Our first sail was about as perfect as our first trip to the fuel pontoon (see Chapter 5) had been imperfect. We talked through how to leave the slip and prepared the dock lines, removing the shock absorbing lines in advance and then smoothly cast off the leeward dock line, then windward and then the pre-loosened laid mooring lines at the bow. Unlike our last attempt in which I had fumbled to get both the shock absorbing lines and dock lines off and then struggled to cast off the crusty, heavy laid mooring lines, this time everything went smoothly. We breathed a little easier: at least we’d learned from our first debacle and been able to put that learning into practice.
We motored through the marina and then for the first time began pulling in the fenders, coiling the lines, and preparing to actually bring the sails out. It may sound crazy, but this wasn’t just Ángel and my first time sailing Gradisca since arriving in June; it was our first time sailing her ever. When we bought her from abroad, we had hired a surveyor to review the boat and we had never done a sea trial or even seen her in person. While this may not be the optimal way to buy a boat, we simply did not have months to scour the Mediterranean looking for the perfect boat. We have a several year window in which to pursue our sailing adventure before we will relocate to Spain and rejoin the world of the normal people, and we didn’t want to eat up our sailing time endlessly comparing boats. And honestly it’s not just my fierce sense of loyalty that makes me wonder if we would have found a better boat even if we had undertaken a long, in-person search. We chose Gradisca (originally named Bubbly Lady II) for a mixture of practical and impractical reasons, just like all boat buyers. I think for everyone, some of it is reason and some of it is gut.
The next section is one I’ve hesitated to write for a while. I know many of you aren’t sailors and probably don’t care all that much about detailed boat features, but I’ve heard from some of you that you want to know a little more about why we chose our boat. So for those of you who care about boat features, please read on for an overview of why we chose Gradisca, and for those of you whose eyes glaze over with a lot of “boat speak”, please feel free to skim, skip, or just look at the pictures
Our “sensible” reasons for buying Gradisca, a 2001 Bavaria 40 Ocean Center Cockpit.
40 feet: Not so small that we feel cramped or so large that she’s too big for us to handle comfortably with just the two of us. Also, it helps that at 12 meters, she’s usually just under the cutoff for more expensive marina fees (marinas often charge by boat length)
Center cockpit: for my non-sailing friends this means the cockpit is further forward, which means you can have one roomy aft cabin (aft = at the back of the boat) instead of having two smaller berths on either side of the companionway (stairs). Our master berth is big enough to have an actual bed, small armoires, bookcases, and little built-in loveseats which makes it feel like an actual room. I often read or work curled up in the loveseat and it’s nice not to have to crawl over each other to get in and out of bed.
In- budget: Bavaria is a large “production” boat company, meaning that it produces lots and lots of boats mostly for the Mediterranean charter market. It’s kind of like the generic store brand of boats in the Med. Because she doesn’t come with a fancy boat builder pedigree and because she’s almost 20 years old, Gradisca was comfortably within budget.
Blue-water ready: Even though I just said Bavarias are built almost exclusively for the charter market, Gradisca is actually from Bavaria’s very short-lived Ocean line. Bavaria Oceans were meant to compete in the bluewater cruising market (“bluewater” means capable of ocean-voyaging and liveaboard cruising rather than coastal cruising or day sailing). Additionally, because she’s almost 20 years old, she hails from an era when Bavaria boats were built to a higher quality standard than the more recent years. This means Gradisca is heavier and sturdier than the Bavarias intended for coastal chartering, and she also has greater fuel, water, and storage capacity in order to accommodate longer sailing.
Fully-equipped and ready to sail: If you’re lucky with the prior owners as we were, one of the benefits of buying an older boat is that you can piggyback on their years of hard work and experience. When we bought Gradisca, the prior owners had already fitted her with solar panels, a bimini and dodger, cockpit cushions, a dinghy and outboard motor, anchor and anchor windlass, heating system (!!!), lovely interior cushions and curtains, and innumerable other little things that made Gradisca immediately usable as a home and a sailboat. Hunting through her lazarettes and cubbies was like searching for treasure as we found years worth of spare parts and handy items. This saved us valuable time that could be spent cruising instead of comparison shopping on sailing websites.
