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Welcome to Ken’s Blog!

Greetings! My apologies for this report coming out weeks after when I should have sent it. You may have heard that the Cabo San Lucas area, where Roberta and I live four to five months a year, had a direct hit by a Cat 3/4 hurricane. I am the President of our homeowner’s association in Cabo and over the last week I’ve been consumed by coordinating our community’s disaster recovery effort and getting information out to homeowners. This particular blog entry is being rushed out and probably isn’t as good as it could have been, but… it is what it is.

No worries though. The blog will be back next year, and it should be a very good year for the blog, and a very good year for Roberta and I. I have lots of ideas for ways to make the blog more fun and more interactive, and some cool surprises for the blog that I just never had time for this year.

Our 2014 cruising season has now ended.

Roberta and I flew home to Seattle last Saturday and (excepting the incidents in Mexico) we are enjoying being back in America. For the first time in months I had fast internet! Roberta couldn’t wait to go to Starbucks! There are no words to describe how it felt to go into Costco here in Seattle. There is nothing on a similar scale that we saw in Croatia, Montenegro, Malta or Italy. The selection and quality of the vegetables, meats, and food is shocking when you’ve been out of the country for a while. It isn’t like we were traveling in third world countries, but.. America is unique in the world, and that fact is really driven home once you’ve been out of the US for a while.

Wow, what an incredible year this was!

We moved the boats over 2,000 miles and had some great times and we also had some challenging times. It was a year with high-highs and low-lows, that sometimes felt more like an advanced Captain’s training course than a vacation.

Here’s a quick map showing the route we took this year:

These maps show the over 2,000 miles that Seabird and Sans Souci covered this summer season. It’s hard for me to imagine that we did all of this in just a few months, but we started in Croatia, cruised down the east coast of Italy, explored the east and southern coasts of Sicily, cruised Malta, returned to Sicily, then out to the Aeolian islands, back to the west coast of Italy, out to the island of Ppnza, past the island of Capri, northeast Sardinia, the east coast of Corsica, past Montecristo, cruised Elba, returned to the mainland, visiting the Cinque-terra region of Italy, and finished in San Remo, on the border with France.

That’s a lot of paddling!

NOTE: CLICK ANY OF THE PICTURES IN THIS BLOG TO GET AN ENLARGED VIEW

At the end of my last blog entry, we had put Sans Souci into the Mirabello marina in mainland Italy, in the town of La Spezia. We had scheduled a date for some boat-mechanics from France to meet us, to accompany us on the last leg of the voyage. The boat was running fine, but I liked the idea of having someone in Europe who knew how to run the boat, just in case it would need to be moved for some reason.

Unfortunately, the guys who were supposed to accompany us were sidetracked, and wouldn’t be available for a week. We were fine with waiting, but were worried the weather, which had suddenly turned nice would turn nasty again. Our last ride would be a long one; over 100 nautical miles of open sea.

Roberta and I watched the weather reports closely, and when we saw a day of dead-calm seas followed by several days of bad weather, we decided to just go for it.

Roberta and I had planned to have crew along for our final 100 nautical mile cruise to San Remo. However, a couple of days before our planned departure a beautiful weather window opened and we decided to jump on it. The flat seas you see here were as rough as it got. It was a perfect way to finish the trip!

Roberta’s and my final trip was eleven hours long, on dead calm water, in perfect conditions. I had been dreading the trip, knowing that we were close to finishing the year with zero serious mechanical problems, and that it just felt like we were overdue for some crisis. I was confident that something would go wrong. Afterall, what are the odds that we’d get through an entire season with no major mechanical issues? As it turns out, the odds were 100%! We arrived at the boat’s final resting place for the 2014 season, at the Portosole marina in San Remo, without incident.

Several people we have spoken to, who have reading our blog entries have said, “It doesn’t sound like you had much fun this year?” I apologize for sending that impression, although I must admit that this was not our favorite year. It actually wasn’t so bad, and when we think back on it, there were some incredible highlights.

Perhaps part of the problem was that the last few years have been so incredible. We have been spoiled by Turkey, Greece, Montenegro and Croatia, all of which had spectacular anchorages spaced close together. This year we had long stretches where there weren’t really good places to anchor, and we also had a summer which was so bad that it made headlines in Europe. I read one article in the French press talking about this being a year where the luckiest vacationers were those who vacationed in September, after the summer was over. The weather finally stabilized and they were able to take advantage of the lower off-season rates. July and August were miserable at times.

Before you feel too sorry for us; keep in mind the old saying that goes something like, “The worst day on a boat beats the best day on shore.” I wouldn’t go quite that far, but I would say that if you watch this slideshow that I quickly threw together you’ll agree that if this was a bad summer, can you imagine how awesome a normal summer is?

Click the link below to see a slideshow highlighting the summer. I think you’ll like it!:

http://www.kensblog.com/uploads/16765/2014_09_07_final/slideshow.html

A warning before you continue reading…

The balance of this blog entry summarizes the effort to close up the boat for the winter. Some of it gets a bit techie. I did what I can to make it comprehensible to non-boaters, but … it is still stuff that some of you might be bored by. Form your own opinion. My feelings will not be hurt if you skip some of what follows.

With our journey finished, I was curious to analyze our fuel consumption and see how we did. The spreadsheet above shows that Sans Souci, our Nordhavn 68, consumed a whopping 3,600 gallons of fuel! Given that fuel costs around $9 per gallon in Europe you can imagine why it was important for us to fill up in the country of Montenegro where duty free fuel was possible.

Steven Argosy, on the boat we spent the summer traveling alongside, had to rub it in a little, as to how efficient his Nordhavn 62 is, by sending me this email:

“…I did some rough calculations. I averaged just over 5 GPH for the summer so far not including generator use. I used 1253 gallons so far on the main since Montenegro and 377 gallons on the generator. It works out to a bit more than 1.35 nm per gallon. – Steven”

While I am talking about the Nordhavn 62, I should probably mention something sad. Although the Nordhavn 62 is one of greatest boats ever built, it has been superceded (if not equalled) by newer model boats, and years ago, the molds from which it is made were literally put out to pasture. Finally, after years of the molds getting moldy, Nordhavn decided to permanently retire them. This article talks about the history, and end of the line of this phenomenal boat: http://www.nordhavn.com/news/headlines/rip_friend/

The topic of where to winter the boats became a soap opera that spanned the whole season.

We only cruise four or five months a year, which leaves seven or eight months when the boat is alone. One would think that the solution is to just put the boat into a marina, turn everything off, and then fly home.

I wish it were that simple.

On a boat as complex as Sans Souci, there is much that needs done during the off-season.

• Zincs need checked.  The zincs are small chunks of metal attached to various places on the bottom of the boat (propellors, shafts) that are meant to be “sacrificial”. They are intended to be absorb the deterioration from electrolysis in the water, before it eats surrounding metals
• Start the engines periodically. Sans Souci has four diesel engines (two main engines, two generators). These engines should be started once a month, just to keep them in good working condition and the starting batteries charged up
• Wash and wax the boat. Keeping the boat clean is important to keeping the finish looking new for years to come
• Wipe off the bottom. The bottom of the boat collects barnacles and other crud. It needs a diver to go down periodically to wipe it off
• Check the lines. Over the winter there are a series of storms. The lines loosen and chafe. They need checked constantly and occasionally need tightened or replaced
• Check the power. Sans Souci has power going at all times, even during the winter. The batteries need continual charging, and some electrical items, such as the bilge pumps, should always have access to power. Dock power is always unreliable during storms. There are power outages, power surges, even times when voltage sags. All of these can trip breakers and wreak havoc on the boat’s electrical system
• Accept parts. Receive parts and put them onboard. I will be sending mechanics over at the start of the next year’s crusing season. They will need parts of various sorts, and those need to be shipped. There will be a series of shipments this winter headed to the boat.
• Assist technicians. I will have various technicians on/off the boat over the winter. Someone needs to watch over them, and get them on/off the boat. I always want all work on the boat to happen while I am away. My goal is to fly home at the end of the season, leaving behind a list of work to be done, and then return at the start of the following season to a boat that has been restored to “new” condition.

Think of it this way…. Let’s say you had a million dollar bill, and were told you had to leave it lying somewhere in a foreign country, somewhere you had never been, and that you’d need to trust someone you’ve never met, and who doesn’t speak your language, to watch over it, and care for it, for seven months. You would want to be very careful about who you pick and where you place it. And the truth of the matter is that this analogy is not a good one for several reasons: 1) The boat costs more than a million dollars, and 2) A million dollar bill would be easy to care for and secure. Boats are complex!

Our search for a marina started months before this summer’s cruising even began. Moorage in Europe is not always easy to find, particularly when you are seeking moorage for two fairly large boats (Sans Souci and Seabird.) In some countries, such as France, there simply isn’t moorage available. To get a slip you have to know someone, have lots of money, and wait a very long time. Italy is easier, but even then, there is a bit of a game of musical chairs that goes on. During the summer slips are easily available for short-term moorage, as all of the boats are out cruising. At the end of the season, when the music stops, everyone returns to their home ports and the boats scramble to find moorage.

Before our search could begin this year, we had to determine where we would finish the season. That was a battle in itself, but resulted in us deciding we wanted to be somewhere near France. I then studied dozens of marinas, with only the information I could find on the internet to work with. There wasn’t much information. I wound up writing to many marinas to get pricing and availability. It was a long process with lots of back and forth.

We finally settled on a marina called Imperia, in Imperia Italy, about 50 miles from the border between Italy and France. I chose it because it was new, which would hopefully mean that the electricity was stable, and that there might be good wifi internet. It was also recommended by several other cruisers. Imperia required a $6,000 USD per boat deposit to hold space for our boats, and both our traveling companions (the Argosys, on Seabird) and ourselves wired money.

Months later, as the cruising season was starting, I stumbled onto a new article saying that the Imperia marina was filing bankruptcy! Emails to the marina went unanswered. I called them, and they assured me we would have moorage, but meanwhile their website disappeared, and emails continued to be unanswered. I received mixed reports from the cruising community. Some people said the marina was alive and well, while others asked me questions like, “Can you be certain that the security will be good? Or that the power will stay on?”

We spent most of the summer worrying, and hoping that someone would give us definitive information. I even paid some guys from France to drive to Imperia and have a look. They said good things about the marina, but we were still nervous.

To make a long story short… The marina continued to refuse to respond to emails, and we decided we couldn’t trust them. We bailed, forfeiting our deposits. We notified the marina and asked for refunds. The marina responding saying there were lots of creditors ahead of us, but that they’d tell the lawyers who would add us to the bottom of the list.

Midway through our season we stayed at a very nice marina, called Ragusa, on the southern end of Sicily. They offered a price for moorage for the winter that was roughly the same as the deposit we had paid at Imperia, and a lot less than we still owed Imperia. It was too good to be true, but was true. Even better, Ragusa is close to Tunisia where cheap fuel is available, and outside the EU [Note: For tax reasons we need to exit the EU every 18 months] and close to Malta, where we found great cruising! They also had a good shipyard, and offered dry storage on land if we wanted it. The downside was that it was 700 miles from where we had planned to finish the year. Steven said, “It’s only 700 miles, let’s just backtrack.” I said, “I don’t backtrack.” It would be 700 miles south, and then another 700 miles north. The savings just weren’t worth it to me, and I didn’t believe the savings were as big as Steven was thinking. It would be another 1,400 miles on the boats, and there is both a time and money cost for that distance. I didn’t want to split our two-boat group, but both Steven and I dug in our heels. I started the search over, finding it a little easier with only one boat to find space for, and settled on Portosole in San Remo, while Steven committed to Ragusa.

As I am sitting typing this, I know what happened after our two boats parted company, and it isn’t pretty. Seabird did make it south the 700 miles to Ragusa, but it was not a perfectly smooth trip. Steven and Carol have their own blog, and whereas my trip was boring, they will have a much more interesting end-of-season blog entry. I don’t want to spoil any surprises, but registering for Seabird’s blog at: www.seabirdlrc.com could be worthwhile. I have mentioned in the past that I always consider the blog a bit of a battle. When good times are happening, my blog is boring, and readers lose. When things go wrong, and I am least happy, the blog gets exciting! Steven’s blog (when he gets around to writing it) will win the competition between us for best final blog entry this year.

