Porto Limeni

Today, we sailed for the first time. We left Kalamata marina in no wind and as we went, the wind picked up at our back up to about 17 kts. Lovely sail in a winter like atmosphere with cloudy sky and a dark blue sea. When we got close to our destination at Porto Limeni, a heavy rain started for maybe 10 minutes. We got soaked, but 10 minutes later it all went away.

We' re now on anchor in Porto Limeni.

Kalamata and the transit log

We arrived at Kalamata marina on Monday at 4pm after a long travel that started at 6am in Ben Gurion Airport. We were lucky with all the buses so we made it all the way down to Kalamata pretty fast. After all, this is like the end of the world here. It's so far from everything.

Anyway, I had an interesting experience with the Greek customs that I wanted to share with everyone who sails in Greece.

Since we entered Greece on March 22nd (In KastelloRizo) , our transit log expired today, September 21st. It was valid for 6 months. A transit log is like a tourist visa for boats.

So I went to the customs here in Kalamata to extend the transit log (I was told back then in Kastellorizo that it shouldn't be a problem), and found out that I can only extend it by 15 days. I wasn't planning to leave Greece in 15 days!

Fortunately, I met there a very nice and helpful guy named Mr. Stavrianakos. First he said that he can only extend my stay in Greece in 15 days. I told him that I need to get to Preveza and it would take me more than 15 days. He checked all the regulations again and said that he can't find any way around it. As he started the paperwork I tried a different approach: I asked him if the fact that the boat was locked in the marina for over a month while I was at home, helps me get a longer extension. He said: "That's interesting. If you can get me a letter from the marina that you left the boat for a month, I can give you an extension of another month".

So I went back to the marina office, and then again to the customs office with the letter (I'm lucky to have bicycle on board), and after a long journey through paperwork, payment at the cashier, etc. I got the extension.

I tried to understand how this works so here is what he explained to me:

As a foreign boat, you're allowed to stay in Greece for only 6 months. Then you have to leave the country for 6 months, at least, and then you can come back for another period of 6 months, and so on.

Then, if you leave the boat for a long period of time, you can either surrender your transit log at the customs office or just come back with a letter from the marina that shows that the boat was left locked in the marina, and the that time off won't count against the 6 months. So actually the 6 months is the net sailing time that you have in Greece.

In practice, the bureaucracy is so heavy that I don't know if it's practical to go through it every time you leave the boat and go.

There is still the question of the reciprocal tax that I need to pay every 3 months. I still don't understand how it works and feel like I'm the only boat owner paying it. Once I understand how it works, I'll share it in this blog.

Eyal

Ionian Islands, Again

Hi All,

I didn't get a chance to write anything in the blog yet. We've been sailing the North Ionian see since July 7th first with my Brother's family (Dror, Gila and Nadav) and then with Roy and his kids Naomi and Yoav. I need to find the time to write about the past 3 weeks (or hopefully one of them will...)

In the meantime, you can see some of our pictures on:

princessnayeli_2010_ionian

Passover trip from Kos to Galaxidi

We took a two week vacation and had a family trip on Princess Nayeli from Kos to Galaxidi. A total of 290 NM.
The weather forecast was quiet good. There was a SW storm that was supposed to end on Thursday (a day after we landed in Kos), and from then on, nothing much.
It turned out that the weather is more difficult to predict this time of the year.

Kos for itself, turned out to be an interesting place with a lovely old port, an a lot of archeology from the days of Hippocrates.

So, sitting on the boat in Kos and reading some tour guides, we understood that the best place to see a Pascha celebration is in Patmos, an Island just North of us. So we decided to change plans and go North first. This turned out to be a great decision as we went up in a stong SE wind (23kts) and by that we gained enough upwind milage to start going West against the NW wind.

We stayed in Patmos for 3 days. Unfortunately, we had to see the midnight celebrations from the boat. Noga and Yasmin were too tired to make it till midnight in town. Anyway, the fireworks show was perfect to be seen from the boat.
The one thing that was annoying, is the earsplitting explosives.
One anecdote from Patmos: Going down from the monastery to town, we took a taxi. Once he realised we're from Israel, he put on a disk of Noa (Ahinoam Nini). It turned out that his wife, who's German, works for an organization in Athens that preserves Jewish heritage. He drove us through his house to meet his wife and kids. Such a thing could not have happened in the summer!
After Pascha, we stayed another day due to bad weather. Yes! The Meltem wind already started blowing (only force 5 at this time, but we didn't want to do a whole day's sail in 20+ knots of winds).