Well-maintained: The prior owners kept Gradisca in shipshape. Her engine, sails, and other important systems were maintained in excellent order, and she looks far younger than her 20 years. She is also a very tidy, organized, and dry boat. Our surveyor actually complimented the bilges saying they were some of the cleanest he’d seen in his decades of work. Given that my biggest misgiving about living on a boat was a fear of constant damp, this sealed the deal for us.
Our “gut” reasons for choosing Gradisca:
Classic, dark wood interior: This one is pure preference. Some people like the light, bright interiors of more modern boats. To me, they look like a Hilton Garden Inn- all white plastic and blonde wood and no soul. We both love the older boats with their dark wooden bookcases and brass nautical fittings, and Gradisca’s library-like interior called to the bookworms in both of us on a fundamental level.
Teak decks: Though we don’t oil them and they’re definitely a silver-blonde rather than deep brown, I love our teak decks. Yes, they’re utterly impractical as they require far more maintenance than non-wooden decks, but love is not known for being practical.
Outdoor shower with hot water: Back to my fear of damp boats (thank goodness it’s a neurosis that Ángel shares), we’ve never once showered inside Gradisca and we probably never will. Having hot water for an evening shower outside makes ALL the difference.
Head and galley that look like a bathroom and kitchen: I know I’m supposed to use the boat terms, but hey- my boat, my rules. I still call it the bathroom and the kitchen, because that’s what they feel like. In some boats, the head is basically a smelly little toilet cupboard and the galley is a miniscule slice of countertop with a stove underneath. We’re very lucky that our bathroom and kitchen, while both quite petite, would not look too out of place in a San Francisco apartment. We have bathroom mirrors! A toothbrush holder! A tiny spice rack in the kitchen! And it’s amazing how these things bring a sense of normalcy.
Located in Crete: Okay this one is fully on the impractical side of the ledger, but it actually factored into my reasoning that we would begin our Mediterranean voyage in the cradle of Mediterranean history: Minoan Crete. I’m serious.
Have we found some drawbacks? A few, but nothing that makes us regret choosing Gradisca. I sometimes get transom envy when I see a boat with a nice smooth transom with the name done in beautiful hand lettering. I will always be drawn to colorful boats so Gradisca’s white fiberglass exterior was not my first choice. And as we sail her more, we’ve found some additional upgrades and repairs that we need to tackle, but such is boat life. There aren’t fifty million corny sayings about boats (“BOAT = break out another thousand”; “Cruising is just fixing boats in exotic locations”, etc) for nothing.
…. And now that I’ve basically done the written equivalent of taking out a stack of photos of my grandchildren to make you all look at them for 30 minutes, let’s get back to our first sail, shall we?
Our first sail was, in a word, glorious. Between 15 and 20 knots of wind but no strong gusts, and we finally had our one last concern about Gradisca laid to rest. Even though she is a blue water cruiser, she doesn’t sail like a brick. She can get up a good speed, is well balanced, and comfortable even when heeling. She’s the perfect boat for Ángel’s need for speed borne of years of racing and my need to not feel like I’m going to fall into the water at any moment. We came back in, proud and excited.
We now knew we could sail her, and even sail her well. The only question now, was when and where.
We had a couple of constraints that made route planning a little more complicated than usual. First, our extremely late start meant we only had two months tops in this season. Second, we were beginning in the south of the Aegean in August which means pretty much anywhere we could go would be an upwind sail of at least 70 miles. And finally, we needed to make relatively good progress soon because we had reserved a winter berth in Sicily beginning in October. If we wanted to see much of Greece before heading over into southern Italy, we’d have to get cracking.
We kicked around the idea of going to Ios, Anafi, or Santorini but settled on Astypalaia. Even though it was further away (about 90 miles from Crete), our neighbors on SV Ronja and SV New Dawn were already there and it would also give us a nice downwind reach to Milos, the island which we planned to use as a jumping off point for sailing around the Peloponnese.
We had a destination; now we just needed a window. Daily we looked in frustration at the forecast as the meltemi sent 35 knot winds screaming down the Aegean. We’d wake up and prior to checking email or the news, we’d both start scrolling through Windy.com looking for any evidence of a favorable upcoming window.
As we waited, we busied ourselves with preparations to be ready for whenever that window arrived. I won’t bore you with long descriptions of all our boat tasks as I think I’ve already tried your indulgence with my 800 words of narrative prose about why our boat is the best boat. But we dutifully ticked off many important tasks that would make cruising in our new boat safe and comfortable.