The town of San Remo turned out to be a wonderful surprise. From the marina to town is an easy walk, and there is all of the shopping and restaurants we could want. We drove over one afternoon to check out the other marinas that I had contacted, including the Imperia marina, and there was none I would have rather been at. We had somehow stumbled into a marina that was everything we had hoped for.

Our final days on the boat were more work than I had expected. Jeff Sanson, from www.pacificYachtManagement.com flew over for our last week, to help tuck the boat in for the winter. Jeff is a whirlwind of energy and whereas my plan was to relax and let him do all the work, that is easier said than done. We all stayed busy during the final week readying the boat for the winter.

One of the first things Roberta and I did after arrival was to look for someone to wash the outside of the boat. I found a local company who would wash the boat but they wanted to inspect it first. Their proposal surprised me: Five hundred euros (around $700 USD.) I didn’t love the price, but the boat was in desperate need of a good washing so I said, “Sure” and we headed off to lunch while they got started.

On return to the boat we were somewhat shocked. The cleaners had removed all the cushions, and basically everything outside the boat that wasn’t nailed down, and strung it all along the dock. The canvas you see dangling from the passarelle of the sailboat on Sans Souci’s port side comes from our boat! This picture shows only some of the “stuff” that was strewn down the dock. I can’t imagine what other boats thought. Perhaps they were thinking, “Oh look. Sans Souci is having a garage sale!”

It all turned out well though. The cleaners were unbelievably efficient and did an incredible job. They had a team of six people who brought their own hoses and brushes. The entire wash, which normally takes a full day was done in about three hours. The wash was well worth the money, and I tipped them well. Later, I went to thank the agent who arranged the cleaners, and he said they had been shocked by the amount of salt on our boat, and couldn’t imagine how we had gotten salt spray all the way up on the radar arch. Never under-estimate a Norhavn!

We were safely in port, but that isn’t the end of the story…

When I first spoke to the marina about a reservation they said they had no slips available for a boat my size. But then, minutes later, they wrote back to say that they had another large boat needing space, and could possibly wedge our boats into THREE slips on a dock meant for smaller boats. They needed me to commit within minutes if I wanted that option, and I took it. Why not? Well .. I was soon to find why not.

Access to the slip, and tying up at the dock were easier than expected. The three slips our two boats were sharing had all the space we could want, and then some.

We were delighted to find that our moorage at the Portosole marina, in San Remo Italy, was wider than our boat. It is very common for boats to fib about the width of their boat, because moorage rates depend on how wide your boat is. This means that you are often asked to back into a slip which is narrower than your boat, and you have to proceed backwards slowly, hoping that your boat will push aside other boats without causing damage. At some ports, such as St Tropez in France, this is a spectator sport. Huge crowds line the dock, particularly when there is a little wind to add to the “fun” as multi-million dollar boats struggle to shoe-horn into impossible places.

One of the many challenges with Med Mooring is the tying off of the bow line. The boat is tied at the bow by two lines which extend to the bottom of the marina, and at the stern (back) to two bollards (cleats) on shore. Because we would be leaving the boat for seven months, during which there would be heavy storms, we used the boats windlasses to make the lines tight at the front and the back of the boat. The bow line you see here, tied to a cleat at Sans Souci’s bow was trickier to tie than is apparent. That rope line you see is actually tied to about twenty feet of very heavy chain. The windlass is required to lift the chain off the bottom, and once you do that, you somehow need to get it off the windlass and onto a cleat. If you leave the line on the cleat a sudden surge from a wind-produced wave can wreck the windlass, meaning an expensive repair.

The only slip available for our boat was actually one and a half slips. This sounded fine at first, but then I discovered that there were complications. The bollards (on shore cleats) were positioned assuming a boat smaller than ours. We needed to center the boat by tying to bollards that were spaced incorrectly for our boat.

 

Because the bollards behind the boat were spaced for normal usage, and Sans Souci was spanning one and a half slips, there was no way to tie the boat correctly. We needed bollards in places where there weren’t any. We had two that were much too far apart, plus one that was in an awkward place centered behind my boat. Another concern was chafing. The lines will take a beating over the winter and whatever we do needs to hold up to extremely strong winds and surge. The first couple of pictures above show how other boats on the dock were using chain to tie up, and gave me the inspiration for what I should do on my boat. I drew the picture on the right to show how I could use chain to simulate having two different points to tie to behind the boat.

The drawing went through a number of iterations as I spoke to people in the port. The original version had shock absorbers on the lines, and I received a bid for $7,000 USD to put it together. I quickly removed the shock absorbers and simplified what I was trying to accomplish. My final solution still involved writing a nearly $3,000 check. Argh.

Tying the boat was a challenge, and then I hit an electrical surprise.

Because Sans Souci was tied up on a dock normally used by smaller boats the electrical power was also sized for smaller boats. We had three slips being shared by ourselves and a 100′ sailboat that was on our port (left) side. We moored within an hour of each other, and discovered simultaneously that the shore power wasn’t going to work. It was the wrong kind, and there wasn’t enough of it. [Note: Sans Souci is moored at a dock with 32 amp single phase 230v shorepower, whereas the “big boat” dock has 380v 64 amp 3-phase power.]

The joys of shorepower

We knew when we equipped Sans Souci that we’d be cruising around the world. One of the many challenges of world cruising is that different countries have different electrical standards. When we are away from the dock, it is irrelevant. We generate our own electricity. However, when we are in a marina, we usually try to connect to whatever shorepower the marina has to offer.

At most marinas you are not permitted to run your generator and must connect to shorepower. Running a generator while tied up within a few feet of other boats will make you extremely unpopular. Modern generators are very quiet, but they still have some noise and exhaust. No one wants to smell my generator exhaust all day.

Sans Souci gets around this by having a huge, heavy, expensive and fragile device called “The Atlas” which converts virtually any dockside shorepower into the same type of electricity (voltage, frequency) that we have at home in America. I am sure that the company who makes my Atlas would disagree with my calling their device “fragile” but I’ll stand by those words, and have the long history of repairs to back up what I say.

Despite this, I would install an Atlas again today, and consider it a must for the kind of world cruising Roberta and I have been doing, but the flexibility it offers does come at a price.

Actually, I’ll back off a little on my comment. In a “normal” environment, I am sure the Atlas is fine. However, we travel to places where the power is not only different than US standards, but often different at different parts of the day. We have been many places where voltage at the dock is best described as “random.” The voltage rises and falls based on events well beyond our boat. If someone in town runs their dryer, voltage can drop at the dock. We’ve been in marinas where the marina staff thinks nothing of turning off power to the dock several times a day. And, then there are the winter storms. These can create major power surges and long outages.

Another major disadvantage of the Atlas is that it consumes some percentage of all the electricity it is given, and has a fairly high minimum power requirement just to be operated. In some marinas electricity is very expensive, and the electricity consumed by the Atlas, even with virtually nothing on the boat using electricity, can cost a thousand dollars a month or more. We’ve also had issues with heat generated by the Atlas. When we are in extraordinarily hot places, such as when we were in Hong Kong, the Atlas was throwing out so much heat that my lazarette (where the Atlas lives) was overheating, causing problems with other electrical components, like my inverters. Luckily, I have good air conditioning in the lazarette and could bring the temperature down to a reasonable level, but the incremental air conditioning also cost electricity, and reduced my cooling capacity. In addition to heat, when the power at the dock is severely limited (not many amps available), the amps that the Atlas pigs for itself doesn’t leave many for the boat.

To make a long story short, I’ve decided that the right answer for when we are not on the boat is to run the boat off of the batteries. The boat has inverters which convert power stored in the 24v batteries to US-standard electricity. I should have done this years ago, and just didn’t think of it. The inverters only power the 120v appliances and electrical outlets. The heavy appliances on the boat, such as the washer, dryer, dive compressor, and air conditioning, aren’t used during the winter, so I don’t need to think about them, and the safety electronics, such as the bilge pumps run off 24v, so as long as the batteries are charged, they will operate.

To run off the batteries, I need a way to charge them, and I have a battery charger which is very flexible. Like the Atlas it can accept virtually any electricity thrown at it. This is fairly typical of most battery chargers. I am guessing that power surges and frequent outages can also “blow up” a battery charger, but instead of a $50,000 highly complex specialty item (the Atlas) needing repair, it is a $1,000 battery charger that can be found and replaced fairly easily.

For more than you ever wanted to know about how Sans Souci is wired, and how I’m running from shorepower, this is a slideshow I put together mostly for my own use. I tend to forget how these things work from year to year and need to leave myself some degree of documentation: http://tinyurl.com/ke9zwp4

Ordinarily I have no problem attaching to shorepower, but at the Portosole marina we were at a dock intended for smaller boats with lower power requirements. We battled for nearly a week to get shorepower working, and even brought over a specialized electrician from France on three seperate trips. But, finally, we did it! We got it working just in time to turn it all off, and stop using my fancy international power transformer (the Atlas), as we put the boat into winter-mode running off a battery charger.

See those silver buckets? They are each full of five gallons of 15-40w motor oil. I purchased five of them in order to change the oil on my two main engines, and two generators. You will be shocked by the cost: $1,100 USD! Gas, oil, diesel, and electricity are all much more expensive in Europe than what we pay in the United States.

Some of you may recall that earlier this season I had an oil hose pop off while changing the oil and manage to spray myself, and the entire lazarette, with dirty oil. I swore that I’d never do it again.

However, as this picture shows, my resolve not to spray oil didn’t last long. Jeff, my US mechanic who flew over to help me put away the boat for the season, asked me to start the pump so that we could test that it was working. He was holding a hose we were using to drain the starboard engine and thought only a trickle would come out. As you can see in this picture, it was more than a trickle. I can confirm that the oil pump was working quite well indeed.

Our final days on the boat were spent cleaning and packing. Here’s a picture of Roberta cleaning out shelves in the master bath while wearing headphones to listen to music. She has a pad of paper in her hands. One of the last tasks she does on the boat is to go through everything and make notes about what we need to bring back to the boat next year.

She won’t be happy I put this picture into the blog, but I thought she looked cute!

Just hours before we left the boat for the final time, the toilet in the master head broke. Someone (who shall remain nameless) was cleaning the toilet and had a brush down the throat when the ball valve at the base closed around the brush, stripping the gears. We carry lots of spares, and here we see Jeff being an incredibly good sport about swapping the guts of the toilet just hours before departure. (I was conveniently elsewhere at the moment)

Our final days were not all work. Our good friends from Cabo, Ray and Karen Hoffman, were on a small cruise ship that docked at San Remo. Interestingly, just before their arrival in San Remo, their cruise ship traveled to the south end of Corsica. This is noteworthy because at the time there was a huge mistral wind blowing. The mistral wind is a fierce wind (typically 30-60 knots) that can last for days in the Med. It was a good day to be in a marina, but their cruise went anyhow. They had an uncomfortable ride, but I guess cruise ships operate on a schedule, and have to move regardless of conditions. I prefer how we do it on Sans Souci. If the wind is blowing we sit still.

And, we didn’t know it at this time or we wouldn’t have been smiling, but wind was soon to play a larger role in our lives. Our homes and community in Cabo would soon be seeing winds over 100 knots.

One of our last projects on Sans Souci was to cover up the windows. This keeps the sun from damaging the interior over the off-season. We also bring in all the chairs, cushions, etc.

This has nothing to do with my blog, but I found it interesting…

Our favorite cruising ground thus far has been Turkey. This puzzles some people, and we often get questions about, “Why Turkey?” The answer is: “Great anchorages, great people and the chance to see history close-up.”

I mention that because of a thought-provoking email I was sent earlier today. It was sent by a cruiser to everyone who receives his blog, and is somewhat self-explanatory.

