Archive for October, 2011
Menorca
The Balearic Islands are a Spanish archipelago comprised of four main islands; Menorca, Majorca, Ibiza, and Formentera. Located approximately 150 miles east of the Iberian Peninsula these islands are actually exposed peaks of a mountain range stretching from mainland Spain.
Throughout history the islands strategic location in the western Med did not go unnoticed or unvalued. Subsequently the Phoenicians, Romans, Moors, Barbary pirates, Turkish privateers, the British, the French and finally Spain have all played parts in shaping up a fascinating if not tumultuous history.
“The Mediterranean has three good harbors: June, July, and Port Mahon.”
That famous quote by an Italian Admiral Andrea Doria (1468-1560) refers to Menorca’s capital, Port Mahon. This would be our first stop, and being on the east side of the easternmost Balearic island is the first place in Spain to see the sunrise. It has a population of about 30,000, and is indeed famous (in Menorca at least?) for being the best natural harbor in the Mediterranean, more on that later.
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After two days and 215 miles at sea we found ourselves at this acclaimed old harbors entrance where Fortaleza de la Mola and Fort Marlborough strike an imposing first sight. It turns out that they would be our view for the duration of our stay here; we would eventually nestle right in between these huge forts (more on that too!). The town itself sits at the back of the harbor, some 5 kilometers away from the anchorage. Here’s a birds eye view:
The anchorage was packed with boats and as we were threading our way through we could see that this would call for some precision anchoring. No problemo, happy for the opportunity to show off a little of our hard earned Slapdash anchoring prowess to these Med weekend warriors and regional cruisers. Watch and learn Pepe; the big dogs are in town.
After a reconnaissance lap through the anchorage we soon had Slapdash artfully nosed into the perfect position, I hit reverse to slow our roll. Instead of providing the reverse thrust we needed though, the drive leg instead popped right up out of the water and in a noisy splashy display we totally blew the approach.
The little yolk which provides the reverse lock we desperately needed was clearly not engaged. The normal procedure in this case is for the closest person to kick down on the top of the drive leg until you hear a reassuring ‘click’ sound. With this done, and after narrowly missing a couple of boats while regaining our composure we finally managed to thread our way back up into optimal anchoring position. We engaged reverse thrust: Blurp! Splash! Glug! Glug! Glug! Same damned problem!
At this point the lack of sleep, heat, tension, embarrassment and desire to just “GET THE EFFING HOOK DOWN!!” all collide. A sting of obscenities is unleashed, then another. In my mind I blamed Jaime for not ‘kicking the drive leg properly’ (as ridiculous as that sounds) and went back to kick it into place ‘the right way’, but that reassuring click remained elusive. Clearly I wouldn’t be able to blame Jaime for this and so found myself in desperate need of a plan B.
While Jaime kept us from crashing into our bemused neighbors (harder than it sounds when you can only go forward), I launched the dinghy for closer inspection. This inspection revealed that the little stainless steel spring whose job it had been to pull the latch back into its seat thereby making that reassuring clicking sound had broken.
Unable to anchor, I commenced with repairing this small problem by hanging upside down off the back of the transom while Jaime paraded us around in circles through the restricted anchorage. After a half hour of this I had somehow managed to get the job done without dropping any tools, springy bits or falling off the back of the boat; nothing short of miraculous.
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We brought her around one more time and with some fancy maneuvering the target position was reacquired. We nailed our approach and dropped the hook. Ahhhhhhhhh, humbled but no matter, I can already taste the hard earned victory beer. Then the wind shifts and before I even have enough chain out I can see that we are far too close to another boat. Well, no sense getting upset about it. Nothing to do but haul the LOUSY FREAKING SON OF A MOTHERLESS ROTTED PIECE OF S**T… ahem, anchor up and start again.