We worked with the engine specialists to clean out our diesel tank and install stainless plates around a new entrance hole so we could better inspect and clean the tanks in the future.
Ángel continued to battle with the refrigerator compressor, eventually visiting no fewer than eight different shops in search of an electric relay to improve performance.
We bought a custom shade for the boat.
I bought a giant memory foam topper and carved it to size with an electric turkey carving knife to make our mattress more comfortable.
We worked with the electrician to fix the fuel and water gauges so we could better monitor our consumption while at anchor.
And very importantly, our first crew member joined us to help us with the passage to Astypalaia.
Héctor is one of Ángel’s oldest friends and has a good amount of sailing experience under his belt. He very kindly agreed to come with us to lend a third set of hands for our first major sail (although I don’t think we had to twist his arm too much to get him aboard).
In the days leading up to departure, Ángel and Héctor installed our new AIS navigation system. AIS is an absolutely invaluable tool when sailing since it shows you the position, speed, and direction of other boats. During our night sails, this tool has helped me to not wake up Ángel every single time I see lights on the horizon. I look on AIS, see that the boat is 15 miles away from us and not on a collision course, and I can just sit back and watch it go by and not panic that we’re about to smash into a tanker.
As we neared the end of our pre-departure task list, we spotted a favorable opportunity to leave on the night of August 12. There was a predicted two day respite from the howling meltemi and Ángel planned a route to Astypalaia that would bring us there on one consistent upwind tack.
The only problem was, we had gotten a bit greedy our last month in Crete. Once we had decided to postpone our departure to allow us time to properly prepare, we treated ourselves to a second order from SVB.com, a German online boating retailer. (Sorry for all the tangents, but living on a boat entirely changes your shopping habits. My enthusiasm that was once reserved for shoes and dresses has now transformed into a mania for locating highly specific boat parts. I’ve gotten excited over a marine toilet valve, I’ve dithered over what color fender covers to buy, and I actually referred to the Harken brand winch cleaning kit that still eludes me as my “white whale.”)
When faced with an extra month in Crete, we had begun piling more items into the online cart to take advantage of this final period of having a semi-permanent address. But now that we had a destination and a weather window, we found ourselves in the quandary familiar to many cruisers. Namely, we didn’t yet have our parcels and we didn’t know if we’d have them in time to leave.
By August 11, the day before we were supposed to depart, I was beginning to panic. The “overnight DHL” listed on the receipt was clearly overly optimistic as we’d now been waiting 10 days.. I compulsively checked the DHL tracking site for updates and Ángel and I ruminated based on completely unfounded information about the likelihood that it was still in Athens, whether they had put it on a plane, etc, going round in circles and always falling off into sighs that “well, it will get here when it gets here.”
Then at about 1:00 in the afternoon, my stomach dropped. DHL had updated their expected delivery date. To August 21.
I didn’t have the heart to tell Ángel that we’d miss our weather window for this stupidest of reasons. I started frantically Googling for DHL’s phone number and after speaking with their Heraklion and Athens agents, I learned that DHL had passed the parcel on to some company called Speedex, but more than that, they could not tell me. I called Speedex, fully expecting them to tell me that our parcels were in Athens or on Mars, and the angel on the other end of the telephone said,
“Ah, but we have your packages here in the office?”
“Where? In Heraklion?”
“No, in Agios Nikolaos.”
“THEY ARE IN AGIOS NIKOLAOS???”
“Yes. If you want, we can bring them now to the marina. One hour and a half. My driver is at lunch.”
“THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOUTHATWOULDBEWONDERFUL.THAT’SAMAZING.THAT’SPERFECT!!!!!!YOU’REPERFECT!!!!!!!!THANK YOU!!!!!!!!”
“Uh okay, one hour and a half.”
I put down the phone, shaking.
When the marina office called us to tell us our parcels had arrived, I sprinted over, fearing that maybe the office would close and lock the parcels in. It was not until I had the enormous box in my hands (“No, no, it’s no bother! I’ll carry it!”) and I was struggling to carry it back to the boat that the knot of dread in my stomach began to be replaced by butterflies of apprehension and excitement.