And, this has nothing to do with boating, but I have to say a word about Cabo before closing…

The media has not said much about the hurricane that struck Baja California, where we have owned a home for nearly 17 years. Our community in Cabo is approaching two weeks now with no water or power. We are in Seattle, but I speak with people in Cabo many times a day. I would like to share that the devastation was much worse than you have heard, and that the recovery is happening much quicker than anyone would ever have thought possible. I already had tremendous respect for the people of Mexico before the hurricane, and far more than that now.

Below are links to two longish, but quite compelling, videos that tell a bit more of the story than you may have heard. One shows the destruction, and the other shows the clean-up that is already happening. My prediction is that within a few short weeks tourists will start arriving back in Cabo and for most it will feel as though nothing ever happened. However, if you view these videos, you’ll know the rest of the story.

Video 1 – Hurricane Odile and the aftermath: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XqwwTwuTNTM

Video 2 – The reconstruction: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=evgvoy_ZyR4

And in closing…

If you missed the prior blog entries from this season, you may view them here:

• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/05/31/KensBlog-2014-01–Preparing-For-The-Season
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/06/14/KensBlog-2014-02–Welcome-to-Italy
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/06/24/KensBlog-2014-03–Rough-Seas-And-A-Visit-to-a-Historic-Town
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/07/07/KensBlog-2014-04–Southern-Sicily-and-Malta
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/07/22/KensBlog-2014-05–Malta–Winds-and-High-Seas
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/01/KensBlog-2014-Entry-6–We-re-having-a-SWELL-time
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/04/KensBlog-2014-Entry-7–Welcome-to-Party-Island
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/17/KensBlog-2014-Entry-8–Everyone-knows-it-s-Windy
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/30/KensBlog-2014-08-Entry-9–Arrivederci-Seabird

If you haven’t been receiving my blog entries via email, click this link to register. It will be many months before I send another blog entry, but… why wait until the last minute:

http://www.kensblog.com/register

That’s it for the summer 2014 cruising season. Another year has come to an end. Thank you all!

Ken and Roberta Williams
ken(at)kensblog.com
MV Sans Souci
Nordhavn 68

Welcome to Ken’s Blog!

Greetings!

Our 2014 cruising season is nearing the end, but isn’t over quite yet. We’ve had a lot of adventures these past couple of weeks and seen some amazing sights!
As you read the blog entry that follows, the pictures below will help you orient the locations I’m talking about:

The pink line in this photo shows the approximate 2,000 miles that Seabird and Sans Souci have covered this summer season. It’s hard for me to imagine we did all of this in one season, but we started in Croatia, cruised down the east coast of Italy, explored the east and southern coasts of Sicily, cruised Malta, returned to Sicily, then out to the Aeolian islands, back to the west coast of Italy, out to the island of Panza, past the island of Capri, northeast Sardinia, the east coast of Corsica, past Montecristo, and into Elba. That’s a lot of paddling! (well, actually .. motoring) And, our journey is not over.

The orange line shows the short distance Sans Souci has remaining, and the green line shows the long distance that Seabird will be covering in the weeks ahead.

NOTE: CLICK ANY OF THE PICTURES IN THIS BLOG TO GET AN ENLARGED VIEW

 

These reference maps show the locations that I’ll be talking about in this blog entry.

A smooth passage from Porto Vecchio, Corsica, to Elba Island

We were up at 5 am for our departure from Porto Vecchio on the island of Corsica, where we had anchored for several days waiting out high winds. The wind had stayed high until about 10 pm the prior night. It was particularly disappointing because we had held out hopes for at least one nice dinner in town before departure, but it was not to be. I had to call the same restaurant two nights in a row to say we were canceling due to high winds.

Our biggest concern was that the wind wasn’t going to drop. The weather reports were claiming that the wind was going to end, but it just kept hanging in there. Finally, at 10 pm it was like someone turned off a switch. One minute there were 20 knots of wind, and minutes later we had 5 knots.

Perfect!

From southern Corsica to Elba would require a ten-hour passage. It was to be my favorite kind of passage: boring. The wind did kick up a couple of times, with some spray over the bow about an hour into the run, but then settled down. Overall, it was about as pleasant of a trip as could be imagined.

Monecristo Island

Montecristo Island

We passed by the island of Montecristo along the way.

One of our sons, Chris, when he was much younger, had an interest in the story of the Count of Monte Cristo so I thought I’d take some photos for him.

This prompted Roberta to ask, “So, was there a real Count of Monte Cristo?”

On Sans Souci, no trivia question goes unanswered, particularly when on a long passage. This triggered some research.

I stumbled onto a biography of Alexander Dumas’ father (Thomas-Alexandre Dumas), who was the inspiration for his novel, “The Count of Monte Cristo.” Apparently, his father was quite a guy! I’m not much on history, but there is a big distance between sitting in a classroom reading about the past, and looking out the window and seeing it.

[Note: What follows is my summarization of an article I read on Wikipedia]

Pulitzer price-winning book about the real Count of Monte Cristo http://www.amazon.com/The-Black-Count-Revolution-Betrayal/dp/0307382478

Dumas’ father, who I will call Thomas to minimize confusion, was the son of a renegade French nobleman who was on the run from authorities and had an encounter with a Haitian slave. Thomas was sold into slavery at 14, only to be repurchased by his father and shipped off to Paris years later.

In Paris he was accepted as French aristocracy and received a good education, then enlisted in the French military. He rose quickly in the ranks during the French Revolution, ultimately commanding over 50,000 troops! For nearly 100 years, until Colin Powell became a four star general in the United States, Thomas held the record of being the highest ranked black soldier in a white military unit worldwide.

Later he would become a thorn in Napoleon’s side, making a lifelong enemy.

His life took another turn when on his return to France, from Egypt, his ship was wrecked and he found himself taken captive and thrown in a dungeon on an island, by unknown captors.

Years later, he was released and returned to France, only to find that Napoleon had seized power and restored slavery, which had previously been abolished. He was put back to chain gang labor, illegally married a white woman, and thus was Alexander Dumas born.

Ultimately Thomas died, at age 43, from the debilitation of his time imprisoned in the dungeon.

Elba Island; Until Sans Souci’s arrival, it was best known as the island where Napoleon was briefly exiled

Elba is a fairly small island; about 17 miles wide by 10 miles wide.

One great thing about Elba is that its shape provides for many anchorages, with shelter from almost any direction of wind and swell. There are also multiple cities with anchoring possibilities in front of the towns.

We arrived at Elba on the south side of the island, with the wind coming from the north. Our anchorage was called “Marina Di Campo” and we anchored on a beautiful sunny day in front of a wide sand beach.

I somehow managed to forget to take pictures of one of our favorite places; the anchorage at Marina Di Campo on the south side of Elba. Had I not taken this picture, looking south towards the island of Montecristo, you’d have seen a busy beach with 100s of happy people working on their tans, playing in the surf, and enjoying the sunshine.

Or, had I tilted the camera a little to the right, you’d have seen Roberta and some very mellow puppies sitting on the upper back deck of Sans Souci just enjoying the view (and, an excellent dinner.)

One of the sad things about boating is that sometimes you arrive at a great place, and are then chased away by the weather. The prevailing winds on Elba come from the south, so even though there are at least four great places to anchor near our location, we all knew that if the wind were to shift to the south, we would need to move. Life at anchor is awesome, unless you are sitting in a bay with swell being pushed in, at which point life becomes miserable.

As usual, the weather gods decided to mess with us. We had less than 24 hours to enjoy southern Elba before we had to move.

From southern Elba, we moved about twenty miles to Porto Azzurro on the eastern shore, where we would only be for another 24 hours before we once again would need to move.

   

Porto Azzurro on Elba Island. We were to spend more time there than ever planned.

Weather is a big part of cruising. Our first day in Elba was beautiful and sunny with everyone focused on tanning. The second day was dark and depressing, with everyone focused on figuring out where to be (us included!)

One interesting thing about Elba… We were seeing more small local sailboats around us (in the 15-25 foot range), and I think that is a great thing. There was one large sailboat in our anchorage at Porto Azzurro (approx. 110′) but mostly there were small sailboats and catamarans. On the back of them I saw Italian, German and French flags. Personally, I’d rather be in a bay with the small sailboats than the big megayachts. The small boats are populated with “real” people out cruising, anchoring and having fun.

As a very broad characterization, I mentally segment cruisers into three categores:

• The small boats, typically with couples or groups of friends onboard,
• The charter boats, typically with hard-partying young people aboard. They have one week to have a year’s worth of fun and usually try to drink that on the first night
• And, the big boats, with professional crew, and guests who dress fancy and fly in helicopters

In the United States there is a fourth category: Fairly large boats (like Sans Souci) that are owner-operated. You do see that here from time to time, but generally, all boats over about 50 feet, particularly power boats, have professional crew.

Stereotypes can be wrong as often as they are right, and stereotyping is wrong. But…I’d be fibbing not to admit that when I enter an anchorage some of these thoughts cross through my mind, and sometimes it is a waste of mental engergy, and sometimes it is relevant. For example, if there’s a lot of wind expected, I want the professional crews upwind of me; if I want peace and quiet, I don’t want in the thick of a bunch of bareboat charter guests.

 

Steven, from Seabird, tying up his tender at an over-loaded tender dock at Porto Azzurro on Elba Island.

One of the first things we always look for when arriving in a new town is a place to tie our tender while exploring the town. Marinas probably hate the people who anchor out and then bring their tenders into the marina, as they take up space and don’t provide much, if any, revenue. We’re never sure where to put the tender, and usually just look for where everyone else is putting theirs. The picture above shows a tiny fraction of the tenders at the closest thing we could find to a tender dock. When Roberta and I arrived I had to be on the bow, shoving aside other tenders as we fought our way into a position where we could tie ours up.

A few days before, at Porto Vecchio, we apparently parked in a spot where we weren’t wanted. When we returned to our tender someone had moved it a long ways away, and had taken apart my mooring line, making a mess of it.

   

Porto Azzurro prides itself on the number and quality of its restaurants.

It probably says something about how boating keeps you active, in that I’ve managed to lose weight here in Italy despite all the amazing food (pasta and pizza most especially) around us. These pictures are from just one of the many excellent restaurants at which we dined (Osteria Dei Quattre Gattes)

On a sad topic… Elba is where we and Steven and Carol Argosy will be separating. We will be going north to a marina near the Italian border with France where we’ll be wintering Sans Souci, and Seabird will be heading 700 nautical miles south to a marina on the southern end of Sicily. It will be a strange and lonely feeling for us to travel alone.

Sans Souci and Seabird will be wintering the boats over 700 miles away from each other. Seabird is heading south to Ragusa, Sicily, while Sans Souci is heading north to the Italian border with France – San Remo. Normally we would stick together, but Roberta and I have less cruising time this year than Steven and Carol on Seabird. They will be spending the entire month of September continuing to cruise whle we’ll be headed home to Seattle. Our little group will recovene in 2015 for France and Spain.

At dinner we talked a little about the season we are just wrapping up. The consensus was that there were some high points (Montenegro, Malta, Taormina, Ragusa, NE Sardinia, Siracusa, Panarea, Stromboli, Elba) but overall it was too many miles, not enough good/great anchorages, too much bad weather (wind), and not enough fun. Oh well .. it’s the luck of the draw, and hopefully next year will be better.

Here’s a short video that is kind of amusing.

We anchored in a beautiful bay on the north side of Elba. There was a strong wind blowing from the south, and where we anchored was fairly deep. We dropped in 60′ of water, and where the boat settled was nearly 80′ deep.

Roberta and I have become quite good at digging in the anchor. A properly set anchor actually buries itself in the sand or mud. We also put out plenty of chain. In this case, we had out over 350′ of chain.

When we pulled the anchor for our short ride to another anchorage at Porto Ferraio, the anchor brought up a big gob of seaweed and mud with it.

Getting one hundred pounds of mud off an anchor is not easy. The usual approach is to try dragging the anchor backwards quickly in the water. Another way to do this is probably to just use a boat-hook, and a hose, but that would take a long time and I was in a hurry.

