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

Back to Orei

On Sunday (August 9th), we left Panormos bay and sailed nicely with the wind back to Orei (we’ve been here about a month ago).
The port was almost full. There was one good berth left, but it was blocked by lines of the two neighboring power boats. We decided to go in anyway. We made it till the blocking lines and waited there to see if we can find the owners of those boats. After a long wait, we decided to behave as the locals would and move one of the lines so that we can go all the way in. We’ve done so, with the help of someone on the quay. As we got in, the owner of the other boat came back, he pushed the button on his remote control to open up the gangway, and went on board his boat. While doing so, he mentioned that another boat is planned to come at 5pm into our berth and that it’s pre arranged.
As this is not our first day in Greece, we knew that there is no such thing to reserve berths in Greek ports, so we just ignored him. You could tell by the look on his face that he has no case.
To be on the safe side, I took the boat papers and went to the port police. The policeman there, was very nice to me, and naturally, knew nothing about this reserved berth. He told me I can stay and even said I don’t need to pay if it’s just for one night.
End of story.

Out of Skiros

On Friday morning we checked the forecast carefully and found out that we have a good window where we can sail back North toward the Sporades. We didn’t know if we would hit Skantzoura or Skopelos but whichever would be good for us as it would be out of the range of the 6-7Bft.
So we left Skiros at 10am. Once past cape Oro we got a steady wind of about 18-20 knots, 60 degrees off our bow. We had two reefs on the main and we were running at 7.5 knots.
We had a beautiful sail (only a little bumpy) till we got close to Alonissos. There we learned the true meaning of a new term: “Borino”. Borino, is some kind of an air turbulence or something like that.
As we got closer to Alonissos, the wind dropped significantly and we kept seeing massive clouds over Alonissos. Yael asked me what they meant, but I had no idea. Fortunately (and thanks to Yael) we still had two reefs on the main (but full blown jib) as we got under the clouds.
Then suddenly, the wind picked up to gusts of up to 25 knots straight on our nose (Borino, I guess).
We quickly furled the jib to the smallest napkin we could get, and sailed close hauled towards Skopelos. The problem was that we couldn’t go close enough and according to my calculation we would have ended up 7 miles south of Skopelos.
After some debate, we decided to keep going and hope that the wind would drop. And this is what happened! When we got to the south most tip of Skopelos, the winds from both sides of the Island merged and the result was almost no wind. This was a good opportunity to take off all the sails and just motor into Panormos bay on Skopelos.
On Friday morning we checked the forecast carefully and found out that we have a good window where we can sail back North toward the Sporades. We didn’t know if we would hit Skantzoura or Skopelos but whichever would be good for us as it would be out of the range of the 6-7Bft.
So we left Skiros at 10am. Once past cape Oro we got a steady wind of about 18-20 knots, 60 degrees off our bow. We had two reefs on the main and we were running at 7.5 knots.
We had a beautiful sail (only a little bumpy) till we got close to Alonissos. There we learned the true meaning of a new term: “Borino”. Borino, is some kind of an air turbulence or something like that.
As we got closer to Alonissos, the wind dropped significantly and we kept seeing massive clouds over Alonissos. Yael asked me what they meant, but I had no idea. Fortunately (and thanks to Yael) we still had two reefs on the main (but full blown jib) as we got under the clouds.
Then suddenly, the wind picked up to gusts of up to 25 knots straight on our nose (Borino, I guess).
We quickly furled the jib to the smallest napkin we could get, and sailed close hauled towards Skopelos. The problem was that we couldn’t go close enough and according to my calculation we would have ended up 7 miles south of Skopelos.
After some debate, we decided to keep going and hope that the wind would drop. And this is what happened! When we got to the south most tip of Skopelos, the winds from both sides of the Island merged and the result was almost no wind. This was a good opportunity to take off all the sails and just motor into Panormos bay on Skopelos.

Skiros – the Island of winds

I had this desire for many years to go visit Skiros. Skiros, is an island that on one hand belongs to the Northern Sporades but on the other hand is located in the middle of the Aegean sea, away from any other island or land. It sits in the path of the summer wind of the Aegean called “Meltemi”, and therefore the locals call it: The Island of Winds.
We decided to take our chances and use the time we have to do our way south through Skiros since the weather looked pretty good.
So we got to Skiros on Wednesday August 5th, just to find out that it was given its name for a good reason. The visible forecast, almost a week from now is for 7bft, and we need to cross the channel of Doros (between Evvia and Andros) which is known for its high seas when the Meltemi blows.
So as it looks right now, we’re changing plans and are waiting for the wind to calm down so we can sneak back north and just to enter the Evvia channel and do our way south through the bridge of khalkis and avoid all this area of bad weather.

The boat is properly moored in the port of Linaria, and we're waiting for the weather to calm down. At least it is nice and cool here...

The Lost Dinghy

One day when we sailed a short way across the channel from Steni Vala to Peristera, Yael was driving the boat while I was at the bow setting up some stuff.
When I came back astern, I noticed that the dinghy was missing.
We usually tow the dinghy (our small tender boat) behind us while the engine is secured to Princess Nayeli’s deck. This time, since we only had a short path we left it on the dinghy.
So the dinghy was lost together with the outboard engine!!!

We turned back immediately and started looking for it. The wind was blowing at about 15 knots so we just went down wind looking for her.
And then we saw her. She was about a mile south of us, about to hit the rocks of Alonissos. And one more surprise – an 8m semi rigid power boat was riding towards our dinghy at full speed. We knew that if they get there first, they’ll have the dinghy or at least demand 50% of her value as “rescue fee”.
We got there together!
While we were maneuvering around her, the other boar caught the dinghy.
We told them that this is our boat, and fortunately they could see that she had the name “Princess Nayeli” written on her bow.
They were then kind enough to return our dinghy.
Needless to say that since then we double check that the dinghy is properly tied.