After finally settling in we made our way to shore where I discovered that “Estrella Damm” was a mighty drinkable Catalan Pilsner. I was in the midst of this discovery when the ex-pat knob sitting next to me started going on about Mahon having the largest natural harbor in the world. Sorry to disappoint I said, but it’s not even close. He didn’t appreciate having his fictional monologue interrupted with pesky facts so with a chuckle and condescending look tried to impress me into accepting his delusion by citing his lofty and considerable nautical background.
Curious about what kind of nautical experience could give someone the ability to alter reality (and happy to change the subject) I asked him about it. Was he Navy? A Merchant Marine perhaps? His vague response included some ship names and I eventually realized that he had been going on about being a passenger on Carnival Cruises! In other words this ‘nautical experience’ he had been trying to impress everyone with basically amounted to buffet lines, folded towel animals, gem shopping and ice sculptures. I asked if he had been on any cruises that called in at any of those other meager natural harbors like Sydney, Pearl Harbor, Halifax, Rio, Falmouth, Wellington etc. He said, “yeah sure, what of it?” Moron.
I left before finding out if his IQ was contagious wondering why someone should feel the need to embellish their place in global harbor hierarchy when instead they could just claim their town as being the actual place where Mayonnaise was invented?
It’s true. Back in 1756 the British were calling the shots here, but then this Duke de Richelieu guy showed up in with 20,000 of his French homeboys looking for a fight. As the story goes, at some point between rumbles with the Brits, this farmer whipped up a special sauce for our little French Duke. He liked it so much that after kicking British ass he took the recipe home with him and served it up at the victory bash in Paris. “Mahonnaise” (cause it’s from “Mahon”) was an instant hit. Mahonnaise became mayonesa in Spanish, mayonnaise in English. The Duke eventually died and the British empire fell, but mayonnaise went on to achieve world condiment domination.
You can see why Lord Nelson picked Mahon to park his bad assed ships-of-the-line here during the Napoleonic Wars. Georgian buildings climb the steep hills backing this very impressive and historic looking harbor and make it easy to imagine the warships anchored here being fitted out for battle.
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I found Jaime and she had found carajillo’s. This Spanish drink is basically a cup of coffee ‘corrected’ with brandy or rum; although some versions have sugar, cinnamon and lemon involved. In Menorca they just bring you a cup of coffee and then put a bottle of brandy on the table so that you can mix them yourself! For a dollar! Now that’s service. It’s beginning to look as though Jaime will not see sleep or sobriety for the duration of our stay.
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Earlier Jaime had visited the local authorities with our passports and boat papers, which has officially become a ‘girl job’ on Slapdash. I always come back from the experience feeling bedraggled, hassled and dehydrated. She gets offered tea, politely declines marriage proposals, gets offered comfy seats and basically gets treated like royalty. I was worried that her charms may not have worked this time because she said that they wanted both of us to come back to the police station with our passports. We had been traveling sort of um, under the radar since Turkey so I felt we had reason for concern. I was wrong. We showed up at the prescribed time and I watched in amazement as half the station came out and greeted Jaime like an old friend. They fussed over us for a while before we walked out the doors 30 minutes later with necessary stamps and papers. I was stunned and once we were a safe distance from the station found a bench and said to Jaime “is it just me or do you feel like we just got away with something?” At that moment a cop came running around the corner, saw us on the bench and asked us to “follow him back to the station”, and after a moments hesitation, “please”.
It turns out they had just kept the wrong copy of some form or another, but it definitely spiked my heart rate for a while there. It’s a good thing Jaime vetoed plan A; going for the guys sidearm on the way in.
We had some time to enjoy the place, a good blow was coming in from the North and we were in the perfect little hole to ride it out, and it would have been too if every single moron in the Med with a boat didn’t think exactly the same thing.
The day the bad weather was expected, more and more boats began to wedge themselves into the already packed anchorage. We watched in disbelief as a steady procession of sailboats and powerboats big and small elbowed their way in.