We were going to leave! We were finally going to begin our journey!
Our last 24 hours was a blur of preparations. We filled our water tanks and fuel tank, inflated our new fenders, cleaned the speedometer, cleaned the solar panels, raised the Greek courtesy flag, and did a last minute grocery run. The boys got the AIS fully working.
But the hardest part of preparing to leave was saying goodbye. On our last night in Crete, our dear friends threw us a farewell party, and we were left yet again even further in their debt.As we pictured leaving this place that had been home for two months now, we both knew we would always have a special fondness for Crete and for Agios Nikolaos, partly because of the magic of the island, but mostly because of the kindness of the friends that we made there.
We left the Agios Nikolaos marina at 9 p.m. on August 12. The sun had only just set and the harbor was bathed in the pink afterglow of another hot Cretan day coming to a close. There was a light breeze and we decided to motor out to the lighthouse before putting the sails up. When we killed the motor and raised the sails, we glided through near-total darkness with a glittering carpet of stars overhead. The night felt almost too magical: some astrological phenomenon was causing cascades of shooting stars and we craned our necks around the bimini to catch glimpses of long shimmering tails of stardust. This lasted for about an hour.
By 11 p.m., things were looking a little different. The wind and waves had both picked up and Gradisca was now hammering upwind, her bow thrust up by 1.5 to 2 meter waves and then thumping down, slowing our progress. Then Ángel went down to check the bilges and to his horror found them close to overflowing with probably 60 liters of water. A quick taste test (the things one does on boats!) confirmed that it was fresh water and not sea water leaking in. He thought immediately of the small leak we’d seen in one of the hoses in the engine room. Sure enough, because of the engine vibration, the small leak was now a big leak and the pump had been pumping fresh water from our tank out through the leaking pipe.
While this may sound bad, a freshwater leak is an annoyance; a salt water leak is a safety threat. One means you’ve gotten your boat wet. The other means the ocean is trying (and succeeding) in getting into your boat.
Héctor and Ángel went down below to fix the leak and begin pumping the water out of the engine room. I stayed up above, trying to take the waves at an angle to reduce the banging. This would have been challenging in daylight with the waves coming at a cadence of about one every 1.5 seconds, but the dark posed an additional hurdle. I wondered whether my steering was possibly just making the problem worse and experimented with just letting Gradisca find her path through the waves. Neither strategy seemed to make much difference. But before I could get too dejected about my poor steering, Ángel came up and said he’d take over driving if I went to help Héctor pump out the water.
When I went below, all my damp boat fears were realized: the engine room was hot from the residual heat of motoring out to the lighthouse and the water was sticky and steamy all around. Héctor and I pumped out as much of the water as we could reach with the pump nozzle, but the rest had to be absorbed and then wrung out of sponges– an action that was now familiar to me as I’d used it for hours on end cleaning our decks. I offered to stay below to finish the sponging job, but after 30 hot, humid minutes of sponging up the last of the drips, I began to feel a twinge of seasickness. This was hardly surprising as the boat was pitching and rolling violently. Mostly, she crested and then immediately slid down the fast-coming waves, leading to a kind of aggressive see-sawing. But every minute or so, we’d hit a particularly rough patch and Gradisca would swoop up and then instead of sloping back down would instead slam back down with a thump that jolted everything below and shuddered our momentum to a halt.
A bit disoriented from my nausea, I went into our berth to change into pajamas to try to lie down. Instead, when I bent to put my foot into the hole of my pajama shorts, I temporarily lost balance and was thrown forward. I landed on my hands and knees and immediately felt a pain in my left hand. My left ring finger had bent back on impact and was swelling up. I’m still not sure what exactly I did to it as I still don’t have full range of motion back over a month later, but I don’t think I broke it.
My struggles to get into my pajamas proved pointless because as soon as I lay down, I realized there was no way I was going to be able to sleep with the wild rolling, creaking, banging, and sloshing. I went above and felt far better in the cool air, and soon my brush with seasickness abated.
We each managed to cobble together a few hours of rest that night, but it wasn’t easy and after a long night of hard sailing, we were all happy when conditions began to lighten up. The sun rose and we sailed past Anafi and then around eight in the morning, we saw Astypalaia on the horizon. With the island in our sights, we began to fantasize about lunch. As we drew closer around 11 and then rounded the island just after noon, we took our sails down, expecting to motor quickly into the bay and pick up a mooring ball.
