Well, we can’t actually say we’ve received a warm welcome to the Mediterranean, since our passage, thus far, has simply been an extension of our experience in the Red Sea. Given the extremely uncomfortable conditions, we both struggled to sleep during our first rest period last night, but, thankfully, slept like babies during our second, since the conditions had moderated somewhat.
Although we had favourable winds of 13 - 17 Kts out of the northeast, which veered to the east-northeast, it was the sea state, with our all-time favourite short, steep waves, that made the passage unpleasant, although we continued to make good progress with a SOG (Speed Over Ground) of anything from 7 - 8.5 Kts. It didn’t help matters, though, that we were forced to divert at least 5NM off our rhumbline, after an approaching motor vessel stopped right in front of us, then hailed us to dictate a 2NM CPA (Closest Point of Approach) because they were about to undertake “machinery tests”. If the vessel had actually stopped 2 nautical miles sooner to our port side, we wouldn’t have had to make the detour. Since we were already hard to weather we, therefore, had no choice but to bare away and pass astern of it. Very frustrating when we were trying to keep our DMG (Distance Made Good) as high as possible in order to avoid an extra night at sea.
Earlier in the night, we had already narrowly averted a collision when a small vessel, which was passing us port to port suddenly turned to port and almost t-boned us. If it wasn’t for Roy’s quick actions of switching on one of the engines to power forward, we most certainly would have collided, as this vessel barely past astern of us by 10 - 20 metres. We have to assume that they hadn’t seen us at all; so, on went the steaming light to light up the sails, even though we were sailing.
A clear, starry night gave way to a very wintery morning; dull, overcast and cold. Elaine was happy to crawl into her nice warm cocoon after her early morning watch, but by mid-morning the conditions had deteriorated rapidly. Within a space of an hour, the wind speed had gone from 10 - 15 Kts to 25 - 30Kts, with seas of 3 - 4 metres, breaking over Paw Paw’s bow, prompting Roy to wake Elaine so that we could drop the doubled-reef mainsail and continue under a double-reefed headsail alone. Fortunately the winds were now out of the east making for a good angle of sail, so we continued to make good progress. However, not one forecast or our weather routing service showed these conditions; we had essentially sailed straight into a Low Pressure system.
Fortunately it didn’t last long and an hour later the winds were back down to 15 - 18 Kts, the slate gray seas had turned to a dark blue and had flattened, the sun was starting to break through and we had blue skies ahead. It wasn’t long, though, before we were motoring without a breath of wind. Unbelievable!
We had crossed the halfway mark, though, way ahead of schedule and we’d received confirmation from the marina that we were heading to, so we definitely couldn’t complain!
Tonight, under another beautiful moonless starry sky, a northeasterly breeze has returned, so we can at least motor-sail, which is keeping our SOG higher, as we continue on towards Turkey.