As you’ll see in this video I tried another approach. I raised and lowered the anchor many times hoping that the bumping around would cause the mud and seaweed to just drop off. I tried this approach at one other anchorage, and the entire gob of mud came off as one huge lump, hitting the water and raising a huge splash which caked me, standing on the bow, with mud.

This mud-removal went fairly smoothly, although you’ll see that I didn’t get the shot when the mud actually came off the anchor. I was fiddling with the anchor stop and looked away briefly. Still a fun video though….

   

Porto Ferraio looks amazing, but only from a distance

The big city on Elba is Porto Ferraio. I was saving this town for our last night on Elba thinking it would be awesome.

To reach Porto Ferraio we left a beautiful anchorage (where, with 20/20 hindsight we should have stayed.)

Porto Ferraio is where the Elba ferries come in — a LOT of ferries! We would come to know all of them by name, and the size of the wake each put out. The giant yellow Corsica/Sardinia ferries were the worst.

The anchorage at Porto Ferraio is excellent, except for the ferries. It is huge and of a perfect depth (we anchored in 29 feet.) The water is crystal clear. The ferries make it very uncomfortable, though.

The town, also, is not terrific. It was a bit of a shocker. Everything looked old, tired and unkempt. Not the kind of ‘old’ that shows charm or quaintness, but the kind of old and tired that just looks — old and tired.

Anyway…Steven and Carol tendered into town to look around for a good restaurant. A short time later, we did, too. Steven called an hour or two later and before he could say anything I told him that we were already back on the boat, and that we had found the town horrible, with nowhere we wanted to eat. I then asked if they had had better luck than us, and Steven said they had walked virtually every street, and it only gotten worse.

Actually, I think that if we had gone to Porto Ferraio first we might have liked it. But, it isn’t the prettiest town on the island by any means. It’s where the ferries come in, and possibly where most the people live — but, it wasn’t what we were expecting. And, to be fair, I did hear from another cruiser that I shouldn’t judge Porto Ferraio until we have seen it at night. Apparently there is a very active night life.

The bottom line for us was that we weren’t impressed, and we wanted something special for our big farewell dinner. We discussed going back to Porto Azzurro, as we had all liked it there and wanted to spend more time. However, it was 20 miles the wrong direction for us, and Sans Souci was light on fuel.

My objections, though, were quickly overcome after we spent a rolly night at anchor because of the incessant ferries. I re-ran my fuel calculations deciding that I had more fuel than I thought, and BACK we went, to Porto Azzurro. My fuel calculations turned out to be overly optimistic, but that’s a whole other story.

Roberta enjoying the sunshine on the dock at Porto Azzurro.

Everyone is smiling on the outside, but sad on the inside. This was our group’s farewell dinner, and we won’t be traveling together again until May or June of next year when we reconvene in some as-yet-to-be-determined location.

This picture shows [L to R] Steven Argosy, Carol Argosy, Ken Williams and Roberta Williams.

With Seabird departing, I should mention how AWESOME it has been cruising with Steven and Carol. Together we have cruised:

• British Columbia, Canada
• Alaska
• Russia (Petropovlosk)
• Japan
• Taiwan
• Hong Kong
• Turkey
• Greece
• Croatia
• Montenegro
• Italy (including Sicily, the Aeolian Islands and more)
• Malta
• France (Corsica)

They complement us well, and in addition to being wonderful people and great friends, they add immeasurably to our security. I seriously doubt that we could have done what we have done without them.

Actually, to segway a bit, I will speak for a second about why Roberta and I, who could easily be described as independent, privacy-oriented people, are cruising alongside another boat for so many thousands of miles.

I wouldn’t say it is totally common, but is fairly common, that when world-cruisers are going long distances to “out of the way places” they often try to do it in the company of another boat. When doing regional cruising, or coastal cruising, most people are happy to go it alone. But, when going into other countries or across oceans, I think most cruisers are happier knowing there is another boat nearby — for companionship, logistical and safety reasons. And, if it works out, you become great friends! As we all have…

Here’s something that I heard that I’ve never forgotten…

Scott Strickland, who had a Nordhavn 47 and crossed the North Atlantic with us as part of the Nordhavn Rally in 2004, kept track of what later happened to the 18 boats that made that passage from Florida to Europe together. It’s too small a number to really quantify definitively, but Scott’s perception was that those boats that continued to cruise in the company of others had a positive experience, and those who toughed it out alone became quickly disenchanted and headed home or sold their boats.

Cruising in a foreign country can be a challenge. In fact, there are lots of challenges to overcome. Being able to use a divide and conquer strategy, where each person or couple tackles a different task for the benefit of the group, makes it much simpler. Plus, even though it may be a bit of a placebo, knowing that there is another boat alongside at all times adds reassurance when making long passages, dealing with severe weather or having mechanical problems. It also gives you friends to talk to in places where otherwise there is this huge language barrier between you and the locals.

The biggest benefit is that each rises to the best of their skill set. We all have things we are good and bad at. I freely admit that I am a “software guy” and when hardware breaks, I am sometimes at a total loss. Steven is a “hardware guy” and comes from a machine shop background. Together we form a team that can do about anything, but apart we aren’t as powerful a force.

And, on a related topic, here’s a link to the blog of a Nordhavn 68, traveling alongside a Nordhavn 72, for an unbelievable trip to Greenland:

http://shearmadness72.com/posts/

Anyway, back to my story….

At our farewell dinner we started talking for the first time about next year, and the year after that. There’s an old saying that “cruising plans are best written in sand at low tide.” So…between now and next year a lot can change, but the idea with the most momentum currently is to cruise France and Spain next year, followed by the Caribbean the following year. Our dream scenario would be that Braun and Tina Jones from Ocean Pearl, who formed the third boat of our GSSR journey from Seattle, across the Bering Sea and through Asia could join us. They are currently thousands of miles north of us in Denmark, so…who knows how practical that is, but it is the dream.

Note: Braun and Tina have had some wild times cruising the Baltic this year. If you haven’t been following their blog, this could be a good time to check it out:

http://www.oceanpearlyacht.com/Ocean-Pearl-Blog

Our evening concluded with hugs, and a sad farewell to our friends on Seabird…

Minutes before their departure for their long 700-mile journey south, Steven and Carol tendered over to Sans Souci to say goodbye to us AND to the puppies.

The thick line you see is one I use to tie the tender overnight. I’m always paranoid that some thief will sneak in during the night to steal our tender, or more likely that I’ll goof tying the tender to the boat, so I always add a second thicker line at night.

Here’s Steven offering Toundra and Keeley a fish as a departure gift. Our dogs are quite spoiled and wisely refused his “gift.”

The dogs will miss their Uncle Steven and Aunt Carol! They stood on the deck behind the pilot house as Steven and Carol departed with Seabird, greatly confused about why their boat was leaving without us.

Roberta and I wanted the smoothest possible ride for our trip north and weren’t in a hurry, plus Porto Azzurro is a great place for “hanging out.” We had good protection from wind and swell, excellent restaurants a tender-ride away, and a cool little town to explore.

Our next destination after Porto Azzurro would be the town of La Spezia, 100 miles to the north. This would require an eleven hour run.

Here’s something most visitors to Porto Azzurro don’t know, or at least that they don’t go way out of their way to tell you.

Just above the idyllic anchorage, at the end of the pretty path that extends from town and ends abruptly at a fenced-off place, there is a maximum security prison. As one waiter described it to us, “That’s where Italy puts the worst of the worst.”

No sooner had Seabird departed than the weather around us turned to crap.

On normal, sunny mornings, many of the boats around us would leave the anchorage to go find some pretty bay to swim in, or to work on their tans. Instead only a few boats were leaving the anchorage due to the weather. I saw one sailboat leave with a young lady in back with her bright yellow bikini, only to see the same sailboat returning 30 minutes later to drop anchor, the young lady now wearing sweat pants and a thick jacket. So much for optimism.

 

Sitting out the rain while at anchor, hoping for sunshine.

Anyway…there’s nothing wrong with sitting at anchor. We have good internet, television and the town a short tender ride away. I also had some boat projects to do, including changing the oil in the generator, while Roberta took the time for some housekeeping, laundry and prepping for dinner.

On most sailboats and most smaller motor boats, the generator (which converts diesel fuel into electricity) runs only a few hours a day, just long enough to charge a battery bank on the boat. On Sans Souci we run our generator nonstop 24 hours a day when away from the dock. Some cruisers would argue that this is wasteful, and puts too many hours on the generator. This last winter we even had to install a new generator because we had worn out the previous one. The primary reason that Sans Souci runs the generator so much is that we have many electronic devices which consume electricity that we keep turned on at all times. For example, we have satellite-based internet. There is an antenna on our roof that is constantly trying to keep pointed at a satellite. The same is true for our satellite television. Not to mention the air conditioning in hot weather! But before you think us unusual in running a 24-hour generator, Sans Souci is at the break-point of boat size to require a full-time generator. (When we had our prior Sans Souci, a Nordhavn 62, we were able to get by on running our generator only about 3 hours a day.) Size and complexity of boat does make a difference. So there is a bit of a culture gap between us and some other cruisers. Some would say, “Isn’t the goal of a boat to get away from all those things?,” to which I would respond, “We consider our boat a portable home, which can transport us to far-flung and exotic locales. When you’re far away from home for long periods of time, the strangeness and stresses of boating life can sometimes get overwhelming. Having some of the “comforts of home” can help mitigate those feelings, and for us, anyway, add to the enjoyment of our cruising adventures. As Roberta has often said, “Sans Souci will be in a lot of faraway lands – which is a wonderful experience – but, when I enter Sans Souci, no matter where we are in the world, I want to feel like I can close the doors and be “at home.” Like I said, it’s a culture thing and has to do with how you think of time on the boat.

Changing the oil in the generator is a regular part of my life, as I need to do it every eight days. Normally, changing the oil is a painless 20 minute exercise, but my last oil change wound up being a half-day of misery. While changing the oil I goofed and my hand brushed the valve for the oil transfer system, closing it. I have an automated system that sucks oil from the various engines on the boat, or transfers in new oil. The system works terrifically under normal circumstances, but not quite as well when the valve at the generator is closed. When I turned on the pump to transfer new clean oil into the generator, no oil arrived. As I was crouching next to the generator to try to determine why, the oil transfer hose popped loose, spraying me, and the lazarette, with oil. Crap! Reattaching the hose and getting the generator going took minutes. Cleaning up the mess took hours. Oh well .. they say that “That which doesn’t kill you makes you a better Captain.” Lesson learned. I’ll be much more careful next time.

After a couple of days of grey skies, the sun came out and summer returned to Porto Azzurro. Roberta and I discovered a wonderful restaurant perched above the bay for an early dinner.

     

View from the La Caletta restaurant, in the bay of Porto Azzurro. If you look closely, Sans Souci is hiding in amongst the boats. Can you find her in one of the photos?

The highlight of dinner was watching all the boats returning to the bay from their day trips to other bays with beaches. As the bay filled, places to anchor became sparse. As you can see in this picture, we anchored out in the boondocks, in deeper water. The sailboats like to be in the shallowest water they can get, and seem to have no fear of being too close to each other. We watched boat after boat maneuver to position, toss the anchor off the bow, and then return to the cockpit, never bothering to set the anchor, often much too close to surrounding boats. Boats would collide from time to time, and no one seemed to get very excited about it, they’d just pull the anchor (by hand) and drop elsewhere. It’s a much different world than I live in. Sans Souci’s 120 ton mass would make more of an impression if we bumped into someone.

Do not interpret my comments as negative towards the other boaters in the bay. Actually, I feel quite the opposite. One of my pet sayings is: “It doesn’t matter the size of your boat. We all anchor in the same bays, and if anything, there is an inverse correlation between fun and boat size.” These small boats can be underway in minutes and move where the mood takes them during the day. They anchor in places I can only dream about. On Sans Souci, moving the boat is “a production.” I’m sure these boats are jealous of Sans Souci’s air conditioning, or our good internet, or even our warm showers, and flush toilets. But, ultimately, there is much to be envied on all sides, and generally you’ll always find Sans Souci anchoring as near to the smaller boats as we can get, as they tend to be the ones most willing to forget the rest of the world, relax and just focus on having fun. They help remind Roberta and I of the simple fun of boating!