Next stop was supposed to be Mikonos. Or actually, Delos. We started sailing at around 8am, and quickly we found out that the wind is coming from Mikonos and it wouldn't be easy to get there before dark. The wind directed us to Maxos, so there we went.
In Naxos, the first time in Greece, while we were in a restaurant, celebrating the end of Passover, someone opened our gangway, walked on the deck all the way to our bedroom window, opened it (it wans't locked), and fortunately, something scared him off and he left before making it into the boat! We were lucky this time.

So the next morning, we left Naxos and headed to Delos. It was all nice and quiet before we got there and we were planning to go into the small harbor and visit ancient Delos. Once we approached Delos, the wind started to blow hard. According to the pilot, Delos, which is very small, gets dangerous with the strong North wind. So being prudent, we changed course and entered the adjacent port of Mikonos.

Yael, being in Mikons for the first time, loved the place. The city is beautiful and very well maintained. It's mostly shops and restaurants, but all in good taste. And the best part is that it was all just for us as there were very little tourists.
It also gave us the opportunity to visit old Delos the next day. We just took a tour boat (that fought the wind and waves for 45 minutes to cross the channel to Delos), and a wonderful English speaking guide. It was very interesting.
We could also see with our own eyes how small the bay in Delos is, and that there's no way for our 45' boat to get in there next to the tour boats. The only way is to anchor out and take a dinghy to the entrance. I think the pictures show it quiet well.

After checking the forecast carefully, we realised that the Meltem wind (North wind) is gathering strength towards the weekend, and the more West we go, the lighter the wind is and is coming more from the East which is good for us.

So we started to run fast. We left Mikonos at 4:30PM and put up some sails to let us run in 8+ knots to Ermoupolis, Siros. In Ermoupolis, we have our dear friend Charles, that waited for us in the port and helped us moor the boat.
The following day, again we waited for the afternoon hoping that the wind would go down (which never happened), to leave to Loutra, Kithnos. This time, we had a side wind, 20-23kts, and had a beautiful sail going there. Noga, at this point, got so used to sailing that she kept singing and laughing all the way. Yasmin just went to sleep and woke up when we got there.

Charles told us to make sure we go to the hot bath in Loutra. When we were there, with our coats, hats and gloves, we didn't think it would be possible to take off our clothes and go into a hot bath which is in the sea (it's a mixture of a hot spring and cold sea water). After asking a few people who returned from it, and absolutely recommened it, we decided to go.
I must tell you, this was the best experience we had all this trip. The water was so good that we could have stayed there forever. It's hard to describe the feeling of sitting in a hot natural bath, in a lovely bay, surrounded by sea water and stones, with cold wind blowing in your nose. It was divine! For all of us!

Next stop was Epidavros. Again, we originally planned to stop at Poros, but Epidavros was new to us so we decided to go there and visit the ancient theater of Epidavros. The theater is very impressive. The view, its size, the phenomenal acoustics, the way it was preserved, etc.

And now - the Corinth canal.
We've been here same time last year, but it's always exciting to go through the canal (maybe because it costs 220 Euros...). Anyway, past the canal, we tried to go into Corinth marina for the night. It's only 2 miles away from the canal and looks promising according to Rod Heikel.
So going in there was a nightmare! The whole marina including the approach is very shallow. Some rocks are maked as 1.9m (while we are 2.3m deep).
So with the West wind blowing, and shallow water, we could not find a place to tie our boat, so after spending maybe an hour there, we decided to go to the commercial port. It was a little more bumpy, but we had 8m depth, and after 9pm, the whole port for ourselves!!!

So, Galaxidi, here we come.
Another 35nm, (first time on engine), we were anchored in Galaxidi.
We know the place well, after spending Pascha there last year. We also know someone there that could keep an eye on our boat. When we got in, there was only one other yacht there (you can see it in the pictures). It belong to a British family that is going around the Mediterranean and will hopefully come to Israel soon on their boat.
We had 1.5 days left, to prepare the boat for her stay in Galaxidi. Noga and Yasmin were very helpul this time. They even helped me fold the huge jib!

Eventually, we took the 3 hour bus to Athens....

