fort George has been turned into a fancy bar and restaurant. The place is so inviting, with its huge sofas under the pine trees that we can’t resist and sit down. Now of course we have to take a look at the menu, smoothies, lots of great looking smoothies. It was a trap and we fell right into it. Except that it is a dumb trap, they do not serve smoothies in the evening. Why? Who knows, except that it gets us back on our feet in no time and out of there. By the time we are back in town we are too late to go to the outdoor cinema which would have been an amazing and relaxing experience after so many weeks spent with visitors. Instead we opt for the legendary best sandwiches in town. It’s a terrible mistake, the only thing which is legendary is the shit show and after nearly an hour we only get below average sandwiches. It feels like a bit of a missed opportunity to have had an amazing evening in a little town which for once doesn’t feel too overwhelmed by tourism. Back at the boat I discover that our mooring ball is the only one which is offset. The boat next to us is huge and still traumatised from the previous night I feel uneasy about our situation but now all the moorings are occupied so there isn’t much we can do but hope that all the boats are going to behave and that Kujira for once will turn in sync with everyone else.
It is with very little regret that the next day we go hunt for the local Karen in order to check out. We find her office but no one is there despite being during opening hours. Instead a sign on the door is asking you to call a number to talk to a representative of the Karen elite. Which I do and get nothing but what could I have expected:
“Hi, we would like to check out”
“Vere are you”
“In front of your office”
“Vere”
“In Vis, in front of your office. The sign on the door was asking to call this number”
“Come back at 2”
And she hangs up on me.
So we head back to the boat to drop off all the groceries we bought in preparation for our 500Nm journey and I head back to town. I am there at 2pm, on the dot but no one is there.
I wait a bit. Nothing.
An Italian arrives, also wanting to check out, also disappointed to find the office closed.
He calls Karen.
I can only partly hear one half of the conversation but I can easily guess the other half. It must have gone more or less like this:
“Haylo, this is Marrrio, I vould like to cheeeeck out, si”
“Come back later”
“Que macaroni?!? I vant to check out!”
“Don’t care”
“Vat do you mean?!? I need to check out, no one herrre you need to come”
“Come back in a hour”
“P%$&@@!!”
“..”
The Italian leaves, shouting in Italian what I can only assume to be types of pastas. I decide to call Karen as well, just in case group pressure might help:
“Hi again, I would like to check out, I am in front of your office”
“Vait”
“But you told me earlier to come back at 2pm, it is now 2.30pm”
“Vait, ve vill be zere very soon”
So I wait.
And I wait.
And I wait some more.
At 3pm I call back.
“Hi, I am still waiting for the check out, there is still no one”
“I ave told you to vait”
She hangs up on me.
I don’t have many other alternatives but to wait. Finally after some times, a policeman arrives. He is walking like John Wayne, claiming to be the sherif in town. I can feel that it will not be straight forward. He is obviously annoyed to be there and having to work for 5 minutes.
“Vat do you vant?!”
“I would like to check out”
He takes my papers, takes a look at them before kicking me out of the office and asking me to “Vait” some more… After another 5 or 10 minutes he comes back with a stamp, stamps my documents and we are good to go. I rush back to Kujira and we finally get underway by 4pm. Croatia, I will not miss you which is unfortunate as my previous 2 visits of the country, by land, had been excellent. Another reason why I will not miss you is because the weather forecasts for the coming days is predicting winds up to 60 knots along the coasts! Luckily, we are sailing into the sunset at a Kujira pace of 4 knots with a gentle breeze of 12 knots. Sadly the sea state deteriorates to a lumpy horrible sea during the night, Kujira is bouncing and rolling with not enough pressure in the sails to smash the waves. Somehow we manage to hit 8.8 knots during a gust and a wave behind us as the winds tend to be on the very light side. The next day the conditions improve significantly and with all the sails out we manage to average 5.5 knots in 9 knots of wind, which is an excellent ratio for our fat whale. As we are happily cruising in the sunshine, my eyes catch something in the distance. At first it is too far away to be clearly identified. The heat of the sun makes the horizon shimmer but as we get closer, with the binoculars, I can start making out the shape. Very soon there is very little doubt and today we are not the only one to be moving. It is getting bigger and bigger every minute and soon we get surrounded by F18 fighter jets taking off and landing like a swarm of hornets at the entrance of a hive. So here we meet again, USS Harry Truman Show!