We spent the day trying to convince our fellow boaters (with varying degrees of intensity) that dropping their anchor right on top of ours and then hanging back so that our bow and their stern are LITERALLY touching was a really bad idea. This actually happened about three times, we haven’t seen anything like it before or (thankfully) since. Let me also point out that we were not being at all fussy. Those self-appointed anchor police guys that seem to think they are in charge of new boats arriving and so jump around on their deck, flapping arms, and shouting away at boats in German or something while they are trying to anchor really piss me off. It was a crowded anchorage, we were in for a blow, so of course expected things to be snugly. The people we chased away were the truly clueless cases, the `they aren’t seriously going to do that` people, and we tried to be nice about it. Except for this guy:
At one point during this truly educational day, we were t-boned. Another first for Slapdash. So this brain dead ass-clown was one of those boats that anchored right on top of us. Do these people realize that you have an anchor too, and that they are going to (at best) dislodge it, and (at worst) get tangled up in it virtually guaranteeing unwanted drama? He took some convincing but eventually had the good sense to move. Apparently we had just witnessed the limit of his `good sense` though.
Once he had the anchor up, he put his boat in gear and then went up on deck to start trying to tie the anchor down. We watched in disbelief as the boat slowly chugged around in a wide arc and eventually headed straight for Slapdash amidships. We ran up on deck and started yelling at this guy, assuming he would see what was going to happen and get to his helm. This was the second time we overestimated his grey matter. After looking up he decided he would be better off on the bow trying to stop his boat from hitting us by hand. Unless he was Superman this was a plan doomed to fail. Jaime and I were waiting for the guy and all 3 of us tried to dampen the impact. Crunch!
I was distracted from trying to kill the guy because Jaime had the jump on me and was trying to do the same. It was a reflexive thing and I totally regret it. After he took off without so much as a `sorry` I wished I had held him instead of Jaime.
We inspected the damage and almost couldn’t believe our eyes, apart from a gauge on the thick galvanized rub rail, there was none! A few inches lower and he probably would have punched through the hull, but his bowsprit lined up perfectly with this hard rubber strip which did an exceptional job. I did notice that his chain roller was all bent over and messed up so we derived some satisfaction from having come out of the thing with less damage. Another guy came over in his dinghy and offered us some pictures of the other boat (that was now long gone) so that we could take them to the police if we wanted. I felt that a third trip to the police station in one day would be really pressing our luck so we declined.
After that we really didn’t want anything to do with the inevitable anarchy once the wind picked up, it was already bad enough and there was still no wind. We began looking for alternative anchorages. There were none suitable within range, so in the end we were forced to make the most of this one. We knew the wind would be changing direction later, and since nobody wanted to be at the back of the pack we were able to find an opening there. Being at the back means that everyone who drags is going to crash into you, so we were counting on the wind change to reverse our fortunes and put us right up front.
There was enough space back there for me to let out a good 100 feet of chain, so in shallow water like this with decent holding we would be going nowhere. Then we sat back and watched boat after boat come in, dump 5 or 10 meters of chain in a pile on top of their anchor, then without a second glance shut off the engine and start pouring drinks. It was going to be a disaster. The wind clocked around right on schedule at 11PM and at once went from zero knots to 35. It was from the north so we were now comfortably located in the pole position, and not one boat ahead of us.
Behind us it took 30 seconds for the first boat to drag into the boat behind it. This dislodged their anchor and tangled up together they charged through the anchorage like a wrecking ball. Then a 60 foot million dollar power boat at the back decided to light up the whole scene with his massive spotlight, completely blinding everyone in the process. This of course led to more crashing as boats no longer anchored drove into boats that were because they couldn’t see. I’m not sure what their intentions were but it didn’t matter because pretty soon they were dragging too. For the next two hours running lights were flicking on and off, engines were firing up, screams and shouts intensified just before crunching sounds, all the while boats circled around the anchorage in the dark. Total chaos, anchoring anarchy, a true Med mash-up! Fortunately our shallow draft had us up in a no-go zone for most of these boats so nobody tried to anchor in front of us in the dark. We sat there and watched this gut wrenching show with front row seats until things finally started to simmer down at last by 3AM.