We have a lot of pictures this time. Many of them were taken by Noga and Yasmin:

PrincessNayeli201003_kostogalaxidi

Sailing from Herzliya to Kos

Passover is coming and it’s time to start the sailing season. We’re planning to start sailing with the family right after Leil Haseder so we wanted to get the boat to Greece. Kos Island, this time.
We had a big debate over the decision when we should start our journey. We were planned to leave on Thursday the 18th, early in the morning but there was bad weather (2-5m waves) expected on Thursday so we kept checking the weather and debating which is the right forecast (as we had a few different ones) and what we should do.
Eventually we decided to leave on Wednesday night, to Haifa, get there in the morning and then make the decision if to keep going or wait for the weather to pass.
The night sail to Haifa was interesting. We had a 15-30kts wind that varied from SW to NW, accompanied by some rain and some thunderstorms. After having the mainsail with one reef and the jib furled as much as possible we had to reef even more. Since Danny was the only crew that was healthy and awake, and since this was his first night on the boat, we decided to just drop the mainsail and not mess up with going forward on deck to prepare the 2nd reef.
With a tiny jib alone we kept doing 7.5kts. The boat went steady, and Danny and I who spent this shift together enjoyed it very much. We were both very tired after a long day of preparations but we were excited.
Before entering Haifa, we called RCC Haifa (Haifa Radio) to ask where we need to moor for immigration and as a response he said: “I don’t think you should leave to Cyprus today, there is a storm with 2-5m waves expected.” He then called all ships and finishing boats to announce the coming storm more explicitly…
So we entered Haifa in the morning as planned and after long debates we decided that the storm is not as bad as it seems and is mainly on the southern part of the Mediterranean and we’re sailing on.

We left Haifa around 2pm. Weather was nice and the crew sent me to sleep.
After about an hour of nice sailing (and a good sleep I had), I woke up to the sound of the jib flapping fiercely. I went out to see that we were caught under a cloud in a 35kts wind, the sea is white and Roy, Oren and Danny fighting with the jib trying to furl it. Fortunately the main sail was already reefed to the 2nd reefing point. By the time the jib was furled, about 3m of the leech line were torn so we couldn’t use the jib any longer. After some debate and failed attempts to call a sail repair guy in Israel, we decided to move on with the storm jib or engine and keep going to Cyprus. If we went back to Haifa, we would have missed our flight back from Kos.
We spent the night motoring against the sea. Roy had some fever and the whole crew was sick (either really sick or just sea sick), but still functioning. Danny even cooked rice for us!
I had about 3 hours of sleep in 48 hours, but wasn’t tired at all till we got to Cyprus.
In the morning, about 40 miles away from Limassol, the wind shifted a little and we put the storm jib on. The boat sailed beautifully with the mainsail and storm jib (as you can see in the pictures).

Entering St. Raphael marina in Limassol (Cyprus) was not easy either. With a 25kts wind blowing, it took us maybe 5 attempts to be able to moor the boat on the extremely crowded marina. I wasn’t here for 11 years, and now the Marina looked so small and crowded. There is not enough room to even turn the boat around.
Anyway, we were happy to find a very nice sail repair guy who took our sail in the evening and returned it as good as new the next day at 7am.

We left Limassol at 10am heading towards Kastelorizo ( Meyistri) in Greece. We had a good close hauled sailing till 4pm when the wind changed instantly to 25kts straight on our nose. We tried to motor against it and made little progress so just before darkness we were able to find shelter in the rocky port of Pafos and with much less fuel in our tank. At least we could have a good rest and a good fish dinner in a local restaurant.

Next day started at 5am with a quiet motoring in a calm sea towards Kastelorizo. We had about 24 hours ahead of us.
The main attraction was a nice dolphin show we had on the way. If you take a close look at the pictures you’d see that one of the Dolphins has a sucker fish (Remora) hanging on its right side. It’s still a debate (with the experts from the Dolphin Reef involved) if it’s a Remora or a baby Dolphin. In any case, the show was thrilling.
The night was much quieter that the previous ones, still motoring against some wind and sea. The weather was still very cold. I had 5 layers on, including a winter coat and a storm suite to warm myself up in the nights.

We entered Greece through the island of Kastellorizo early in the morning. The sleepy island has only 150 inhabitants, most of them are over 80 years old. But it’s still a nice place to visit. We skipped the blue cave this time. It was too cold to even think about swimming, and we still had a long way to go.

