july/august/sept 2004

hi folks ==

with my nieces as crew, we set off for our first big sail. 200+ miles to
sardinia - two days, two nites with daylight in the third day to spare.
no problems, motor sailed most of the way.  wanted to go to the north coast
of sardinia but had to settle for alghero in the northwest corner as the
wind picked up just as we were closing with the coast and was right on the
nose.  libby caught a tuna on the way across, i cleaned it and filleted one
side, she did the other side.  last time i caught a fish, my vegetarian
crew decided she couldnt eat fish anymore because it looked her in the eye.
not so with my nieces, we all gobbled the fresh fish down.  good sushi too.

our first exploring in sardinia left us with a marginal opinion of italian
men.  we were sitting quietly at a cafe when a group of 3 guys bought us a
drink (water is what we wanted) and started to chat it up with the nieces
while they continued to consume lots of beer.  it didnt seem to matter that
we spoke no italian and they no english/spanish/french.  one spoke a bit of
german and i used to speak/understand a bit, but being in spain so long had
pushed my german out of my head. we were waiting for our bus back to the
anchorage and when we went over to the bus stop one of the guys decided to
come with us and bought a ticket.  just a little creepy, he did ride the
bus home with us, but didnt manage to follow us out to the anchorage and
the boat.

the day after we arrived in sardinia we were to connect with maja from 
zurich.  she was flying into olbia on the northeast corner of sardinia 
and we were in porto conte on the northwest corner.  but sardinia is not
huge and we expected her on the bus that evening.  we check the bus station
(really a bus stop by a park in the town of alghero) a zillion times but
she didnt come.  we dont have a phone number for her, she doesnt have
one for us because our spanish cell phone doesnt work in italy.  we send
sms messages with the blackberry to zurich and leave messages on answering
machines but cannot connect.  finally i try an email via my blackberry toy
to tobi, a friend whose email i know.  tobi answers back that he will check. 
then we hear nothing for about 6 hours.  finally we hear that maja is on a
bus.  we have had to leave alghero on the last bus back to porto conte.
then via email from me to tobi, sms from tobi to maja, and back again
we hear that she is in porto conte but hungry and tired so going for
food and a hotel room, we say wait we will come get you, she says wait
i got a ride to the boat, ... after about an hour of miscommunication, a
very tired maja climbs onto the boat and just collapses in the cockpit,
exhausted but happy to be here.  she will stay for a week.

we visited a cave in alghero that involved 660 steps down from the top of
a cliff to the sea and entrance to the cave.  that also implied 660 steps 
back up again in the heat.  we had only 20 minutes to get up because the
bus was leaving and the next one was not for 4 hours.  but we made it with
time for a drink and an ice cream to spare.

we had been anchoring for a while and it was time for a marina with showers,
water to fill our tanks, feul, etc.  a bit of a mishap filling the water
tanks.  we usually tell that the tank is full by hearing it clunk as it
gets close to full.  the nieces were filling the tank, one on the dock to
shut off the water when the clunk comes and the other aiming the hose from
my filter.  seems to be taking a long time, didnt realize we were so empty.
just for kicks i glanced at the bilge, where the overflow goes if the tanks
are overfilled.  oops.  its totally full of water and about to spill out onto
the floor. a frantic 10 minutes of pumping with the bilge pump and my hand
pump and we were back to normal.  learned something though -- a full water
tank doesnt clunk.  it also seems a design flaw, or at least a poor design
decision to have the overflow from the water tanks go into the bilge. not
sure why my bilge pump didnt kick in automatically, maybe it was turned off,
maybe the automatic switch that is broken now was also broken then. also not
sure of all the implications of having the wiring that comes down the mast and 
thru the bilge get wet.  i let it dry for several days and now everything
seems to work up there.

after all the motoring to get to sardinia it was time to change oil again.
have it down to a science, only 1/2 roll of paper towels and about 2 hours
and its done.  there must be a better way.  i have run out of my west marine
gallons of oil and had to buy the last two liters locally.  sticker shock,
10 euros per liter at the marina. with the exchange rate thats about $12/quart
and my whole gallon at west marine was only $6.47 or something like that.

