Sailing to Sicily

58 hours at sea:

Monday: Up early and prep the boat for sea. Anchor up at 11am. Motor out of our safe harbor and point almost due West.

I couldn’t believe how calm the sea was. We had left Greece knowing the weather would be calm for the upcoming days and due to Marybeth and the kids tendency to get seasick, a window of calm was exactly what we needed. Even though this meant motoring with the Main sail up, we would get there in two and a half days.

After some coffee and breakfast, we settled into our sea routine. Someone on watch and others in various spots on the boat, depending on how hot it was. The kids are now helping with day watches, which helps the adults have more down time and earns the kids precious “screen time,” a system that Shirish, the captain, has expertly weaned to an art of trading chores for time spent on their computers.

I spent some time up front on the bow and finished the book, Christ Recrucified, by Nikos Kazantzakis, with the ending leaving me in a melancholy mood.

Night watch was split between the three of us and I was assigned 3am to morning. Shirish woke me on cue. Summer watch is so simple compared to pulling on a ton of gear for cold weather sailing. The warm air allows you to dress in what you have slept in and only slip on your safety harness.

Once in the cockpit, I clip a tether into my safety harness and get a briefing from Shirish: “No ships all night. Stay at 270 degrees. Wind shouldn’t change. I’m going to bed.”

Ten minutes later a ship appears on the distant horizon.

First just one white light. Then three. "Okay, it’s a cargo ship. Then green…or is it red. #@%^!&*!! It’s both!" I panic to myself.

I watched for about 40 minutes as the lights got larger and the position on the starboard (right) bow didn’t change. I absolutely HATE to wake the captain when I’m on watch but it was getting too close and I could not make out what direction it was heading relative to us. I was seeing both red and green and that means it is heading straight to us.

I decide: It is better to say “sorry I woke you” then “sorry I crashed your boat into a freighter.”

After waking him, the ship seemed to turn slightly and only the green light was seen and seemed to not be moving. As it passed, even Shirish was not sure what it was, I concluded that it was not a freighter but a large yacht that was able to slow down and change course slightly for us. With Shirish back snug in the salon bunk, I watched the ship quickly disappear on the dark horizon behind us.

Tuesday: Another light day of wind and hot day of sun. Most of the day would go by without a sighting of anything else living except a quick showing of dolphins. The second night, I had the midnight to 3am watch. This is a much harder watch because you go to bed at 9pm, wake and midnight and go back to bed at 3am, breaking up your sleep and leaving you zombie like when you wake at the normal “sun in your eyes” time in the morning. I’m a great nap-taker so I don’t worry about it and with the right amount of coffee (something sacred on the boat!), I can feel quite alive.

Wednesday: Sometime in the night the wind had picked up to 15 knots. Shirish had added the 150 gib and the Staysail increasing the boat speed from 4-5 knots to 6-7…letting us turn off the motor and giving us a sensation of flying thru the water. It was a great entrance into the port of Syracuse, Sicily. An amazing castle/fort lines the side of the city as the entrance to the bay. The pearly white ancient site blended into a line of like colored buildings that lined the city. It looked like a movie set. We are definitely in Sicily.