Unlike our previous encounter when they were in “stealth mode”, with no lights or activities and we nearly ran into them, this time the entire neighbourhood is aware of its presence. On top of everything it is actually coming in our direction and every fighter jet seems to fly above us while taking off or landing. What is at first an amazing display of Tom Cruise slowly gets us a little uneasy as the aircraft carrier is still getting closer and the jets are now circling above us. In the distance, we also identify a few more navy ships. It looks like we just crashed a party we had not been invited to and dealing with Americans, you can not be certain they will not start shooting at you for no reason. So Kim does the only sensible thing to do, she goes on deck in underwear and starts waving the kiwi flag as a display of our peaceful intentions. Whether it works or whether they were never interested in us in the first place, we will never know for sure but eventually we pass each other with not much more than one kilometre between us, which is very little considering it is 333 meters long, and the angry hornets stop flying above us. And just like that, it suddenly disappears out of sight. After so much excitement, Kim leaves me on watch and goes for a nap. About an hour later, as I am peacefully cruising and minding my own business, I start hearing a strange humming noise. Within seconds it turns into a roaring sounds. Next came the downwash, like a squall out of nowhere, and then suddenly I find myself staring at a US Navy Seahawk helicopter, all guns pointing at me, which then starts doing a 360 around me, always facing me.. Not knowing what to do, I step out of the cockpit and waved at them. Luckily, for once I am wearing shorts. They leave without an explanation, as quickly as they had arrived.
After this, the rest of the day is uneventful, borderline boring.
The following 20 hours are a mixture of sailing and motor sailing in light winds. Therefore in the morning, as we get closer to the Italian coast, we decide to set up the genaker. By the time we are done and ready to deploy it, a big thunderstorm is developing over the land, just a few nautical miles away from our position so we decide to pack up everything to play it safe, just in case. The thunderstorm never reaches us but the wind increases enough that by lunchtime we are making good progress under sail. Sometime during the morning we also lose our trusty, rusty rapala. That one lure that caught the huge tuna on our way across the Tyrrhenian Sea back in June. We will never know what happened but it must have picked a fight with something way too big for him, or us as a matter of fact, as the breaking load of the line is 60 kg and it broke. However, by 3pm that afternoon, it doesn’t matter anymore as we are about to tackle a much bigger fish.
As we get close to the “heel” of the Italian boot, I get some cell phone reception and seeing another big black cloud developing over the mainland, I decide to check the weather forecast. That was a smart move because what I discover is pretty alarming. Basically, there is a huge thunderstorm developing offshore, just south of our location and it is predicted to move over the mainland. In short, we are in the middle of a turd sandwich. I start crunching numbers. If we start motor sailing right now and push Kujira to Mach 1, we should be able to squeeze right between the storm and the land and make it around the heel of the boot before being hit by lightning or crushed onto the cliffs. The only alternative is to turn around, hope to clear the eastern end of the heel before being hit by lightning or being crushed onto the cliffs. If we succeed, beside setting us back quite a few nautical miles, another thunderstorm will be welcoming us. First option it has to be. While I am making all these discoveries and calculations, Kim is on deck, giving Kujira a good scrub, completely oblivious of the situation.
“Kim, stop right now, we need to get out of here”
“Give me 15 minutes”
“We don’t have 15 minutes, we need to get out of here, right now”
“Yeah, yeah, let me finish this”
“No, now, in the cockpit!”
“I’m almost done”
“You don’t understand..”