Our upcoming 100 mile passage to La Spezia, on the mainland of Italy, wasn’t such a big deal that we couldn’t manage in any of the weather conditions we might encounter…but somehow it felt different. It would be be our first passage of any substance in two years without Seabird right alongside. (It may be remembered that Roberta and I did cruise Turkey by ourselves for two summers before Steven and Carol rejoined us the summer of 2012.)

Usually, if you want good weather, the process is very straightforward: You wait for it.

For this passage it would be a little more complicated in that preperations for departure would need to start the day before we depart. If we were to wait until we could actually look out the window and see calm seas, it would be too late to take advantage of the calm seas and go. Normally weather cycles last longer than a few hours, but there was nothing normal about the weather this year in the Med. One restaurant owner told us, when I asked how the season was going, that this had been the worst year in his 35 years running a restaurant. He had been clobbered by the Italian economy, which he attributed to crooked politicians, and was now being dealt a killer punch by what seems like an endless series of storms and unseasonably cool weather.

We were watching the weather for a period of sunny days with no swell, and quickly realized we were dreaming. We went from watching for calm seas, to wondering when we could get a ten-hour window of lumpy, but not too rough, seas. Expectations were lowering by the day.

While talking about the weather, I should mention how we are checking weather.

I use a variety of free, or near-free, services. Typically, I check a couple of the free services (Windfinder, Pocketgrib) via apps on my i-Pad. I also google expressions like “Marine Forecast Liguria” or wherever we are, to find sites with the local weather forecast. If the reports are agreeing or it is a short ride, I usually stop there. We also subscribe to a weather service called “seaweather.net.” Roberta swears by it and checks it often.

Some of you might be saying to yourselves, “Why is Ken always talking about the weather? Doesn’t he have a Nordhavn?” Nordhavn boats are rugged and are built to cross oceans. That is true. On the other hand, my body is somewhat flimsy, and was built to live on land. When buying our boat I remember asking the salesman, “So what kind of seas can I go out in if I buy this boat?” The answer was, “You will give up long before the boat does.” That turned out to be a truer statement than I realized at the time. On our inaugaral voyage, from Dana Point, California to Seattle, that same salesman (Nordhavn’s President) came along for the ride. When my father and I met him at the dock he said we couldn’t depart for a few days saying, “We need to wait for the seas to calm.” I said, “No way. You sold me this boat based on its ability to go in bad weather. Let’s go.” Given that I had just written a large check he reluctantly agreed, only to then wish later that he hadn’t. The boat did fine, but our stomachs not so much. I will spare you the gorey details, but suffice it to say that “real sailors” know that you don’t go to sea, unless it is your job, on nasty days. A flat calm ride is a happy ride.

When I want to be absolutely certain about the weather, there are some paid services I use:

• http://www.seaweather.net Seaweather is expensive (around $200 USD for a 90 day subscription). They were referred to me by a big-boat Captain friend who loves their service. My initial impression was negative. Their website is kind of ugly, but I signed up anyhow based on my friend’s strong recommendation. Immediately after signing up I almost gave up on them, in that the product itself didn’t look particularly amazing. However, after checking the weather on their site many times a day over a long period, they have become our favorite option by far. The Seaweather interface is easy to use, and provides all the information we want quickly and easily. More importantly, they seem to have “gotten it right” more often than the other services we use.
• http://www.ocens.com Another expensive service I use, with a much slicker, albeit confusing interface, is: Weathernet, and GribExplorer from Ocens. They charge a bunch of money to purchase their product ($99 for Weathernet and $199 for GribExplorer, with renewal fees annually) but then are fairly inexpensive (like $2 or $3) each time you check the weather. I’ve grown to like their interface, and trust their data in some parts of the world more than others. But, overall, I like their product and they have great customer support. I check them before most passages.
• http://www.oceanmarinenav.com When I’m on a run and the seas aren’t behaving as predicted, or when I really want good information I call Bob Jones at Ocean Marine Nav. He has been doing weather forecasting for boats for many years, and gives me a live human to talk to about the weather. His pricing varies but is normally by the passage, or by the hour. I consider it cheap insurance to call Bob and have him take a look at all the up-to-date data and listen to his opinion.

So after a couple of days of seeking a perfectly clear weather forecast, we just decided that wasn’t going to ever happen. We had conflicting information from different services, with the only consistency being that everyone agreed there was nasty stuff coming, and that there was a fairly short window (one day) of good weather coming.

The problem was that the precise timing of that good weather window was subject to differing opinions.

So, Roberta and I did what most sailors do after waiting a few days for a clean weather report. We said, “I think it’s going to be fine. And, if it isn’t, we can handle it.” I called Bob at Ocean Marine, and he agreed with my logic, and a decision was made.

It was finally time to bring in the “fish” (pull in the flopper stoppers), put the tender on deck, and start engines!

Our passage north can be summarized as “ten-hour misery.”

I’ve mentioned before that I fear wind less than swell. The wind creates the swell, and it is the swell that makes life difficult inside the boat, and sometimes the wind isn’t even in the exact area where you are cruising – but the swell is!

There was almost no wind for our passage. But, there must have been wind somewhere west of us that stirred up the waves and sent them our direction. The waves (swell) weren’t all that high; mostly in the six to eight foot range. But, they were unrelenting and exactly on our port beam (left side). The distance between waves is always important to note, because if the waves are far enough apart they are a non-event. For example 30 foot waves 30 seconds apart would probably be preferable to eight foot waves four seconds apart.

Exacerbating the problem was that Sans Souci was very low on fuel. There would be a fuel dock waiting for us at La Spezia, but for the passage we were riding higher than usual and bobbing like a cork.

We have stabilizers, and they did a masterful job of keeping things secure inside Sans Souci. In fact, one of my “tests” for how bad the waves are is to ask myself, “Do I need to remove our laptops from the table in the pilot house?” There have been a few times when we were rocking and rolling enough that the laptops could easily be envisaged sliding off the table and transforming into an expensive pile of rubble on the floor. It was never anywhere near that bad.

It was just annoying, and relentless.

Roberta and I are good about not getting seasick, but Toundra and Keeley less so. From the beginning the dogs looked miserable. We never know what to say to them. They don’t know what we’re doing, why this is happening to them, what they did to cause it, or how long it will last.

They just know they don’t feel well in their tummies.

Roberta put them on her lap to try to make them feel better. That became a bad idea when Keeley sprayed her with puke a couple hours into the trip. She had no sooner cleaned it all up than Toundra, our other dog, who NEVER gets seasick nailed her. She cleaned up again, and then Keeley got her again. Finally, Roberta went outside behind the pilot house, to lie down with the dogs, hoping that the calmer ride and fresh air would help them.

There isn’t much other than the lumpiness to note about the ride. We had one wave that I’d have to describe as a rogue wave. In all our years of cruising it was the first anomaly of the sort we have seen. We were just cruising along happily, rising and falling and rising and falling, with no one on the radar and no boats in sight, when Sans Souci suddenly lifted probably 15 feet in the air for no reason. It wasn’t violent, it was just a sudden upwards elevator ride. It was accompanied by a bit of a spin, and then we gently came down the other side. It was nothing more than a big wave; kind of a gentle giant. We were running probably 10 miles off the coast at the time, so I don’t know what if any impact it might have upon reaching shore. The only other event of any sort was that we almost struck a whale. I saw the back crossing left to right in front of me, and at first just thought it was a pack of dolphins, so I took no evasive action. Quickly though I realized it was much too big to be a dolphin and then saw how the water was dark all around it, and immediately killed the throttles. I was sure we were going to hit it. But we glided over where it had been and just kept going.

Sans Souci at anchor at Porto Venere, just outside La Spezia. Beautiful!

Anyway…enough of all that. As you can see in this picture, we made it to anchor near La Spezia in front of a charming town called Porto Venere. We were tired, but Roberta whipped up an amazing dinner of beef barley soup and a salad of greens, blackberries, toasted pecans and goat cheese crumbles for dinner. Sublime!

And — on a COMPLETELY different topic — here is a link to a blog entry of a Nordhavn 62-owning friend, James Ellingford, from Australia:

http://www.pendanablog.com/Pendana-Nordhavn-62-blog/2014/08/25/Pendana-s-World-Trip

In James’ most recent blog entry he is announcing that he will be taking his N62 AROUND THE WORLD. I put that in caps, because it is a big deal! When James and I first started talking about it I said I thought it was a great idea unless he had teen children or pets. He then said he had both, and I asked if he knew what he was getting himself into. That was a couple months ago and James has been working non-stop since that time to understand and come up with solutions to all the challenges. As recently as a few days ago his voyage was still not certain as he was meeting with US immigration officials trying to understand the US visa requirements. He is now making this announcement because all barriers to the trip (at least all the known barriers) have been eliminated, and the trip is a “go.”

I’m very excited for him, and was secretly hoping he’d figure it all out and make the decision to do the trip. But when I would write to him, most of my correspondence focused on reasons why this was a crazy idea and there were too many obstacles. The life he has chosen for his family will not be an easy one. There are many days when Roberta and I look at each other and say, “Why are we doing this? It makes no sense.” Roberta and I could be somewhere sitting at a Four Seasons Hotel by the pool, being served drinks with umbrellas in them. But instead, last week I was sitting in the bilge of our boat covered in oil, scrubbing for hours. All I can say is that the rewards are there, and they do justify all the effort, but no one should underestimate the cost (financial and effort) or underestimate the rewards (places, history, people and fun) of a circumnavigation. Our crossing of the Bering Sea and trip through Asia was probably the most challenging we’ll ever make, and yet, I am certain that we’ll never have a more rewarding adventure. The journey IS the reward, not the destination.

Anyway..best wishes to James on this new chapter in his, and his family’s, life. Make sure you register for his blog. It promises to be very interesting!

Sans Souci knows how to make an entrance

After a night at anchor at Porto Venere, we rose early to go to the fuel dock at the Porto Mirabello marina. While we were getting fuel the dockmaster walked up and introduced himself by saying, “Welcome to November in August!”

His comment was in reference to the unseasonably cool weather, which had once again turned horrible. The wind was blowing 15 to 20 knots, heavily overcast and beginning to rain. We had arrived at the fuel dock after a rainy night at anchor.

The fuel dock was on the outside of the marina, and one of the easiest to access that we’ve seen. But the best thing about the fuel dock – besides obtaining much-needed fuel — was that a regular reader of my blog, who just happens to be a big-boat captain was standing on the dock waiting for us!

Shyness has never been a problem I’ve had to deal with. So, within a few minutes of shaking hands I explained our situation about going into Med-mooring situations and asked for a favor. Roberta had shoulder surgery last year and does not handle lines and fenders while Med-mooring. Therefore when entering marinas I am effectively single-handing the boat. (With side-tie docking, there is no problem, as she can handle that – no problem). But, with Med-mooring, particularly in windy conditions, I need two other people on the boat besides myself. Thus I asked if he had any crew he could loan me to help get Sans Souci into the marina. He wisely said that the marina staff would be happy to help, and that he had already given his crew the day off.

I discussed my challenge with the dockmaster, who said he’d be able to help, but I wasn’t sure we were communicating or that he really understood the challenges of Med-mooring a 120-ton boat (while single-handing).

So I tried a different approach. I asked my new Captain friend if he would like to try driving a Nordhavn 68 while I worked lines. Nordhavns are fun to drive, and a proper Captain enjoys a challenge. We were pinned to the fuel dock by wind, and it was going to take some skill to get us into the marina.

He took up the challenge and into the marina we went.

Meanwhile, the dockmaster decided that he wanted to help, and would find me the easiest possible slip to get into. The good news was that we had a side-tie, and the bad news was that it would be a very long walk to the shops/restaurants. That seemed like a great deal to me.

That was to be the last good news I’d get during the next hour.