The wind would be out of the south for the next few days so we took the opportunity to get out of Mahon and explore the rugged northern coastline. This area has some beautiful and seldom visited calas (coves) which were perfect for our needs, well and truly sick of the human race at this point a few days exploring totally isolated anchorages were just what we needed. Our first stop was in Albufera, a beautiful place where Jaime`s kayak was stolen on our first night. We were clearly not far enough away yet. At the next stop we celebrated the 4 year anniversary of our trip (August 31st). Soon we had recovered and were ready for a new island, despite all the crazy stuff happening we really enjoyed Menorca.
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Looking back at it now I can see that I`ve kind of highlighted the bad stuff, but the island really is beautiful and we would soon learn that it is the most chilled, and although a little sleepy it`s the least touristic of all the Balearics.
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Sardin. Eeeeeaaaah!
Sardinia was a 200 mile sail away from Sciacca. We made landfall in Carbonara Bay and dropped the anchor in 10 feet of gin clear water over top of white sand. It was our best Med sail yet, following everything… wind, sea and current. The perfect sailing trifecta. Skeptics might suggest that our positive frame of mind from the great passage has led to the above description of our first Sardinian anchorage. I would suggest that these sceptics have never anchored their boat in Carbonera Bay in perfect weather. Doing so would silence any doubters, but don’t take my word for it, just look at this picture and form your own opinions.
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You know what can really ruin living on a boat in a post card like that? When the ideal beach surrounding your impeccable anchorage is full of gorgeous people.
And you know what can ruin that? Tough question I know. First of all what could be worse than putting up with this translucent Mediterranean blue water, immaculate weather and the most beautiful people you have ever seen cavorting around on powdery white sand?
I’ll tell you; when these beautiful people also happen to be clothing averse.
Yes, it’s true. Day in and day out this awful picture was made even worse by tanned up, toned down goddesses playing paddleball, rubbing sun tan oil on each other and just generally frolicking around with their disgustingly faultless brown breasts bouncing around for all the world to see.
It’s almost enough to make a guy move back to Canada where practical things like frostbite, business casual dress codes, and sensibly repressive British backgrounds prevent disturbing scenes like these from playing out. All you can do is try to take it one day at a time.
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These girls are also gifted with some kind of super crazy revved up metabolisms or something. Countless times we would see them sitting down and eating a giant pizza or plate of pasta that we would have split and still left feeling stuffed. Maybe they all have bulimia, but it happened enough times for us both to leave us scratching our heads. Then Jaime reminded me that they all carry a dormant mustache and uni-brow gene.
When we couldn’t handle it anymore we took on a massive seven mile passage to the other side of Carbonara point. We anchored near the marina in front of this really nice beachside campground. The well equipped campground provided us with easy access to water, showers, a coin operated washing machine, a little grocery store, a spot to land the dinghy, and buy pizza. We’ve been really enjoying the clear warm water here in Sardinia, which causes the occasional Caribbean flashback… or premonition depending on how you want to look at it.
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A few days later we moved on to Marina Del Sol in Cagliari Bay. Another smelly marina with lazy lines so scummy you don’t want to touch with your hands or boat. Fortunately the marina is run by a super friendly chilled out helpful guy. He will rent you his car by the hour and is the first person in the Med we’ve met who hasn’t flinched when I asked about filling our propane bottles. This has been a surprising problem for us here. This is the third place we have managed to get them filled (Albatross Marina in Marmaris, and an out of the way little store on Santorini were the other two). We just assumed that having managed well through the Pacific islands, Indian Ocean etc that the EU should be no sweat. We couldn’t have been further off base. If you manage to find a place at all here it will likely be the most expensive LPG you will ever buy; generally in the 50 euro neighborhood to fill one typical 20lb tank. I won’t bore you with our LPG challenges too much more, only to say that we were really stoked that this place was not only able to fill them, but the guy actually picked them up and dropped them off right at the boat.