But an hour later and then two hours, we were still somehow struggling past the same landscape. I felt like that scene in Monty Python where the knight runs endlessly across the field, making no progress.
We realized we had made three critical errors. First, we had taken the sails in way, way too soon. Second, there was a serious current running against us. Astypalaia is shaped like a butterfly and we were coming in between the wings of land. This created a wind and current tunnel that were basically acting directly against us. Third, we were being way too shy with the engine. Not comfortable yet with how far the engine could be pushed, Ángel refused to go above 1500 RPMs, and this simply was not enough power to act against the strong wind and current.
We brought the jib back out, but even with this additional power, we still struggled to make much forward progress, especially since with the jib, we had to tack back and forth. Knowing what we know now, we would have just powered up to 2200 RPMS and been there in an hour, but we were being cautious and at that point, we didn’t know Gradisca well enough to know what she’s comfortable with.
It took us four hours to motor the last ten miles. No joke.
By now it was 4 p.m. and we were hungry, tired, and ready to be done with beating into the never-ending wind. We no longer dreamed of lunch, now we were just resigned to skipping lunch and going straight on to dreams of dinner.
When we finally motored into the little cove where Ronja and New Dawn were waiting for us, we saw our friends standing on the pier waving to us.
They’d been watching our progress (or lack thereof) on AIS and were glad to see us finally arriving, hours after we were expected but in one piece. Ota had taken their dinghy and picked up the mooring ball line for us, saving us from having to try to spear the line with our boathook. He tied us onto the mooring ball and we gratefully yelled our thanks, waved a tired hello to our other friends, and went below to begin preparing our long-anticipated meal. We dug in eagerly to the steaming bowls of pasta and toasted our safe arrival after a pretty grueling passage. We sponged out any remaining water from the bilges and laid out our clothes to dry. Sleep came early and easy; I don’t think a single one of us made it past nine p.m.
The following morning, we woke refreshed. And after some wrangling from our neighbors, one of the fisherman agreed to move his boat so we could tie up on the dock. We dropped the mooring ball and pulled up alongside in between Ronja and the line of fishing caiques. As we secured the dock lines, I could see Ángel’s shoulders drop as the tension of the last 36 hours rolled off him. We had arrived. The boat was tied up and safe. We were all (give or take a finger) okay.
And now it was time to explore a new island. Our journey by sailboat was finally beginning.
9 comments
So, an electric turkey carving knife is standard equipment on a sailboat?
Ha! I should have known I’d get some ribbing from you about that! No, we ordered it on Amazon because ordering a 100 Euro extra large topper and 30 Euro knife to cut it down was a lot more palatable than the 600 Euro custom made topper that the store quoted us. Plus now we’re set up for Thanksgiving aboard!
So, are you really GOING to settle down in spain????
In canary islands or somewhere else?
Yes! We’re planning to move to Spain (very likely Madrid but keeping other large cities on the mainland as possibilities) after our adventure at sea comes to a close. Not sure on exact timing at this point. We’ll be spending a few months this winter in the Canaries though– Christmas in Tenerife is pretty hard to beat!
Rob hurt one of his fingers similarly either at work or in a game of ultimate. I hope yours Heals quickly..
Love your analysis oF why Gradisca.
It’s healing though still not perfect. My poor left hand– my pointer finger has the scar from the Immersion Blender Fiasco of 2017, my middle finger has a black nail from slamming it in a freezer door in Greece, my ring finger is still painful to grip things, and my poor little pinkie finger is just waiting in fear for his turn!
i’m thoroughly enjoying the details of what’s broke and how we fixed it! the last minute parts delivery is a great one. sorry about your mishap but Hurting your finger is ok. much better than your back/head/neck. the ins and outs of why gradisca was very interesting as was the actual first sail and that strong current you encountered at the end.
Ha! I’m glad to hear you’re enjoying hearing about things breaking because that’s definitely going to be a theme in the next few chapters! In fact, I think it may just be a theme of boat life… And thanks so much for reading and commenting on what you find interesting- it really helps me to know what elements people are enjoying!
I hope your finger is ok! I loved the details about gradisca—totally fascinating!
I’m so proud of you guys—Miss yOu both, of course!