And she doesn’t indeed as it takes a few more precious minutes before she stops doing what she is doing and climbs back into the cockpit. By now, black clouds have started developing on our port side and our radar is going ballistic, picking up electromagnetic activities all over the place. We adjust the sails accordingly and start motor sailing. The grab bag is ready and my phone with the backup charts is wrapped in a thick layer of aluminium foil in case we were hit by a lightning. The next 2 hours are probably the most stressful hours of motor sailing of my short life as a sailor. First we get hit by winds over 20 knots coming right on our nose, then the rain started pelting down. We quickly start talking about the situation where we might have to abandon ship. Kim gets together the grab bag and I suggest we should wrap our phones in aluminium foil in the case that we are struck by a lightning bolt and our electronics were fried, we would hopefully be able to contact someone. Next come the lightnings and a sudden increase of the wind to 34 knots. The visibility drops to less than a hundred meters. Fortunately our enclosed cockpit is keeping us dry and protected from the wind, which of course would be useless if we end up smashed on the cliffs. To complete the turd sandwich, the sea picks up. We are now facing steep short waves. I push Mr Perkins to his limits and make him scream at 2000rpm and even though he might have a terminal illness, he is not letting us down. Oil is probably oozing out from every gasket but at no point does he slow down. With the extra push from his buddy Mr Perkins, Kujira is smashing these waves like a champ, his fat belly seems to have turned into 13 tonnes of muscles and slowly, little by little, we make our way toward the south, never getting closer than a quarter nautical miles from the coast. After a long and intense couple hours, we finally manage to reach the end of the heel, we can now turn 45 degrees to our right and move away from the storm on a beam reach without risking grounding Kujira. Another couple hours and we finally can relax, having survived our first proper storm. By midnight we are back under sail. The sea is lumpy but the moon is fully out. Despite only 9 knots of wind, Kujira is moving along at a nice 4-5 knots, completely pumped up from the event of the afternoon. Sadly it doesn’t last long before his super power subsides and by the morning we are dragging our keel at a mere 2.5 knots. The Med being the Med, by mid afternoon we are beating into the wind and into the swell, we have 2 reefs in the main and I have put up “Foc the route”, our number 2 on a staysail. It’s a process which turns out to be an absolute pain in the behind once the conditions are a bit dicy. The staysail cable is heavy and bulky, the nose of Kujira is bouncing up and down with every wave we beat into, the deck is slippery and it is a miracle nothing goes wrong in the process. As we reach the bottom of the boot after nightfall, we are shattered, the wind has died to 5 knots and we decide to drop the anchor for a few hours in a place we had stopped on the way east a couple months ago. Predictably, after sunrise the wind starts picking up and by mid afternoon we are zooming at 7 knots moving in complete harmony with the sea. We are now crossing just below the Messina Strait. The steering is not easy and definitely requires a lot of concentration but once in the groove, it is one of those magical moment when you feel ready to take on the world. While Kim is helming I start sketching a rough schedule of our journey to Almerimar, which now not only looks like an achievable goal but one we should be able to reach with a few enjoyable stops along the way. Reaching Almerimar would also be an important milestone in our journey to Las Palmas in Grand Canary where we need to be by early November. Suddenly, everything seems to align perfectly and I get overwhelmed with a feeling of success and achievement. By tomorrow midday we will be in Malta, for a visit and a technical stop to replace our dead batteries. We will have achieved a 500Nm passage, double handed. We will have plenty of time to reach Almerimar and catch our flight to New Zealand. We will make it to the Canaries.
The ying and the yang … do you remember the ying and the yang? When everything goes well, something bad has to happened. The higher the positive, the lower the negative. Oh boy, little did we know what the universe had in stock for us, because everyone knows that the universe has nothing better to do than play with a couple kiwis riding a whale in the southern Med.
With nightfall, the wind drops as per usual and it is the common time to wake up Mr Perkins. As we do so, something on our plotter catches the corner of my eyes: the voltage hasn’t gone up.. I check the guage by the switchboard. Same story, hardly more than 12 volts.. I open the engine compartment, the lights on the alternators controller are off, both of them.. I grab my voltmeter and measure the voltage straight on the batteries, nothing is going in and being dead for weeks now, there isn’t much in them either. The maths are easily and quickly made, without the ability to recharge the batteries, they are likely not going to get us through the night. With no power, we lose the chart plotter, the AIS, the radar, the autopilot and the navigation lights! We would go completely dark like a ghost ship. We need a contingency plan, right now. Kim is really quick to react, she grabs the pilot book and sees that Siracusa (where she really had wanted to go to), literally a few nautical miles away, would offer a safe harbour to anchor in with its large protected bay. We turn 90 degrees to our right and once more ask Mr Perkins to do an extra effort. The entrance of the bay is narrow and defined by breakwaters and rocks. The swell is hitting us beam on and Kuijra is rolling like a mad dog. Everything inside the boat goes flying and crashing. My eyes are stuck on the chart and the radar as it feels like we are just about to crash Kujira. We then start being able to use light bearings and I suddenly feel very grateful for our training going up the Brisbane river, at night. After another intense hour, we drop anchor in one of the easiest anchorages we have been to in the Med. The city walls and breakwaters are doing a marvellous job, inside the bay the sea is absolutely flat and we drop the anchor in 10 meters of water on a muddy seafloor. Defeated, we go to sleep.