So, once we finished the entry procedures (immigration, customs and port police), we went on to Rhodes. The wind was on our nose again and we started tacking. We had little fuel left, so we tried to sail as much as possible. The boat sailed nicely, making about 3.5kts towards our destination, with the beautiful scenery of the Turkish mountains covered with some snow.
At 6pm, Roy encouraged us to furl the sails and start the engine. We don’t want to get into Rhodes at 2am, he said rightfully.
So, motoring against wind that’s increasing as you get closer to the Rhodes channel, we finally reached the entrance to the port of Rhodes at 11pm.
It was amazing to see the usually crowded port with tons of boats, empty. Only some wintering charter boats and a lot of room for us…
In general, the Greek islands we visited were still sleepy, preparing for the summer with almost no tourists. The Greeks were all extremely nice to us and always very helpful.

From there on, the sea was calm, almost no wind till the last leg from Simi to Kos where we could use some Spinnaker and could even try some combinations of jib + spinnaker or main + spinnaker. Eventually the best combination was to have just the spinnaker on.

On Wednesday afternoon, we made it to Kos!!!

Thanks to the great crew. Row, our frequent sailor, who hasn’t missed a single cruise, was key to our successful trip specially even though he had fever most of the time, and of course he was a great cook as usual. Oren was always ready to help and was with high spirit all the time (well, he did use some help of beer, cherry brandy and limoncello). He allowed everyone to sleep well as he was taking long night shifts.
Danny, who was the least experienced of all, was strong and positive all along, and was a very helpful crew and a great mate for the night shifts.

Click the link below to see all cruise pictures:

Princess_nayeli_2010_03_Herzliya_kos

Grand Soleil 45' going against the sea

I was surprised to see the performance of my Grand Soleil 45' this summer. We were sailing the Aegean sea, most of the time going upwind. In previous cruises, we learned that she can sail close hauled, in a ground wind as light as 6 knots, and still make about 5 knots.
This summer, sailing the Aegean, We've learned to sail her in much stronger winds. The regular summer winds in the Aegean are strong North winds. Anywhere between 5-9 beaufort is the standard wind in the Agean. So sailing against the wind here is a different story. We learned that we can reef the sails aggressivley (1-2 reefs on the main) and a small napkin on the jib would still take us at 7-9 knots with much less heeling and as fast as with full sails. She can sail as good as 34 degrees to the apparent wind, so we can practically get anywhere with just a couple of tacks.
If the wind is not terribly strong (let's say around 22 knots) we would have two reefs on the main and a full jib. This way we can go really close to the wind but with not much heeling.
We once sailed next to a beautiful 51' Beneteau, in a 12 knot wind. We had just the jib working for us, while the main sail was all the way out (flapping strongly) so the other boat could catch up with us, and we were still making 4 knots, which was faster than the Beneteau with almost full sails up.
The one thing that's less impressive is if you try to motor up wind in high waves. The boat would start jumping on the waves, hitting the water aggressively. We don't like the sound of it, so we just slow down when we go against the sea. I guess that's because she has a flat bow with a vertical ending. The hull works great under sails, but not so well under power.

The Dolphin show

We are now in Kea, waiting for the weather to calm down. We only have one leg ahead of us before we get to Aegina – our final destination.

On Monday, we had a long sail from Orei to Khalkida. It’s about a 60 mile ride, but we had everything that day: wind from any direction and at various forces, some motoring, lovely sunset, and an amazingly long Dolphin show.

We started at 8:30am motoring into the Evia channel with no wind at all. We went slowly as we were trying to catch some fish (no luck on that). A couple of hours later, the wind picked up (straight on our nose) and with it came a school of maybe 10 Dolphins. They started by a couple of high vertical jumps and kept swimming on our bow wave, 3 to 5 of them, over and over again. The were going on the bow wave for some time, then swimming faster on, then jumping and then returning to our bow. As scenery, on both our beams, other dolphins were swimming and jumping. It kept going on and on for about an hour.

It was a spectacular show, very exciting to all of us. Noga thought it’s the cutest animal on earth.

When they left, we decided to start tacking against the prevailing wind, as we had the time and we only had to do some tacking till we can set our course on Khalkida.

As we started sailing, the dolphins came back and rejoined us, kept playing the same old game.

Towards the end of the day, the wind got a little crazy. It would shift in 180 degrees in seconds. The good thing is that we could see it coming (Yael’s specialty is to predict what’s about to happen with the wind). So we managed to sail all the way to Khalkida, through the sunset and the fishing boats outside the town of Khalkida.

At midnight we crossed the bridge and anchored in the bay, ready for a long sailing day to Kea.

I updated the photo album with the latest pictures, and mapped them as well.

Princess Nayeli summer 2009