The moorage, when we got to it, was in a remote corner of the marina. While we were moving I put out fenders and got lines ready. I asked the Captain where I should stand, and he directed me to stand midships ready to hand over a spring line (a line extending from the middle of the boat) to the marina staffer waiting for us on the dock.

As we were backing into the slip I realized that there was no place to tie a line from the middle of the boat. There were only two bollards (the cleats or posts you tie the lines to). One was about 30 feet in front of where my bow was going to be after we backed up to the dock, and the other was at the back of the boat.

Argh! This wasn’t going to work. I scrambled back to the bow and handed a bow line to the marina staffer standing there. It turned out not to be long enough, meaning I had to swap the line. We then tied in the back. The bow and stern line were too far apart. The longer a line is, the more it can stretch. The long bow line was allowing the boat to drift away from the dock. The boat was not being held and would not stay on the dock.

On Sans Souci’s starboard side there is another boat. The owner (or Captain?) of that boat was onboard and was not happy that I’d been assigned that particular slip. I was going to be upwind of him, and with strong winds I’d be blown constantly into his boat. My newfound Captain-friend was having a heck of a time keeping Sans Souci off the neighboring boat while I was scrambling trying to figure how to tie the boat, with nothing to tie onto. Meanwhile, the guy on the neighboring boat looked like he was going to throw a tantrum. He was pacing back and forth on his bow carrying little wimpy fenders that he hoped to interject if we should get too close to his boat. The right answer was to do our best and ignore him, but it did add stress (at least for me) to the situation.

The marina staffer then said, “Would you like a bow line (bow Med-mooring line)?” I hadn’t realized that was an option. Since side-tying clearly wasn’t working, they were offering me the chance to do a traditional Med-mooring. I said, “Sure!” At which the staffer handed me a line from the port side and I went to work trying to get it tight.

The extra line helped but didn’t solve the total situation. We were still drifting into the boat next to us with the nervous guy still pacing. I asked if we could also do the starboard bow line, and then was handed it from the dock. I had to walk it to the bow, and then try to get it tight as well. Once that was on, I was exhausted – but we were in.

Sans Souci, side-tied, and then some, at the Porto Mirabello Marina in La Spezia, Italy

We now had a normal Med-moor docking situation, plus an extra line running to the port side wall. With 20+ knots of wind directly on my port beam (left side) I was still going to occasionally bump the boat on my starboard side. That happened a few times last night, and I saw my neighbor walking out to his bow every hour to look down at the gap between us. I have six big-ass fenders separating us, and he probably has 10 micro-fenders, so it is very unlikely our boats will ever really connect, but I can predict we won’t be forming a lasting relationship.

Meanwhile, the Captain has probably made a note to himself to never hire crew who are former software engineers.

Anyway, we are here, and despite the calendar, it is still November in August!

PS A very special thank you to the Captain who helped us into the Porto Mirabello Marina. Without his assistance, we would have returned to anchor at Porto Venere after obtaining fuel rather than enter this VERY nice marina.

And in closing…

I ran the math to figure out what I paid per gallon for fuel (which meant converting euros to US dollars, and liters to gallons.)

The bottom line: $8.48 USD per gallon! Given the high fuel prices, I’m surprised that trawlers haven’t gained more popularity in Europe.

Sans Souci may not be the fastest boat in this marina, but we have probably gone more miles than any other boat here, including going more places. We can move when other boats are stuck in port, and can move a long distance between fuel stops. I’ve noticed that if I don’t stay in touch frequently with my Nordhavn-owning friends, all I need to do is blink and they seem to wind up in a new country or on a new ocean.

We may not be hares, but we tortoises have a lot of tricks up our sleeves!

That’s it for this issue of KensBlog… My next report will be from where we will winter the boat – Portosole Marina, in San Remo, Italy!

Thank you for following along on our big voyage!

If you missed my prior blog entries from this season, you may view them here:

• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/05/31/KensBlog-2014-01–Preparing-For-The-Season
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/06/14/KensBlog-2014-02–Welcome-to-Italy
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/06/24/KensBlog-2014-03–Rough-Seas-And-A-Visit-to-a-Historic-Town
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/07/07/KensBlog-2014-04–Southern-Sicily-and-Malta
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/07/22/KensBlog-2014-05–Malta–Winds-and-High-Seas
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/01/KensBlog-2014-Entry-6–We-re-having-a-SWELL-time
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/04/KensBlog-2014-Entry-7–Welcome-to-Party-Island
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/17/KensBlog-2014-Entry-8–Everyone-knows-it-s-Windy

If you aren’t receiving my blog entries via email, click this link to register:

http://www.kensblog.com/register

I should also mention that this is one of two blogs that I do. My other blog is on Facebook, although you do not need to register with Facebook to view the blog. Just click on this link:

http://www.facebook.com/kensblogdotcom

My other blog is very different than this blog. I post to it almost every day, and post whatever I happen to be thinking about, without editing or filtering. I also tend to respond instantly to any questions. Check it out!

Thank you!

Ken and Roberta Williams
ken(at)kensblog.com
MV Sans Souci
Nordhavn 68

PS – In case you haven’t figured it out, clicking on any of the pictures above will give you a higher-resolution (bigger) version of the picture.

Welcome to Ken’s Blog!

Greetings!

Here’s an overview of the locations covered in this blog entry:

This blog entry covers our journey from Ponza to Sardinia (which is in Italy), our passage across the Bonifacio Strait, and our time in southern Corsica (which is in France!)

NOTE: CLICK THE PICTURE TO GET A CLOSE-UP VIEW

We had a very long ride to Sardinia.

To reach Sardinia from the tiny island of Ponza requires making a long, one hundred and sixty nautical-mile, twenty-hour passage. Although we have made many overnight passages we do all we can to avoid them. There are cruisers who look forward to these passages but that’s not us. With only the two of us on board we have to take shifts at the helm, and there isn’t enough time for our bodies to adjust to any kind of sleep schedule. Most people who do long passages will tell you that the first day on a long passage is usually the toughest.

Fortunately, we had a perfect forecast for an absolutely calm ride.

For the first sixteen hours of our passage we had perfectly calm seas. About four hours out from Sardinia, as it was just getting daylight, the wind started climbing. Soon it was 35 knots, directly in our face. The wind was coming from the west (the same direction we were going). Luckily though, we were close to Sardinia and the waves didn’t have time to build. We saw only three to four foot chop. The thought foremost on our minds was how lucky we were that the wind hadn’t come sooner. Had we been farther offshore, we’d have been blasted in the dark by much taller waves.

During the last couple of hours we passed a catamaran that was really getting trashed by the wind and waves. I tried to shoot a video of the catamaran, but wasn’t thinking clearly at the time (sleep deprivation) and couldn’t get the stupid camera to focus. Here’s my 15 second attempt. It’s a terrible video, but somewhat shows the seas:

Click here to see a short video showing the seas as we approached Sardinia

Our first hint that Sardinia would be different came as we were approaching the anchorage. I looked out the window with the binoculars and couldn’t believe what I saw. It was literally a megayacht parking lot! I had never seen so many megayachts in one place.

Steven, on Seabird, the Nordhavn 62 that we are traveling with, made the comment as we were approaching that we would be like “The Beverly Hillbillies” here. We suddenly felt very small…

Upon arrival at 8:30 in the morning, we dropped anchor and then everyone on both boats went to sleep. Normally we drop the tenders and go exploring, but no one was in the mood for anything. Unfortunately, what had been a calm anchorage upon arrival was soon invaded by many boats generating wake and bouncing us around. We didn’t care, though; we dined onboard and did nothing for the rest of the day.

Marinella – Our first anchorage in Sardinia…

We anchored behind a huge megayacht named Exstasea. With 20/20 hindsight, we anchored closer than we should have. We use our radar to measure distances to other boats when approaching an anchorage. I set the radar such that each ring on the radar represents 150 feet of distance, and our goal is always to drop the anchor with no other boats within three rings (450 feet) of us. Because of Exstasea’s size, I allowed for five rings (750 feet.) This seemed plenty, but a couple of days later when the wind dropped and both boats were floating freely, I discovered we were MUCH too close. When the wind is high, boats point approximately the same direction, with their anchors hundreds of feet in front of them. When there is no wind, they drift randomly anywhere their anchor chain will let them. Ecstasea departed just as I was thinking I had to re-anchor.

 

We anchored behind this boat, named Ecstasea. I looked it up on the internet and it was 282 feet. It was carrying a bunch of Hollywood celebrities who I only sort of recognized (I’m not up on the latest pop culture.) What most impressed me was the jet engine at the back. Searching the boat on the internet I discovered that it has over 43,000 horsepower of engines and can run at over 30 knots. And…it was sold a few years ago for $200 million.

   

I said to Roberta that for all the cruising we have done this year, this was the first time I had felt like we were in a “real” anchorage. It seems like all we’ve done this year is either go into port or drop anchor in a place completely open to the sea. Finally! We were able to swim and have fun. These are the times that make the difficult days worthwhile.

Our anchorage was called Marinella, and we loved being there! The first day we just lounged around the boat until we built up the energy to drop the tender (which only took about ten minutes). Then we went exploring.

We hiked along the beach and found a great beachfront restaurant with a tender dock for dinner. The approach from the water was rocky, so we tied up the tender in a marina about a mile away, and hiked with the dogs to the restaurant. There were some buoys in the water indicating the tender-approach to the restaurant, but we didn’t understand what they were telling us. I phoned the restaurant to ask for tendering-in directions but the language challenges made it impossible for them to communicate. But we wanted an excuse for a beach-hike anyway.

Once at the restaurant the buoys were explained and later in the evening we went in for dinner along with Steven and Carol from Seabird. Halfway to the restaurant Steven said, “Darn. I left my shoes on the boat.” Oops. He had fancied up, but forgot to put shoes on. We said, “No problem. They won’t care.” And, the restaurant didn’t care at all. They also provided extra chairs for our dogs to sit on.

 

We had a fantastic dinner at the restaurant Oasi Beach Murana (the white building on the beach in this photo.)

Dinners are always late here. It was nearly 10pm when we left the restaurant and the crowd was just arriving.

A side story:

Golfe De Pavero – Our anchorage at Porto Cervo

Our next destination would be Porto Cervo. An article in Forbes last year summarized Porto Cervo this way:

I emailed the port to get pricing for moorage, with no response. I also tried phoning, but my calls went unanswered. My guess is that moorage is booked a year in advance, and that I wouldn’t have liked the price anyway.

 

What does a billion dollars look like? My guess is you are seeing it here in just these megayachts. And, these are only a tiny fraction of the megayachts at Porto Cervo.

Instead, we went to anchor in a bay just southeast of Porto Cervo called Pevero.

Anchoring was a little bizarre. We entered a huge bay (perhaps half a mile across.) As we were entering the bay I thought, “This is going to be great! There’s a ton of space to anchor.” But, as I was hunting for a place to drop anchor I was approached by two guys in a tender, who said that I needed to anchor next to shore, and started guiding me to a corner of the bay.

Roberta told me to ignore them. We’ve been in many bays where there are guys waving flags who try to direct you to some private dock of theirs (or private anchorage) and they charge you money. However, these guys had uniforms and felt legit, so I decided to give them a try. They guided me to an incredibly pretty, but shallow, place near a bunch of rocks.

Seabird was behind me and didn’t like where I was being led, so they headed off to the other side of the bay.

When I was next to the guys in the tender, they pointed at where I should drop my hook. It was 17 feet of very pretty water. About 200 feet to my port side was shallow water and rocks. It wasn’t a place I’d normally drop. They insisted and said it was the safest place from the Mistral.

Mistrals are high winds from the northwest that come up suddenly here, and can go from nothing to 50 knots in an hour. They had guided me to a safe place, and I was convinced they were honest. They didn’t seem to want money. Meanwhile Steven and Carol (Seabird) had headed to the other side of the bay, and they were getting swell and wind. He realized I was in a good spot, and backtracked to where I was.

The guys were indeed good guys! I was in a great spot, and Steven dropped anchor next to me. They are apparently associated with the mooring balls in the center of this bay, and push the little guys (like me) to the side so that the megayachts have plenty of room on the mooring balls.