we explored the north coast of sardinia and then headed across bonifacio 
straits to corsica.  bonafacio is a bit like gibraltar and can be impossible
against the wind, but we had a calm day and had to motor to make any headway.
we went into the town of bonifacio on the south west corner of corsica, had
been told to go early because we would not find a place if we arrived much
after noon.  they were right.  bonifacio is a natural harbor with a high
cliff on the south side; the entrance is narrow and was totally crowded with
a zillion boats milling around the harbor entrance.  it was like a huge traffic
circle where everyone thought he had the right of way and where everyone was
going a different speed, sometimes an order of magnitude different.  quite
intimidating to cautious old me.  we had been told the marina prices were
exhorbitant in july-august and so were planning to anchor in one of the two
little bays just inside the harbor. poked our nose into the little bays and
realized that anchoring requires you to drop anchor, get the dingy in the water,
take ropes to rocks or trees on shore so you dont swing into the other boats.
there was room, but it looked too hard, so big spender evi says lets go to
a marina, i cant do that hairy anchoring thing.  we go to the marina and get
a really good (easy to back out of) spot right in downtown. go to pay expecting
200 euros per night as some boats said.  was only 36 euros. sweet.

as you enter bonifacio there are old houses on the cliff that look like they
are about to fall into the sea.  we tried to find them on land to see if they
really were hanging over the edge, but couldnt.  corsica speaks french which
both libby and i know, so we were in great shape language wise.

changing crew, just when my nieces are totally competent and can run the boat
by themselves. libby and susha go back home to a family reunion, adam from
hungary takes over with no experience, but a good feel for both sailing and 
how to do things, doesnt get seasick and likes rough seas (and roller
coasters).  i got invited to the telluride techfest (free ticket home)
so abandon the boat on a free dock in stintino sardinia, leaving adam as boat
sitter.  adams family are coming to sail, their first time on a sailboat or
a boat of any kind. the beginning of their vacation will be spent at the
dock as i will be in colorado.  the night before i leave, the police
come by the free dock and tell all the boats to leave, that they cant
stay there.  its blowing 20-25 knots so no one can really comply.  and i
am about to be gone for 10 days.  i tell them i cant move for 10 days and
will move as soon as i am back.  most boats ignore them.  when i do return,
two weeks later, the free dock is still full and there is no sign of it
closing.

while home, i visited laszlo, my ex-husband, who is loosing his 3 year
fight against kidney cancer. its a good visit, but i somehow dont face
the fact that he will be gone soon and postpone those real conversations
i would have liked to have.  he died the day before i was scheduled to
return to the boat; i was able to reschedule my flights and return from
florida after the funeral. very sad.  he had come to america during the
hungarian revolution in 1956.

a free dock implies no services and that means no electricity (ok, i have
solar panels) and no water (not ok with a family of 4 non-boat people on
board). adams family ran out of water and mistakenly thought that the toilet
uses fresh water to flush so become very frugal when pumping the toilet.
when i finally get back to the boat, the chemical combination of pee and a
little salt water have left a brown scaly stuff deposited in the toilet bowl.
it defies all normal cleaning methods and i resort to scraping it off with my
pocket knife. the lack of water has made everyone need a shower and the boat
really need a washdown. in the summer the winds in the mediterranean carry
a fine red dust from the sahara and it gets everywhere. we sail around the
northwest corner of sardinia to alghero, where we can fill with water,
take showers, etc.  aliz, adam's mom has short legs and getting on and off
my boat with the med mooring system is challenging for long legged kids and
downright difficult for us short legged folks.  you have to get yourself 
outside the bow rail, which is higher than your crotch, then you have to
walk along outside that rail to the anchor and step from the top of the
anchor down to the pier - a long step over water because you dont want the
boat close enough to the pier to hit it when there are waves from other boats.
quite challenging, but aliz made it, twice in fact. adams family had a good
time in spite of being stuck on the dock for most of their vacation.