The upside of having stopped in Siracusa is that we actually manage to get a good nights sleep without any interruptions or rolling around. The downside is that we now have to clear customs and immigration before finding a way to fix our alternators and going hunting for new batteries. We will also need to find a way to get them on board because our broken dinghy would definitely not survive the weight of 4 new batteries. But first things first, we need to get in touch with the port authorities.
“Port authorities of Siracusa, Port authorities of Siracusa, Port authorities of Siracusa, this is Kujira, Kujira, Kujira, do you copy?”
“Kuyira, zis is porrt autorrities, go channel one one”
“Port authorities of Siracusa, this is Kujira. We are a New Zealand flagged boat with 2 New Zealanders on board. We left from Croatia and were on our way to Malta. We had to make an emergency stop in Siracusa last night due to electrical issues”
“Ok Master, do you need assistance?”
That went really quickly, after all we have just met, but if you want to call me master, sure go ahead, I like it ..
“I don’t know yet but first we need to clear custom and immigration”
“Ok Masterr, if you need assistance ere is the numberrr you need to call”
“Thank you, but what about clearing custom to enter Schengen?”
“Ok Master, call me again laterr”
Well, that didn’t really go as expected. Obviously he either didn’t understand our situation or didn’t know what we needed to do. However, we know that we need to check into Italy as Kujira is not an EU flagged vessel and we are both travelling with kiwi passports. Fortunately we find the phone number of the immigration office. That phone call also doesn’t go as expected. The woman is very friendly but we have a hard time understanding each other as my Italian didn’t get any better since our last visit. Somehow we understand that we need to go to the policia de frontiera at 10am, it is 9 am.
We launch the dingy and start assembling Torqeedo, our electric engine. It is made out of 5 elements, either bulky, cumbersome, heavy or all the above. In order to save time, I clip the magnetic key on the handle, grab that one in one hand and the battery in the other one. As I reach the back of the boat, the dingy is of course out of reach, only attached by a rope that goes to the top of our solar arch. The rope is, as well, too far for me to reach, so without thinking, I do what appears natural, I use the torqeedo handle to grab it. As I swing it towards the rope, time suddenly slows down into “matrix bullet” mode. As I swing the handle, I can see the magnetic key picking up speed and detaching itself as I stop the swinging motion. The key falls in the water and despite being coated in a thick rubbery material, I discover that it doesn’t float. I can see the key sinking like a stone and without any further consideration I jump into the water, still holding the handle, trying to desperately grab the key or its rope before it disappears forever. This attempt is futile. Not only is it going straight down but when it comes to catching anything, I was born with 2 left hands.
“Sacré bleu! Sacré bleu! Sacré bleu! SA CRE BLEU!!!”
Kim jumps out of the salon, distressed by my shouting.
“What happened? Have you injured yourself?”
“I dropped the key!”
“No you did not”
“Yes, I dropped the key, it’s gone. Sacré bleu Sacré bleu Sacré bleu!”
“No no no, what have you done, what happened”
“I fucked up big time, it’s gone”
“We have to do something!?”
She starts crying.
“There is nothing we can do. I tried to catch it but it was too late. It sank like a stone. It’s gone”
“I’m jumping in, we have to find it”
“We can’t, it’s impossible. We are in 10 meters of water and the visibility is disgusting, I couldn’t even see my feet”
Nonetheless, she rushes back inside and come back a few seconds later in swimsuit and with a pair of goggles.
“It’s useless, you are wasting your time”
“At least I am doing something”, she replied sobbing before jumping in the murkiest water we have ever been in.
Of course, after a couple minutes, she gives up and climbs back on board. We are now 1Nm away from the shore, with a broken dingy and no engine, with a boat with dead house batteries and no alternator to recharge the starter batteries and we need to be at the border police in less than 30 minutes from now. It’s ironic how within 24 hours, we went from being on top of the world to being at the bottom of the pit.
First things first, we need to move Kujira closer to the shore as we can not paddle such a distance on our broken dingy, against the wind, of course. The starter batteries complain a bit but they still manage to wake up Mr Perkins, the house batteries complain as well when we pull up the anchor but fortunately I do most of the job by hand, Kim complains about her life and how nerve-wracking it is to be a cruiser but I have nothing to reply. We re-anchor, paddle to shore in our leaky dingy and rush to the border police. By the time we find the place, it is 11am and neither nor are in any mindset to face a Karen.. We enter the building. Two men are currently woking in the office, one in his late forties or fifties, the other one in his late thirties.
