Early morning again and I definitely wasn't feeling the love for sailing. Esmé had been not feeling well and I had been up in the night with her. Ideally we would have stayed another day but we only had 2 days good weather to get us down to Vibo Valentia before the weather turned for a while.
It was a strange old day and after I'd done a long stint at the helm I decided to get my head down for a while and catch up on sleep. After a while I was vaguely aware of the motion changing and after asking Patrick what was going on he told me to take a look. The wind had increased from a measly 5 knots to nearly 30 knots and although the sea was luckily still relatively flat, there was definitely more chop. AJ was starting to get concerned but Patrick did a great job of calming him down, and once we had thought a little, we realised that the wind was funnelling down a valley, and we could see an area a mile or so ahead with decidedly less white horses. As we crossed the line in the sea, the wind changed direction 180 Degrees and decreased from 28 knots to 8 knots. All good.
Patrick had phoned the harbour but the conversation consisted in Patrick speaking in English and the guy replying in Italian, I'm not sure anything was really understood except that they guy might have had a heads up a boat may be approaching. On entering the harbour we hung around for a while and then saw a guy walking towards us who guided us into our berth. We were told the office wasn't open until 6pm but when Patrick walked down he was told nobody would be there until 8am in the morning. Apparently when Patrick said we'd be gone by then the Italian said something that sounded like Transito which Patrick took to mean we had a free night... result!
Sunday: Cetraro to Vibo Valentia
An even earlier morning and very soon I broke out the emergency Coke Zero to hopefully give me enough energy for the day. After a while AJ popped his head up and asked if we were going to put the mizzen up. Patrick told him no, as there wasn't enough wind to make it worthwhile. My response was a little different, and I told him if he wanted it up he could put it up if he wanted. He disappeared down below and reappeared with lifejacket on, and then set to. It was lovely to see how much he knew and soon he was looking at his lovely mizzen!
Breakfast followed and then we enjoyed motoring on a glassy sea.
And then the dolphins came.... see video here.
We enjoyed them playing with us for about 20 minutes before they said goodbye and were on their way.
Onwards to Vibo Valentia where we got a lovely welcome and were well ready for a rest.
Boatschool, tetchy kids, unsuccessful shopping, then our good friend Roger arrived! Lunch, chatting, weather watching, and planning before Thai green curry for tea.
Just had a little excitement with swell coming into the harbour and the boat next to us snapping a mooring spring. After taking a while to work out what had gone bang we quickly managed to re-secure the boat and phone the Angela at the marina who will send someone down to put something stronger on. All fun and games!
No comments:
Post a Comment