Big Monday (Messolonghi) 21/05/12
Open Blue
Tim & Manfreda Penfold
Mon 21 May 2012 20:55
OK, so you have probably read all about it already on Fred's blog (http://smallhandsondeck.wordpress.com/), now it's time for my account..
We left the anchorage in Pandelimon about 10AM, and motored south for a couple of hours in flat calm. I knew from the last forecast we had looked at in Sivota two days before, that the wind was going to build in the afternoon from the East, and therefore be on the nose for us as we entered the Gulf of Patras and headed East.
The forecast I had seen had said force 4, not too bad, we really had no choice as we had to start working towards Athens to meet Giuliania by Saturday. Where I had made the mistake was that the forecast we were looking at was for the Ionian, not for the Gulf of Patras which is where we were headed. As I now know the weather can be very different in either place even though they are close together.
As we rounded the headland and changed course to head East, we straight away found a reasonably large swell coming straight at us. Initially this was fun with the girls enjoying the feeling of the boat bouncing through the 3M swells. There was still no wind at all, and I found this a bit disconcerting as to where this swell was coming from. Anyway we carried on and gradually a breeze from the East filled in, still no cause for alarm as I had expected this.
Then quite suddenly the swell went from 3M to 4-5M and completely caught us napping. We bounced through a large set of waves and the bow went completely through one large one which swept back over the decks, up the coachroof windows and in through the partially open cabin top hatches straight into the saloon and soaking the chart table. My laptop took a good rinsing and was the major source of concern as it is our main navigation tool at the moment.
At this point we got the girls down below and prepared ourselves (a bit late) for a bumpy ride. Soon afterwards I could see a lot of white horses in the distance, signalling more wind, it took a long time to get to us, but when it did it built very quickly. One minute we had 10-15 knots, the next we had 30-40 knots. We were still motoring with no sails up straight into it, so as long as the motor kept going we were OK, just getting a bit of a bashing. By this point Fred had the girls in the aft cabin watching TV on the Ipad, all 3 of them huddled in our bed, ignoring what was going on outside.
I decided we would head into the nearest safe port which was Messolonghi, approximately 5 miles to the East. Those 5 miles took us nearly 2 hours, but the alternative of turning round and running the other way to shelter would have taken longer so we kept pushing forwards while we could. At one point the engine started to overheat due to me pushing it too hard, but luckily throttling back fixed that. Several times the auto-pilot gave up because we were not making enough headway for it to be able to steer the boat.
Eventually I managed to identify the marker bouys for the entrance to the channel to Messolonghi and we headed into safety. This wasn't quite the end of the drama though, as we had to get into a berth in the marina with a 30 knot crosswind, which was far from simple. I think it took us 5 attempts, but finally, and with the assistance of about 15 yachties from the marina, we got safely moored up.
I have to admit Fred and I were quite shaken up by the experience, but in retrospect we learnt a good few lessons from it, and gained some valuable experience of rough conditions and how the boat behaves. In the end the laptop survived and we came through the ordeal pretty much completely unscathed.
The girls are none the wiser. All they know is that they got to watch 5 hours of Charlie and Lola!
Two days later and I chatted to the crew of an Oyster 56 who also attempted the same passage on Monday, except from Ithaka, so they were probably an hour or so behind us. They gave up and turned around, running back to Ithaka after a 70 foot catamaran going the other way called them up on the radio and said they had seen 60 knots wind speed.
I will never know how much wind we really experienced as my wind speed indicator is still not working, but at one point I was certain it was over 50 knots......