“Buongiorno”
“Buongiorno, we arrived last night con una barca, de Croatia, estamos de Nueba Zelandia. Entrada in Shengen, los passports”
“Si si, I underrrstand” replies the older one with a big smile, before translating to his colleague. He is obviously the more experienced one and they don’t see cruisers checking in every day. They talk for a minute and give the feeling that he has actually no idea about what to do and is guessing what could be needed.
“I need boat rregistrration, insurrrrance, passporrrts, crrrew list”
I hand him over the boat certificate of registration, the boat insurance certificate in Italian, my kiwi passport, Kim’s kiwi passport and her French carte de sejour and the crew list, which is the document that the Croate authorities made before we left Vis.
He looks at Kim’s carte de sejour.
“Verrry good” and turns to his colleague to explain to him that she doesn’t require anything thanks to this document. My Kiwi passport however is a different story.
“Insurrrance ?”
“Si si” I reply and showed him the boat insurance certificate.
“I think he means your insurance..”, Kim tries to say, at which point I kick her more or less discreetly.
“Insurrrance, si?”
“Si, si” and I point at my name on the insurance certificate, for the boat, written in Italian..
“Bene, bene” and he turns around to his colleague to explain to him that, not being European I need an insurance and this is the certificate. Not only this is a pile of horse shit, Kiwis can enter Shengen, for up to 3 months, without any documents but a valid passport, but the insurance certificate is for the boat and is written in Italian!?! Yet, he is not being pedantic or mean, quite the opposite but he obviously had no clue about what he is doing. Which is confirmed by his next demand:
“You need to wrrrite a letterrr saying that you have enough money”
“Sorry, what?”
“You know, you wrrrite that you have maybe 5000 eurrros, and put yourrr crrredit carrrd numberrr”
“Say what?!? My card number?”
“Yes, you know, you wrrrite some numberrr and put some XXXX”
“…?!? Ok”
Again, while it sounds weird, because it is, he is not doing this with any malevolence, he is just clueless. So I do as he said and make up a completely bogus and meaningless letter with random information on it. He appears very happy with it and keeps on explaining to his younger colleague what needs to be done to check us in. Which obviously is completely random shit. Next he makes me fill up a crew list, but instead of giving me a copy, he keeps it.
“I think I need a copy of this one”
“No, no, you alrrready have yourrr crrrew list”
“But it’s the one from Croatia, we need one for Italy”
“No, no, it’s Ok. I can sign yourrs if you want” and he stamps and sign the Croate crew list.
My heartbeat increases. Had I known it would have been such a mess, I would have given my French passport.
“Bene, bene”, he stamps my passport, hands my documents back and joyfully welcomes us into Italy. As for Kujira, he claims that we don’t have to do anything so we hurry to leave the building before he realises that nothing made sense. To recover from the past 18 hours of madness, we decide to head to Siracusa old town and find a good Italian pizza for lunch. With a full belly, life suddenly appears to be a little less bleak and we have the feeling that the worst is behind us.
We can be so foolish sometimes.
First we learn that today is a national holiday and that every shop is closed but more over, this week is the week of the year during which nearly all businesses are closed. Getting anything done might turn out to be mission impossible. To make things worse, the wind has picked up like crazy and the bay now resembles a washing machine. There is no way we will be able to paddle back to the boat. In the end, we ask a guy doing tourist boat tours to tow our dingy and give us a ride back to Kujira. He kindly accepts. Even in his little power boat it turns into a mission, but we make it in the end. Finally, once you believe it can not get any worse, as we secure a few things outside the boat, our neighbour comes to see us in his dingy despite the horrible conditions. Apparently a boat dragged into us while we were away. He took a few photos as these bastards of course left without leaving a note but after closer inspection we can not see any damages. It might just be that we can not find them but at this point I am so fed up that I decide to go anchor back where we were the night before, in the middle of the bay, away from people and other boats. The starter batteries miraculously still have enough juice and off we go, exiling ourselves to complete what can only be described as a terrible, horrible and disastrous 24h. Almerimar suddenly feels like an unachievable goal..
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