Week 4 - Brindisi to Le Castella
Heavily reefed sails to try and slow down!!
In the last post, Mark and I were just leaving Brindisi, full of enthusiasm, optimism and relief to be actually moving again. The target (whilst it is always Barcelona) was simply to get some more miles safely under the keel. We had no idea how far we would get this time, but were well aware that there were three “hurdles” to jump before we got to one of our desired staging posts ie. Palermo. 1/ Gulf of Tranato, 2/ The Gulf of Squillace 3/ The Straits of Messina. Thankfully the “One day at a time” mantra has been engrained in my brain for the past 10+ years, so I was able to temper my hopes to what we could achieve today!
Setting off motor sailing in light but favourable winds, we wanted to keep our average to around the 6.5 knots and hopefully achieve close to 150 miles per day! We had decided to both work deck during the day, then around 2000 we would start 2 hours on and 2 hours on overnight. Grabbing some much needed sleep as we progressed through the night.
All was going well. I had cooked a couple of lasagnes before we left (using mascarpone instead of creme freche I might add) to cover hot meals and we tucked into that just before dark around 1600. As I regained my sea legs, we slipped into a familiar pattern of sailing and regaling each other with stories from over the decades. Plenty of laughs, a double rainbow, some fine sailing and no rain. We passed Otranto without incident. Around an hour or so before we reached the last bit of the “heel” the engine took a bit of a speed wobble! The revs dropped momentarily before picking up again. Mark and I looked at each other as if to say “it wasn’t me, I didn’t bloody touch anything” and we pontificated for 30 minutes or so about what it might have been, could have been and probably was or was not! In any case, it appeared to be just a blip and the further we progressed, the less we were concerned as the 100hp Yanmar just kept on driving us forward without any more issues.
I did reveal to Mark later that something my Dad used to say to me about engine noises or strange happenings with my early cars, that once you hear something different, “it won’t get any better or fix itself you know”. As we rounded the last bit of the “heel” leaving Santa Maria di Leuca in our wake, all thoughts about the engine had almost been forgotten!
With a decent wind building on our beam, MacMac surged onwards and life was good. At 2200, with Santa Maria di Leuca 20 miles behind us and 60 to go to cross the bay, our plans were suddenly turned upside down. Mr Yanmar picked that moment to lose power. Dropping from a steady 2000rpm to just over 1000rpm. No matter what we fecked about with, no power just a stubbornness to stick to 1000rpm. There was some colourful language I don’t mind mentioning - a lot actually! My heart was in the pit of my stomach with disappointment and that “F*ck me” feeling. I new righty away that we wouldn’t be doing a straight non-stop run to Palermo. Those of you that know me know that I’m a bit of a fan of the Apollo moon landing program from the late 60’s early 70’s (don’t get me started), but I instantly thought of Jim Lovell, commander of the ill fated Apollo13 flight. They had an explosion on board and he said to the crew “we just lost the moon” ie they now couldn't land on it with a badly damaged spacecraft. I know were we where was not quite as dramatic and I was being melodramatic, but I was seriously gutted. Having said that, it was a fleeting thought, but I knew we were in the shit with no engine!
Mark being Mark, he started to discuss with me the situation, our options and what would be the best thing for us to do. There was certainly no knee jerk reactions or panic, but as he said, “we are in a sail boat and we have sails and we had wind, it’s just a matter of how we are going to use them both'“.
Turning back to Santa Maria di Leuca, we discounted pretty quickly. Mark had already scoped out Crotone as a bail out during our passage planning, so we agreed to press on. Only problem was we were creaming along at 8-9 knots which would get us there in 7 hours in pitch darkness to a place with a difficult and shallow entrance. So we reefed the mainsail and the genoa. That didn’t go too well, our speed only dropped to 7 knots. Another reef lowered our speed to 6 knots, so we reefed down to virtually a blanket up front and dinghy sail for a main. That got us down to 4.5 knots - perfect for a daylight arrival.
I could not believe how fast MacMac sailed on a beam reach even with those reefs in. Look at the picture above and remember this yacht is 23 tons in weight, 54 feet long and we only had 20-22 knots of wind. Incredible to me. It did give us a bit of a laugh though!
Anyway, we both stayed on deck and the sight of the slowly lightening sky lifted our spirits and moral as we closed in on Crotone.
Upon approach, Mark mentioned the distant windmills on the hills slowly getting faster and faster. I relayed the navigational directions to Mark for our approach and entrance and he had us stern to in lightning quick time, with all lines secured we gave ourselves a congratulatory high five. Less than 30 minutes later a gale hit us with 30-40 knots at the masthead. Skin of our teeth stuff but you make your own luck with sound planning and although we were both absolutely bolloxed we were two happy bunnies.