the sail from sardinia to mahon, menorca was in lots of wind (30 kts apparent)
from the east.  its behind us and we should be fine with a reefed main and 
a bit of jib, but i am scared to put the main up, because in my gale earlier
in the season i couldnt get it down, and with green crew in rough seas it 
could be hard. silly but ...  so we sailed thru the night with just the jib,
which makes the boat unbalanced and makes the autopilot unhappy, so we
have to hand steer.  with just two of us, thats hard.  i keep reefing
the jib to keep the speed in the 5-6 knot range instead of 7-9 knots
that it creeps up to.  the seas are rough and confused as always in the
med when it blows, but we have taken our seasick pills and are ok. once it
is light, the wind dies down a bit (25kts) and i decide we have to bite the
bullet and pull up the main.  should be an easy exercise, adam at the helm
keeping the boat into the wind as best he can with the waves bouncing us
all around, me up on deck getting the sail up.  normal sequence is to get
the halyard on the sail, get the boom out of the boom gallows, take off the
sail ties, pull up the sail and you're done.  our sequence was:

	getting halyard on - hairy, i am too short, tippy-toes is not a stable
	position to be screwing the shackle on

	the halyard wraps around the stay, have to take it off, clear it,
	put it back on again

	boom out of gallows, no problem, but now the huge boom is swinging
	around with each wave

	sail ties off, no problem

	start pulling the sail up and notice that i forgot the running
	backstay and it is in the way, cant just loosen it

	stop pulling the sail up and go fix running back

	go to pull it up again and the halyward is wrapped again, have to
	pull main down, unhook halyard, get it unwrapped, put it back on
	pull up sail

finally get the main up, reefed to the third reef point, get on course and
the boat sails beautifully with the wind vane steering, us going 7 knots,
adjusting our speed with how much jib we put out.  should have done it the
night before.  chicken.

wonder if i'm not too old for this, note-to-self, check on in-mast/boom
furling mains.  on the plus side they are easy to deploy and can be reefed
at any point, but on the minus side they are another gadget to go wrong
and the sail probably doesnt have as good a shape as a properly reefed
regular one.  my sail has full battens so keeps a nice shape when reefed.

the sail from sardinia was the best i have had in the med, managable amounts
of wind (10-30 kts), managable amounts of sea (10-15 ft), and my trusty
wind vane doing the steering.  we arrived in mahon menorca at dark, looking
frantically for the lights that mark the harbor entrance.  its 9pm and we
are quite close and dont see them.  reason was that they dont turn them on
till 9pm and this time of year, 8:30 would be closer to dark when you need
them.  it was too dark to pick our way to the anchorage behind an island
at the harbor entrance so we went into the harbor all the way (its about a
mile or two long).  the navigation lights were perfect to get us in and
the ambient light from the town and full moon was enough to let us tie up
to one of the floating islands.  they use floating islands as a dock and
put water and electicity on it.  so you have services, but need your dinghy
to get to shore.

explored mahon and menorca for a few days, then just as we were leaving
the anchorage for the south coast a boat parked beside us and yelled out
"wonderland" (the name of my boat). it was david on happy dancer, the boat
that i had helped sail across the atlantic the year before i did it on my
own boat.  we fed him breakfast (he had just single-handed from sardinia)
and i scored some cuba charts, then took off for the calas (little bays)
along the south coast of menorca.  tried cala coves that had been recommended
by several folks, but it was crowded and boats were anchored and tied to
the shore and it was blowing 25kts, so we chickened out and went to the
next one down, cala en porter.  just about as nice, but with a very nice
beach that implied a tourist development.  i forgot to back down on the
anchor here and spent an uneasy night wondering it we would drag into
the cliffs.  should have just started the engine again and done it. had
a coffee at a cool cafe on top of the cliffs and got nice pictures of
wonderland from above.  we were the only boat for a while.

left the next day to sail to mallorca, still enjoying that nice east wind
that let us have an easy passage.  stayed in palma two nites and then 
headed for cartegena.  good sails all the way.  adam is getting to be
a good sailor, but going back to school.  in cartegena he went home
and vin, my son's best friend from 7th grade came to be crew.  he is an
electrician so i have lots of electrical chores lined up for him.  he
also brought me parts to rebuild my water pressure pump (leaking) and
replace my bilge pump automatic switch (broken) and rebuild the head
(needs new packing).  so we have a few chores for the days of wind in
the wrong direction.

our plan is to head to almeria, get my free sails adapted for the boat
and maybe haul out to paint the bottom, then head to morocco and visit 
the spanish cities of melilla and ceuta and then to gibraltar and out
of the med.  that beautiful east wind has died and been replaced by
west and southwest winds, just the direction we need to go, so we are
waiting a day or two for it to die completely or change.

hugs to all.

-evi