Being so close to the rocks I put out only 150′ of chain.

When we dropped our anchor there was only one boat near us, but within an hour other, smaller, boats invaded.

Our anchorage at Golfo Di Pevero, near to Porto Cervo.

We tendered around the bay sightseeing. The water is so clear that the depth is deceiving. This picture shows seventeen feet of depth, yet it feels like you could easily stand on the bottom and have your head above water.

Here’s a fun size comparison. The megayacht pictured is named “Dilbar.” Sans Souci is on the right side of this picture. I’ve always been told that size doesn’t matter, but I’m not sure that is true at Porto Cervo

Our intention yesterday had been to have dinner in Porto Cervo, which is only a couple miles from where we are anchored, but we spent the whole day totally surrounded by smaller boats. We were in the middle of a packed parking lot! Several were sitting in positions where if the wind should shift we’d quickly run them over. Usually, when boats anchor too close we walk out carrying large fenders, and that gets their attention. In this case, there were so many that we just hoped the wind wouldn’t shift, or that if it did, they’d be quick to start their engines and move.

By dinner time we were tired and not in the mood to go out. Roberta cooked a great meal and we ate on our upper aft deck.

Then we watched a movie and afterward hung out in the hot tub late into the night watching the tenders come and go from the megayachts around us.

Actually…here’s a story I almost certainly shouldn’t tell, but will (even though it really isn’t that interesting)…

We were sitting in the hot tub at 7 one morning drinking our coffee and admiring the view. I pointed out to Roberta that I thought maybe a nearby fancy yacht was taking an attractive young lady out for a photo shoot. She was standing on the swim step, surrounded by guys, wearing a sparkly evening dress, with purse and high-heels. It’s not what one normally wears on a swim step at 7am. I assumed she was a model, and they wanted to catch the morning light for pictures. Minutes later she was joined by three other similarly (night-club) attired young ladies.

Aha! This was not a photo shoot. It was the crew taking “visitors” back to town in the early morning. Oh well .. not that interesting of a story. But, at 7am, how many stories are there?

Anyway…we soon departed for Porto Cervo in our tender. Finding a place to dock it was easy. We hiked around and explored “the village.” Clearly, it is a community designed to target the high-end yacht crowd. Every major luxury brand you can think of had a store in town.

But being “commoners” we merely shopped at the grocery store and bought some needed provisions, and then read some menus intending to head back into town for dinner.

As seems usual this summer, our plans were defeated by a southeast wind that suddenly kicked up. In fact, I think that we may have dragged our anchor. This was particularly surprising in that we were in fairly light (15-20kt) winds. It wasn’t much of an event, in that we caught it within minutes and simply re-anchored a few feet from where we had originally dropped the anchor. We have only dragged anchor three or four times in 40,000+ miles of cruising, so it is worth noting and analyzing.

Although nothing happened, had we gone into town for dinner, the scenario may have played out much differently, perhaps even disastrously.

I mentioned earlier that I didn’t like where we were anchored. We were in a tight, shallow location with a rocky wall only a couple hundred feet behind us, and rocks poking up from the water only a couple hundred feet to our west. It was an incredible, and beautiful, place to be — but there was no margin for error. And, as I said, normally we wouldn’t anchor in such a place as we normally like deeper water with lots of space around us.

Here’s what went wrong:

In this picture, we were anchored at position “A.”

When anchoring I always have Nobeltec (our chart-plotter software) place what we call a “snail-trail” onto the chart. This track shows where the boat has been, and is the red line in this picture. I also put down a yellow boundary circle, the radius of which is the amount of anchor rode (chain) I have put out. In this picture the yellow circle is not in its original location because I re-anchored.

The etching labeled “B” is the outer limit of what was my original circle. The smaller circle you see around point “A” is a fake circle, caused by light winds. When the winds are light enough the boats tends to circle around wherever the chain happens to be sitting.

Point “C” on this picture is the one that shows the anchor starting to drag towards shore. The etchings around point “C” were steadily working their way towards shore, and were outside the yellow circle.

When we dropped anchor, the wind projection was for a west or northwest wind, which would have blown us off-shore, thus I set my anchor by backing the boat from Point “A” towards point “B.”

When the wind turned around 180 degrees and was blowing towards shore, the anchor flipped over. The anchor was dug into the sand, but the 180-degree rotation caused it to pivot and come unstuck. Normally, this is not a problem, in that the real advantage of my anchor (a Rocna) is its ability to re-set itself quickly when the boat pulls back with the wind.

In this particular case, I had set the anchor on a patch of sand, surrounded by seaweed. When the anchor came unstuck, it found itself on seaweed where it could slide. My guess is that it would have found some sand, and dug itself back in again before we hit the rocks, but I didn’t want to test the theory.

Some thoughts on anchoring in general…

Sans Souci’s anchor chain (rode) is all chain, whereas smaller boats tend to use rope to form their rode.

There are pros and cons to using an all chain rode. Chain does not stretch, unlike rope. When the wind is such that there is a straight diagonal line between the boat and the anchor, you can have a problem. That said, it takes a huge amount of wind to have an exact straight line between the boat and the anchor. The reason for this is the weight of the chain itself. The chain is heavy, and most of the time when Sans Souci is at anchor the chain drops in a straight line to the bottom, then lies on the bottom from where the boat floats to wherever the anchor sits.

For example, let’s say that Sans Souci is sitting in 40 feet of water. The general rule of thumb with an all-chain rode is to put out five times as much chain as the water is deep; or two hundred feet. In calm conditions, the chain hangs straight down from the bow, leaving one hundred sixty feet of chain laying on the bottom, extending to the anchor. If there is wind, some amount of chain gets lifted, but not all of it. As the wind rises, more and more of the chain gets lifted. 99.9% of the time, there is some chain sitting on the bottom and there is no pull on the actual anchor. To the extent there is pull, the pull is exactly horizontal, which happens to be the best possible angle of setting an anchor for it to hold and not drag.

I’ve always wondered how much wind it takes to lift my chain off the bottom, and recently one of the readers of my blog pointed me to a webpage that had the mathematical formulas to compute the amount of wind it would take to completely raise my chain from the bottom at different levels of wind. Completely raising the chain from the bottom doesn’t automatically mean that the boat will drag anchor, but it is the first line of defense. If the full chain were stretched tight, then a sudden jerking motion caused by a wave would be transmitted all the way to the anchor, potentially pulling it, and potentially resulting in a very bad day.

Rather than bogging my blog down with a long mathematical formula, I constructed a spreadsheet, which can be downloaded from this link:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/q3tlp9t5itfo9fa/Wind%20force%20calcs.xlsx

This spreadsheet has the values for my boat. The key information to be plugged in are: length of boat, length of chain, weight of the chain, and the depth of the water.

This begs the question of, “Why not just use rope as the rode?” As I mentioned, the good thing about rope is that it stretches, acting as a shock absorber when waves hit. However, the bad thing is that it is light and lifts off the ground almost immediately. There is a compromise solution that many boaters who have all-chain rodes use, called a snubber. In addition to other benefits which are outside the scope of this blog entry to explain, the snubber (which is really just one or two pieces of rope) is stretched between two links of chain, forming a shock absorber, yielding the best of both worlds.

Anyway, I’m off-subject. My mistake here was anchoring in a place with no margin for error. I was on a small patch of sand, with no room for my anchor to catch and re-set if it came loose. The smart thing we did was to stay onboard when we noticed the wind had shifted direction and wasn’t behaving as forecast.

Lastly, below is a picture of Sans Souci floating at anchor. You’ll see that our flopper stoppers were out. This added a bit of “fun” to the equation. Bringing them in is a 15-minute process, and we were in a situation where we needed to hurry. All I could think of to do was to pull the line that goes to the fish (the dangling plates for the flopper stoppers), so that the fish would be lifted six feet into the air. Anyone watching would have thought we looked very funny. But, this took only a few seconds and allowed us to quickly re-anchor the boat.

Sans Souci at anchor near Porto Cervo

The area south of Porto Cervo is called “The Costa Smerelda.” Wikipedia has this to say about the homes in the area:

In a study released by the European luxury real estate brokerage Engel & Völkers, Romazzino Bay in Porto Cervo is the most expensive location in Europe. House prices reach up to 300,000 euros per square meter.

[1] In 2011 Costa Smeralda had the second, the 4th and the 6th most expensive hotels in the world, the Pitrizza, the Romazzino and the Cala di Volpe Hotel.

[2] In 2012 the Hotel Cala di Volpe, which is featured in the 1977 James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me is listed at number 7 on World’s 15 most expensive hotel suites complied by CNN Go in 2012. The presidential suite of the hotel is billed at US$32,736 per night.

This is Ken trying to look “macho” while walking a six-inch tall puppy with a pink leash and matching outfit.

As we were walking around the marina we noticed these three Maseratis. They were parked next to the Rolls Royce dealership, and near where the Bugatis were parked. Behind the dealership was a high-end wine store where we were able to buy some decent wine.

 
   

While we were tendering into Porto Cervo we saw this strange megayacht passing us by offshore. I sent the picture to a friend who “knows his megayachts” and he sent back these pictures showing this very unusual 135′ long boat (Ocean Pearl).

A Windy Anchorage As We Prepare To Depart Sardinia

After a couple of days of high wind at Porto Cervo the forecast was for a couple days of dead calm. We had been watching for a chance to cross the Strait of Bonifacio, which divides Sardinia from Corsica. It can be a nasty piece of water and we wanted the smoothest possible water for the crossing. We also wanted to position closer to the north end of Sardinia to have a shorter run across the strait.

We studied the charts and found a bay, called Porto Liscia, that seemed perfect. It looked well protected from the forecasted southerly wind and would be perfect for our jump across the strait. MAKE SURE YOU PLAY THE VIDEO BELOW TO SEE WHAT HAPPENED.

Given all the wind we were nervous about our departure and made the decision to depart at daybreak, when the wind is usually the calmest. We woke at 5:30am to get the boat ready for departure (put the tenders on deck, put in the flopper stoppers, check the engine room, etc).

We were up at 5:30am for our trip across the Bonifacio Strait. It was the night of the “Super Moon.”

From Wikipedia: “A supermoon is the coincidence of a full moon or a new moon with the closest approach the Moon makes to the Earth on its elliptical orbit, resulting in the largest apparent size of the lunar disk as seen from Earth.”

It’s probably a good thing that this is such a low-quality image, because I was standing on the deck to raise the tender, unshowered, unshaven, and worse of all un-coffee-d.

Despite our concern, the weather cooperated, and we had a perfectly calm ride across the strait. We arrived at a great anchorage (Sant Amanza). The “big city” on the southern end of Corsica is Bonifacio and we were almost walking distance away. I say almost, because Steven and Carol (from Seabird) decided to try walking and it didn’t turn out so well (more on that later.)

Sant Amanza, A Terrific Place To Anchor

We anchored in a large bay (Sant’Amanza) in the southeastern corner of Corsica. The bay offers perfect depths for anchoring, and most importantly protection from the winds, good holding AND multiple tender docks for getting to shore. We had been frustrated by our anchorage at Porto Liscia, in that we could see restaurants on shore, but with no tender dock we couldn’t get to them.

Roberta and I went ashore for lunch at a beach front restaurant, then took the tender exploring around the bay, swam from the back of the boat, let the dogs walk on the beach, and just had a great time.

         

The Sant Amanza anchorage on the southeastern corner of Corsica. A great place to anchor!

We had dinner with our friends from Seabird, the Argosys, at a place called “Maora Beach” which is the kind of restaurant that I have a particular fondness for (beach front, feet on the sand dining, tender dock, upscale but funky, water taxi, good food, massage, clothes-shop, chill music, etc).

At dinner the Argosys described their day, which was somewhat less fun:

We are only 3.5 miles out of Bonifacio, so they decided to walk. It turned out to be a long sweaty uphill walk on very hot, narrow roads, and turned out to be closer to 5 than 3.5 miles. Their plan was to see the city, do some grocery shopping and then taxi back. All went well and they enjoyed the city.

