Just after 8 o'clock on Tuesday morning and we're about an hour away from
pulling into the port anchorage area of the island of Ponza which is Italian territory
It's a group of three islands just off the west coast of Italy so we're gonna
get in here we're going to refuel and we're gonna drop anchor and have
another little day of rest before our next hop
which should take us further south and further east
And we've just arrived at Porto Di Ponza which is on a tiny little island on the
west coast of Italy and we're anchored here in a fairly shallow bay. We were
hoping that we could dock the boat at the little fuel station but it's very
shallow and it's incredibly busy and very tight so what we're going to do
today is empty the fuel from our jerry cans into the fuel tank and drop the
dinghy and go and fuel up that way. Probably take us about three trips we
haven't done that before. Yeah let's see how we get on with that!
It's 11:30 on Wednesday the 12th of September 2018 and we've just left Porto di
Ponza and we're making our way to another little island on the southwest
coast of Italy called Lipari. Beautiful sunny day, calm seas, fabulous autopilot,
great friends... what else could you want?
On this trip we've had to motor quite a lot. I would probably say maybe
90% of the time has been motoring but fortunately on A B Sea we have a Gory
folding prop and it has two major features: first one is that it is as
efficient in forward as it is in reverse
Thanks mate
We're out in the middle of nowhere you get that that's fabulous. So it's it's
efficient forward and reverse because the way it folds. The other thing about
the Gory folding prop is it has something called an overdrive feature
which gives you either 20% fuel-saving or 20% more power. So right now we're
traveling at 8 knots and using 1,800 reps
and how you do this with the Gory folding propeller is
before you set off for the day you put it in reverse so you've got a little bit
of way behind you and then while if the boat is still
reversing you put it into neutral and then into forward so that the propeller
is still in the reverse position when it starts going forward and it has a
different angle of attack on the water which increases its efficiency so we
found that to be very helpful obviously on this journey because 90% of the time
we've been using engine.
It's just after 5:30 on Thursday the 13th of September and here's something
you don't see every day: just over there where the sun's coming up about 26
nautical miles away is the volcanic island of Stromboli also known as the
Lighthouse of the Mediterranean. Unfortunately it's not being very
lighthousey at the moment, it's just sitting there looking like a volcano
without the fiery bit at the top, but still, you don't sail past Stromboli very
often so it's nice.
Directly ahead of us is the island of Lipari where we're going to stop. We're
about maybe 24 miles from the northern tip and then we've just got to sail down
the the eastern side to find a place to refuel and drop the anchor for the day.
And then after that we head between Italy and Sicily through the Straits of
Messina and onwards to our destination in Greece. From the island of
Ponza to the island of Lipari it's taken us about 24 hours
give or take, at roughly 7 knots
It's Friday the 14th of September 6:30 in the morning and I'm wearing sunglasses
inside, but I'm doing that because these are my seeing glasses, long distance
glasses. So we're now leaving Lipari, leaving it far behind us and heading in
towards the Messina Straits, so that should be an interesting passage through
there apparently it's quite busy with a lot of fishing vessels, ferries, tankers
cargo boats, the whole nine yards. So we're going through there today, it'll be a lot of fun
As we come around this corner here and
start heading down into the Messina Straits you'll see that this is a
traffic separation zone so traffic heading this way comes down this side
traffic heading that way comes up this side and we've got a choice
here. When we get to this point we can cross over to the other side because
either way we want to stay outside of those lanes. It should take us about 20
minutes to cross over at our current rate of speed and that would be a
preferred choice because of this short distance because once you get down south
it starts to open up a lot more and the distance to run across is a lot greater
and the rules of the road say that we've gotta cross this at a 90 degree angle, if
we do cross it. Just depends on what these big guys are doing over here
That's a big ferry, that's a big cargo ship. Behind them there's
another to what looks like another ferry and another cargo ship so they're all
coming in to head down in the same direction we are. So depending on where
they are and where we are at the time we hit that corner gives us our decision.
We're getting very close to actually entering the Messina Straits now
and we're just aware of some of the really large fast vessels. This is how
close this one is now. We're actually going behind that boat
now, crossing to the other side of the Strait before we enter it.
And just like that we were through the Straits of Messina. It wasn't that busy
which is kind of good I guess and as long as you follow the road rules you can't
get yourself into too much trouble. I think even coming through there at night
would be relatively easy too because it's a fairly straight run. So now what
we've got to do is we've got to come down come down the west coast of
Italy, go underneath and then we go up the east coast a little way to get to
our jump off point to cross over to Corfu in Greece. But we've probably got
another 24 hours before we stop so it'll take us 24 hours to get round from here
or if you're looking at it from your point of view round from here down to
there. It's very confusing.
Still Friday September 14th and it's
pretty much on sunset and that behind me is the east coast of Italy mainland
Italy. We just made a snap decision: we decided we're gonna
head straight to Corfu. It only adds about an extra eight hours to our journey
we've got plenty of fuel for that so it's not an issue but in the overall
scheme of thing it actually saves us a whole day because we were going to
anchor up off Italy and have a sleep and then go the next day
over to Corfu
but why not? If you can save a day and add extra eight hours onto the trip then why not?
That's the plan! It's nearly dinnertime too.
