Wed 3 Oct – Storm sail

When we anchored on Tuesday night in Naxos it looked like we’d be nicely protected behind the harbour wall. It wasn’t to be. A north westerly swell picked up and by 01:30 we were up on deck assessing our options, as were our neighbours. This wasn’t the usual irritating rocking, as this wasn’t the usual mild swell. Big waves were rolling in and sending Bini literally sailing on her anchor. We looked to see whether we’d be more protected towards the beach where two other boats were anchored. Even though they were a good 80m away, we could hear the contents of their kitchen cabinets being thrown around so they weren’t in any better shape than us. We also considered leaving for Syracuse but given all the potentially prop-fouling rubbish in the water that wasn’t an option either. By now it was 03:30 and with nothing to be done we went back to bed and managed to snooze a bit until the alarm went off at 06:30.

We had a 60NM mile, 12 hour passage ahead of us to Syracuse. After having had very little sleep it took us a while to get going. I made the coffee whilst Tom (in his own words) went off to, “Slip into something a little more functional” – meaning his thermal under layer, as it was a little chilly. We sat wearily on deck, coffee in hand looking in the direction we’d be sailing. It looked very dark and gloomy and Mount Etna was shrouded in thick grey clouds, we were bound to get a soaking. At 08:30 we set off, dressed in full wet weather gear.

We motored for the first hour or so then the wind picked up from the east (as per the forecast) so we got the jib out and started sailing. As we moved further into open water the sea state and the winds started to build. The waves were a good 2 to 3 meters and their peaks hid both the land and the horizon as they passed. Helming required concentration but Bini was handling well. In the distance we saw another yacht coming towards us, and we held our course do we’d pass starboard to starboard. As we continued the wind picked and was gusting to 28 knots, we needed to reef pretty quickly. We headed up into the wind and reefed the jib, managing a quick wave as the other yacht passed. We noticed that he’d already got his third reef in – a storm sail setup.

We carried on for the next hour, our apprehension subsiding as we got used to navigating through the very lumpy sea. We found a few techniques to lessen the blow from the waves which were crashing against our port side, and if we kept the wind at 120 degrees we were making good progress doing 6/7 knots. We got a short soaking once, and managed to avoid one very ominous looking cloud as it passed over the land.

An hour to so later the wind started to come forward so sailing our original course became tricky, as were too close to the wind and the jib was beginning to flap. We tried sheeting in the jib but the wind just kept veering – we were now a whopping 62 degrees off course! As we were already a little later than we’d hoped we furled the jib away and started the engine and got back on our original course.

Then, it started raining. The ever optimistic Tom said, “It looks like it’s clearing up over there” but it really wasn’t. As far as our eyes could see it was dark, and getting darker. They’d be no escaping this one. About 200m in front of us we could see torrential rain and within a minute we were right in it. The visibility was really poor by now so we were keeping an extra eye out for boats, and to our surprise we saw in the gloom another sailboat passing by! It was quite comforting to know we weren’t the only crazies out in this weather. Then within seconds the wind really picked up. We had gusts of 40 knots and suddenly the boat was out of control. The boat indicator on our chartplotter was spinning around in circles and we didn’t know which was was up. The wind was driving the rain horizontally into our eyes making it almost impossible to see, and we had to shout to be heard over the wind howling through the rig. Our main sail, which had been nicely flaked on the boom broke its ties and was being blown sideways. Lightening was flashing all around us and we were convinced it was only a matter of time before we were hit. To make matters worse we were only about 2 miles from land and on a lee shore, meaning we were being buffeted by both wind and waves towards the coast. We revved the engine and I did all I could to steer us due east, all the while watching out for boats although visibility now was down to no more than 30 meters. Throughout this whole nightmare Tom was amazingly calm, which really helped me not have a complete meltdown! Would this ever stop?? I had visions of continuing like this until dark, and then what would we do? I really wished then that I’d spent more time reading our storm tactics handbook than messing around on bloody Instagram.

Glancing behind me nervously for boats I saw – blue sky!! I shouted to Tom who turned around and the relief was written all over his face. Even better it was precisely where we needed to go, and as the wind and rain eased up we turned around and headed out of the storm. Phew!!

We couldn’t relax yet though as we still had three hours to go before we made it to Syracuse. Tom went for a change of clothes as he was totally soaked through; he’d been sitting under the bimini where the water was pouring off and until now he hadn’t actually noticed. Whilst down below he checked just to make sure we could get into the anchorage with this sea state, and luckily it looked do-able.

At around 18:00 we came into the anchorage, which was huge, empty and completely flat calm. We called the coastguard on the radio who told us where to anchor and as we turned off the engine we gave each other a massive hug! We cooked dinner, had a much needed drink and utterly exhausted from the day, and having had only 3 hours sleep we were unconscious by 2030.