When it came time to taxi (via car) back to where they had parked their tender, loaded with bags of groceries, they had a hard time finding a taxi. They found one taxi driver, who refused to bring them to our anchorage. The driver didn’t speak english, and even though Steven pointed at a map on his phone, the driver just didn’t want to tangle with taking a couple of Americans to the boondocks. The driver left the taxi stand with other clients, and no new taxi appeared. Finally, Steven and Carol started the long 5-mile hike back, lugging their bags, hoping a taxi would pass by. It didn’t. Two hot sweaty miserable hours later they were back at the boat.

One of Steven’s projects in town had been to find a local internet sim card (a way of getting fast internet cheaply.) He picked up one for himself and for me. I helped him (with my struggling french) get it running, or at least I tried. The card (which cost around $20 USD) is supposed to give two days of “free” internet followed by offering you a chance to buy more days at some unknown cost. However, where we were anchored barely got a cellular signal. So, the card worked long enough to be activated, but then lost signal. Darn. So we shared my V-Sat satellite connection, which is good and gets the job done, but nothing beats fast 3g or 4g local cell service.

Bonifacio – Visiting The Port And Old Town

Roberta and I went the next day to visit Bonifacio, but given Steven and Carol’s experience with not finding a taxi, we set up a car and driver to take us there, who then waited to bring us back. It cost a lot more than walking – but — we’re here to have FUN and ten-mile walks in August heat just aren’t part of that equation.

The cliffs of Bonifacio (the southern tip of Corsica.) Bonifacio has the distinction of being the southern most point of Metropolitan France.

From the old city of Bonifacio we were able to look down at the twenty-mile strait that divides Corsica from Sardinia.

   

The port of Bonifacio. You can’t really tell it in this picture, but the port is exteremely popular with tourists, particularly the French. There are dozens of restaurants lining the port, along the right side of this picture.

     

From the port of Bonifacio you can see the citadel on the hill overlooking the port. Parts of the citadel date back to the 9th century. Today its streets are lined with restaurants and souvenir shops.

Here are a couple of 3d pictures from our visit to Bonifacio:

http://photosynth.net/view/f8258917-5142-40bd-a247-49a59ee8ddd7
In the 3d picture above from the marina, if you look around, you can see the citadel on the hill, which holds the old city.

http://photosynth.net/view/12e25b84-3c89-42bc-bd0a-20794dfae944

There was one major negative at Sant Amanza. Our impression was that we were seeing the weather as calm as it gets. The wind is funneled between the islands of Sardinia and Corsica. The weather reports were for dead-calm (the weather chart literally showed zeroes for the wind all around where we were anchored.) However, we saw 10+ knots all day. We even had wind surfers and kite sailers around us every day! The forecast were predicting the wind to be 25-30 knots at Sant Amanza within a couple days. Given that winds seemed to be higher than the predictions, we knew we should get moving.

Four Days In Hell (actually Porto Vecchio)

From Sant Amanza we moved twenty miles north to Porto Vecchio, a large sheltered bay.

We knew several days of strong winds were coming and our research indicated that Porto Vecchio was the best place to ride out high winds. Actually, I’ll take that back. The best place to ride out high winds is at home, by the fireplace, watching television. But, since that was not an option, we chose Porto Vecchio.

When we first arrived at Porto Vecchio all was calm, and we could immediately see that it was perfect for what we were seeking. We dropped anchor in breezy, but nice conditions.

The anchorage itself was nearly perfect. We had sheltered land all around, and the water wasn’t very deep, but was wide and big. We anchored in only fifteen feet of water. Shallow water lessens the amount of chain we need to put out in order to safely anchor. I knew wind was coming, and there were no boats anywhere around us, so I let out 175 feet of chain, giving me a ratio of well over ten to one. We were ready to ride out a hurricane!

All of our preparations were rewarded. The expected wind did come, and then some! Whereas the weather reports predicted a steady 20 knots of wind, we had day after day of 25 to 30 knot sustained winds, with occasional long stretches of 35 to 46 knot winds. The wind did calm on two of the three nights enough that we could sleep, but we had one night where the wind stayed high around the clock.

When the wind is over 25 knots, sleep on Sans Souci becomes difficult. The wind rattles everything on the outside of the boat making a howling sound. The chain, at the bow, makes clanking and clunking noises every few minutes at it shifts position with the wind. There are fairly simple techniques to reduce the sound of the chain, so that you don’t hear it inside the boat, but I come from the opposite philosophy. I like hearing the anchor chain and knowing what it is doing. Similarly, we have a wind monitor in the master stateroom, as well as a way to view our chart plotter. On particularly windy nights, we check these things periodically, and also go up to the pilothouse regularly just to take a look around. On some occasions we have stood watch, as if we were at sea, with Roberta and I taking turns monitoring the situation from the pilot house.

The strength of wind rises exponentionally with the speed of the wind. At 10 knots the wind is at most a mild annoyance. At 20 knots, the wind can be a problem in some circumstances but is generally acceptable. At 30 knots the wind starts to become dangerous. It is the speed where boats that aren’t well anchored start to come unglued. Tender rides become very difficult or impossible. And, at 40 knots, the forces are incredible.

We were solidly anchored, so I never worried about us breaking anchor (our anchor dragging.) The problem was that we were confined to the boat. We use our tender to reach shore, and were able to visit town a couple of mornings, but most of the time the wind was too high to leave the boat.

Even if the wind would allow our tender to be used, we didn’t want to be away from the boat for long. This may seem strange given that I’ve said that I wasn’t worried about our boat dragging anchor. The problem is OTHER BOATS. As the wind increased, the anchorage around us filled with boats. The good news is that most of the boats around us were larger boats with professional crew. It was different last year in Croatia, where most of the boats around us would be chartered sailboats. These chartered boats are usually run by people who have little boating experience, and haven’t the vaguest idea how to properly set an anchor. In Croatia, with even mild winds, these sailboats would drag anchor potentially running into us. Larger boats with professional crew have better equipment and know what they are doing.

And, that is mostly how it played out. We didn’t have to wait long for boats to start breaking loose, though. Within a few hours of our anchoring at Porto Vecchio the first boat, a 40′ sailing catamaran broke loose in 35 knots of wind and narrowly missed Seabird. Steven and Carol saw it coming and were standing on their bow with large fenders in hand, waiting for the impact.

 

Sans Souci has “flopper stoppers” (big butterfly-hinged aluminum plates) dangling in the water beside our boat. We call these plates, “fish.” The fish hang from giant horizontal poles on each side of our boat. Their goal is to reduce the side to side motion of the boat while at anchor.

Because in Porto Vecchio the wind was keeping us pointed the same direction as the swell (waves) the flopper stoppers really wouldn’t be needed. When the boat’s bow is being held into the swell by the wind, there is very little roll (side to side motion). There is only pitching (up and down movement of the bow). However, from time to time there would be speedboats that would come zipping by our boat at full speed generating huge wakes. Our boat is somewhat unusual for the Med, with the strange poles hanging out the side, an American flag on the back, and a rugged, trawler look. We attract too much attention at times. Other boats like to “check us out.” They tend to forget the large wakes and the bouncing we get as they pass by.

Anyway…we had our flopper stoppers down, assisting with roll, and…

Did you see the movie “The Perfect Storm”? In that movie there is a scene which I thought was silly at the time, but suddenly felt much too real. The fishing boat in that movie had something very similar to our flopper stoppers, except that they are intended to reduce side-to-side roll while underway, whereas ours are optimized for stabilization while sitting still at anchor. In the movie, when the seas were rough, the wind grabbed the fish (the dangling plates) and they became missiles. Mark Wahlberg had to climb out on one of the poles to cut lose the fish with them flying through the air like missiles.

At 30 knots of wind, the lines that hold our fish in the water were blowing out diagonally. Whereas when we dropped them in calm conditions they were hanging straight down, sitting about eight feet beneath the water. When the excrement started hitting the fan, the lines holding the fish went so diagonal that they came very close to breaking the surface and becoming flying fish.

With the winds high I was worried about trying to pull them from the water. Steven from Seabird brought his tender over to Sans Souci and helped me pull them from the water. (which went very smoothly.) After that, we missed them, but knew we made the right decision.

This boat, a 130′ “Mangusta,” is a go-fast boat that broke anchor. In this picture the crew member on the bow is surveying the situation and thinking about what to do. The boat has just slid from 200′ in front of Seabird to 200′ behind Seabird.

With perfect timing, as we were feeling somewhat depressed about the 35 knot winds, this TRUCK drove across our bow giving us something to laugh about.

How many times in life are you going to have a truck cross your path WHILE a half-mile off shore?

This boat broke anchor very narrowly missing Seabird. It finally came to rest about 150′ behind Seabird.

No one was onboard at the time it broke anchor, but within 15 minutes the boat’s owners came blasting out from the nearby port on their tender. They jumped aboard and (I’m guessing from what I saw) discovered that their windlass was somehow damaged in the process. The windlass is the motor that raises and lowers the chain. I saw them with a little popsicle stick-sized lever trying to lift the anchor by hand. They gave up within minutes, and called for help. The coast guard arrived and helped them move the chain to a cleat, but then departed, as did the owners. The boat was still sitting at anchor two days later when we departed, so I’m not sure how they’ll ultimately get the anchor up.

The next boat to break anchor was a 130′ professionally crewed Mangusta, a large luxurious go-fast boat. Steven called me on the radio just after it broke anchor and asked that I keep an eye on it. He said that the anchor looked small, and the boat seemed to be swinging back and forth in the wind too much. I gave him my theory that professionally crewed boats don’t drag, and he just said, “Just watch.”

Steven was right! Not 30 minutes later Roberta shouted from the pilot house, “There it goes!” I jumped on the radio to warn Steven that the Mangusta was heading his direction. Once again it narrowly missed Seabird and did not come to a stop until it was a couple hundred feet behind Seabird, at which time the crew came out from inside the boat looking confused.

The only boat that dragged anchor at night was a fairly small, perhaps 25′ sailboat. It dragged into the middle of the shipping channel used by the giant ferry we’d see come and go each day. At 7am a tugboat came along side it and started blasting the horn, waking the still sleeping owners, who came onto the deck half asleep and very surprised.

Roberta and I never did get to have dinner in Porto Vecchio, and the saddest of all is that it feels like the weather gods are sending us a message. When we arrived at Porto Vecchio summer was in full swing. The water was a warm swimmable 83 degrees. Passing boats were loaded with sun worshipers in bikinis (and sometimes partial bikinis). Yesterday, the water temperature had already declined to 72 degrees and passerbys were instead wearing long pants and jackets.

We are hoping that the weather will improve in Elba (which is back in Italy, Corsica was in France.) Our time on the boat is starting to wind down and I’d like at least one more burst of good weather.

And in closing…

That’s it for this issue of KensBlog… My next report will be from the island of ELBA!

Thank you for following along on our big voyage!

If you missed my prior blog entries from this season, you may view them here:

• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/05/31/KensBlog-2014-01–Preparing-For-The-Season
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/06/14/KensBlog-2014-02–Welcome-to-Italy
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/06/24/KensBlog-2014-03–Rough-Seas-And-A-Visit-to-a-Historic-Town
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/07/07/KensBlog-2014-04–Southern-Sicily-and-Malta
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/07/22/KensBlog-2014-05–Malta–Winds-and-High-Seas
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/01/KensBlog-2014-Entry-6–We-re-having-a-SWELL-time
• http://www.kensblog.com/2014/08/04/KensBlog-2014-Entry-7–Welcome-to-Party-Island

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I should also mention that this is one of two blogs that I do. My other blog is on Facebook, although you do not need to register with Facebook to view the blog. Just click on this link:

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My other blog is very different than this blog. I post to it almost every day, and post whatever I happen to be thinking about, without editing or filtering. I also tend to respond instantly to any questions. Check it out!

Thank you!

Ken and Roberta Williams
ken(at)kensblog.com
MV Sans Souci
Nordhavn 68
PS – In case you haven’t figured it out, clicking on any of the pictures above will give you a higher-resolution (bigger) version of the picture.