A lovely part of this story was that as we secured our mooring lines, the Italian Marinero Julio, offered us coffee and chocolate croissants. Wow did we appreciate that, it was like manna from heaven. Not only that, he contacted an engineer immediately who would be with us before lunch to get a look at the engine.
By this stage we were like two zombies. We hadn’t slept a wink since 0530, almost 30 hours ago and we both collapsed into our bunks!
The rest of the day was a bit of blur between snatches of sleep and the arrival of Gino the engineer, who methodically worked the problem with our engine.
By the close of play, he hadn’t fixed it and went off home and said he would be back n the morning at 0900. We “hit the hay” and crashed for a 12 hour sleep.
Racor Diesel Filter “Crud”
Gino turned up at 0900 Italian time (which in reality was 1100), but we cared not a jot, as long as he could fix the engine, which to be fair he did.
He cleaned the fuel filter in the diesel tank, changed the filter and cleaned the gunk out of the Racor diesel filter and finally cleaned the Diesel engine filter.
She sounded great when he started her up, very little exhaust smoke and both Mark and I “thought” it sounded smoother. Only time would tell!
Now is a good time to introduce Zatara. A crew of Robert (a big Texan Skipper), Tony and Kat. They had arrived in the night before with a story that really could do with it’s own blog. Robert had bought the Sun Odyssey 49i in Greece and was forced to to pull into Crotone (well they actually got towed in) when his genoa got ripped in two and his engine failed AND the genoa got caught around the rudder so they couldn’t even steer!!! Turned out his fuel tanks contained 80% water and 20% diesel. No wonder the engine wouldn’t run.
Zatara’s Genoa was returned and they hoisted it as the winds blew up to 30knots - impressive!
Going to bed that night, we had a plan for the morning. Go into town, buy some supplies to eat and drink and a few other bits and bobs in the Chandlery. Do some odd jobs on MacMac and give her a good cleaning.
Woke up in the morning, opened my cabin door and Mark said “I have an idea”.
It was a stunning day, so he suggested that we go now round the corner to Le Castella (20 miles away) which would leave us in pole position for the shot across Squillace in daylight. Bloody good idea I concurred. Told Zatara we were moving on now and they asked could they join us. No bother “big man” follow on when you get your main sail back on.
On route, Mark spent quite some time on the phone organising a berth in Le Castella. PLENTY of water we were told. Antonio will look after you. Pull in on the fisherman’s quay and Antonio will meet you.
After mooring alongside the quay on our own (it was another winter ghost town) we went off in search of Antonia to try and get into the small Marina. Finally catching up with him, he suggested that it would be much much better to wait until he had his dinner. Mark said “no we need to do this now and what is the best route to navigate the narrow entrance. “media del canale” said our local knowledge expert Antonio.
Even I knew what that meant in Italian - right down the middle mate! Have we enough water? We draw 2.3 metres and the charts says there is only 2!!!! “molta profodita 5metres” he shouts (plenty of depth 5metres), stick to the middle!
Back on board we cast off and ghosted in toward the entrance - five metres me bollox! We road up onto a rock where X marks the spot, 1 second after our depth gauge read zero. On a positive note here, I know that the depth gauge is very accurate! On the negative side, we had 23 tonnes of yacht stuck fast on a rock. As Mark looked towards Antonio, he gave the internationally known gesture of “What the F*ck”. Antonio decided then it was lunchtime after all and proceeded to “flee”.
After a couple of 360 spins using the bow thrusters and a few full astern and full steam aheads on the throttle , MacMac thankfully lurched off its little pinnacle. The relief was palpable and with a “feck this for a game of darts”, we headed out to the next bay to drop anchor.
Zatara headed to the bay also and we dropped anchor close to each other before Mark and Robert headed ashore on the zodiac to flog and decapitate Antonio.
No sign of him surprisingly (hope he choked on his pizza), but they met a local fisherman, local fixer and all round good guy Francesco who assured us we could moor up alongside the fishermans quay, only just a little further up than where we were before. “Plenty of water?” Mark enquired. 5metres was the reply, here we go again I thought!
As it turned out, we rafted up safely with Zatara on our outside. Our depth gauge read 0.0, but we were still afloat - just!
Ashore that evening with the crew of Zatara to a to a fish restaurant owned by Francesco’s cousin (Francesco came too). We really were treated to an extraordinary spread of fish delicacies, appetizers and dishes.
There must have been 20 plus dishes, great if you like fish - I don’t, but the bruschetta was really lovely!!
We said our good nights, headed back on board and agreed to cast off together at 0700 and tackle “Squillace” in tandem.
0600 with a full pot of Irish Stew prepared and ready to eat, food (proper food - no fish) was not going to be an issue for us - Hopefully the Gulf wouldn’t be either!
Zatara, left first (well they had to, they were on our outside) and we then cast off, touched the bottom again in the supposed 5 meters of water and eased our bow out into the Gulf of Squillace!
Next stop Palermo.