7:30 Saturday
September 15th and our overnight part of this passage as we now
head towards Corfu in Greece was pretty uneventful
the seas as you can see are dead calm, dead flat so we've be motoring all the way
There's nothing on the horizon right now apart from breakfast which is sounding
good and a big thing for me right now is to
download all the data from the cameras, put them into the folders, recharge all
the batteries and then maybe even have a shave.
Could be a plan!
That's what it looks like right now and hopefully it's going to stay that way
all day unless the wind picks up and comes from
there. If it comes from there would be happy we'll
get the sails out. Let's get this lot downloaded
One of the elusive things on this trip has been dolphins and even though it's
been mostly flat and calm and we've seen the occasional one or two, none of them
ever really approached the boat and just off our starboard bow at the moment is a
pod of about a dozen. They're heading in the opposite direction that
we are but maybe they'll come and see us. I mean that's how flat it is out here we
get excited when there's dolphins about I don't know 400 meters away
It's flat!
Just before we lose the light as the sun sets over there in the West it is
Saturday evening the 15th of September and that behind me is the
northern part of the Greek island of Corfu. We've got about another five hours
ahead of us before we can get into the port which is on the on the eastern side
of the island of Corfu so we will be anchoring up around about 11:00 tonight.
Should be a lot of fun, we're going to find our way through that lot in the
dark. Tomorrow will be kind of a day of rest
and a working day rolled into one. First thing in the morning we've got to
talk to the Greek port authorities and get our DEKPA which is basically a
permit which allows us to sail around the Greek islands and mainland. We'll
also have to do some restocking because provisions are getting low - we've run out
of beer, the wine is almost gone and we might buy some food as well! We'll
just basically get ourselves prepared ready for heading slightly further south
because still Keffalonia is our final destination-ish. Unfortunately none of
our cameras are very good at picking up images during darkness and as we made
our final approach to Gouvia in Corfu we were just 12 miles away when we ran
out of fuel. Luckily there was no wind, no current and we were a couple of miles
offshore so we unbuckled our two spare fuel jerry
cans and emptied their contents into A B Sea's main tank which gave us another 40
litres of fuel, more than sufficient to take us the last 12 nautical miles to
our destination. This is where we find ourselves this morning we are on the
Greek island of Corfu and we're up bright and breezy even though we went to
bed really really late because today we've got to get over there and get fuel
and we've also got to do our official paperwork for our DEKPA. So when
everyone's had their coffee - oh you might notice I've got a clean brand new
t-shirt on as well today. I'm looking good for the officials.When everyone's
finished their coffee we're going to bring the anchor up head over there get
some fuel, drop anchor again a little bit more out away from the channel and then
we're going to do our paperwork and then we're going to go on a provisioning run. Come with us
We're just about to fill up our diesel tanks and the jerry cans because
we ran out of fuel last night on the way in. Luckily there was no current and
there was no wind so we didn't drift while we were filling up the diesel tank
with the fuel from the jerry cans. That was an experience.
We're off to get our DEKPA
and some breakfast and some shopping
We're going to Greece!!
It's Monday the 15th of September, it's about 5:30 in the afternoon and we're
leaving Corfu heading for Kefalonia, so here's a little bit of what we're seeing
as we leave Corfu. That massive ship is the Queen Vic - Queen Victoria. I reckon it's
got more than a couple of hundred bedrooms don't you?
Just over there is Sailing Yacht A - it's 470 feet and people are divided as to
whether they really like it or they really don't
We[re just on our final approach into Kefalonia after an overnight of
approximately 15 hours by the time we get there. Pretty uneventful, we actually
got the headsail out for an hour or two at one point that was exciting. Complete
silence as we switched the engine off. We've come from the north we've just dropped
down to the little head landed with the island off it here we have to go round
the outside of the island because it's quite shallow inside then we'll go up
that channel up north and take a right into the big harbour area of Kefalonia
and the name of the place we go into is Argostoli. I think I pronounced that
right. If there's any Greeks watching please let me
know in the comments how well my pronunciation was or how bad it was
So we are literally just arrived in Kefalonia in Greece. It got a little bit
hairy coming in to tie up against the harbour wall here. We have a keel that's
got a depth of 1.8 metres and the chart was telling me that we were going to go
over a spot that was 1.7 meters so I was expecting a little bit of a scrape. My
depth indicator even told me at one point we were at 0.01 meters so I don't
know how that worked out. We didn't scrape anything didn't touch anything
and we're safely now tied up against the harbour wall, our Harbour quay here so
exactly two weeks or 14 days to the hour since we left Mar Menor in Spain. We are
now in Kefalonia in Greece and we will be staying here for at least a week
maybe 10 days, maybe 14 days but right now the priority is to get the boat put
to bed and then we can just sit back relax and take a breather
it's been a long trip. And thanks are due hugely to Mike and Elaine because
there's no way we could have done it without them. No.
It's been a great trip we've done 1300 nautical miles so we're feeling pretty
chuffed for our first long passage
I think we do the rest now. Me too. And a beer. Yes. I don't care what time it is
Next week on sailing A B Sea Baz catches up with an old friend he hasn't seen for 30
years and does the sheduled radio interview solo because I was in hospital
getting x-rayed for a fractured wrist. If you liked this video do give us a thumbs
up, if you haven't already subscribe and ding the bell so that you get notified
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