On August 13th we tried to leave Sardinia, but Sardinia had other plans. We were hammered just trying to get out of Cagliari bay. It took something like 7 hours to make less than 20 miles and for the second time in the Med we bailed. The chart showed some little niche in between some rocks that looked sheltered. We pulled in with plans to anchor for dinner and then get back underway once the wind had blown through. Instead we found ourselves in yet another beautiful bay with a nice beach (Co Di Pula?).
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Our little wireless modem enabled us to download a new forecast which gave us the excuse we needed to stick around a little longer. In the Med Neptune has home field advantage. When he tries to tell you something you need to listen. We were a willing audience, and spent a few more days doing what we do best; idling and lollygagging around.
 01-Jan-2007 00:14, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio W30, 3.3, 6.3mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 64 |
01-Jan-2007 00:43, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio W30, 6.6, 6.3mm, 0.008 sec, ISO 64 |
01-Jan-2007 00:45, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio W30, 3.3, 6.3mm, 0.003 sec, ISO 64 |
In one anchorage I took this picture of our neighbors trying to get to shore. Sometimes visitors make fun of our dinghy, let this be a lesson to you all; it could be worse.
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And no, they didn’t make it to shore without sinking.
In another anchorage I took a picture of this family out for a Sunday drive.
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Sardinia really surprised us. We weren’t expecting to but found some stellar spots despite ourselves. An all around totally protected little pocket bay, some really touristic places, a whole stretch of coastline dotted with caves and coves. In Sicily we wanted to get off the boat and explore inland because of the crappy anchorages and marinas. Sardinia was the opposite; we were full time sun and sand water babies. We snorkeled through caves, Jaime kayaked through coves. We climbed rocks and jumped off cliffs into perfectly formed round cauldrons.
01-Jan-2007 00:34, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio W30, 6.6, 6.3mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 64 |
01-Jan-2007 00:31, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio W30, 6.6, 6.3mm, 0.004 sec, ISO 64 |
01-Jan-2007 00:33, PENTAX Corporation PENTAX Optio W30, 6.6, 6.3mm, 0.005 sec, ISO 64 |
August 18th brought favorable conditions along with it. We stuffed our freezer full of Italian meat, and the cupboards full of olives, coffee, wine, cheese and chocolate. We were loaded up for another 200 mile passage and another country… Next stop? Spain.
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See? Silly. A great place to eat horsey.
We left Kythira on July 29th and sailed 450 miles west to Sicily. It was a rough, close hauled affair summed up nicely by our log entry on July 30th:
“Nice sunset, otherwise terrible.”
N’uff said. Should the birthplace of the infamous Cosa Nostra be anything but a challenging and dangerous undertaking?
We arrived in Likata and took a berth due to the shortage of anchorages on Sicily’s southern coast line. We tied up in the typical Med ‘stern to’ style and started providing Slapdash with some post-passage pampering; scrubs and suds.
Likata is an old, dirty, charming, and real Sicilian town. We loved it even before I found this little local “bring your own container” winery where you could pull an extremely drinkable red straight from the keg for a dollar a jug. Jaime fell head over heels for the place and threatened to rent an apartment and live there permanently. She claims this was for the cozy cobblestone streets which thread their way through crumbling old colonial buildings and roman ruins.
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She also cited the fine chocolates, meats, wines, and the fact that it was virtually impossible to find a bad meal anywhere to further justify her position. A compelling case, but I immediately found it suspicious that she chose not to mention all the suave tall dark and handsome’s swanking around in fine footwear. Just to be safe I pointed out that every one of them carries a dormant Super Mario gene. It’s like a time bomb, at any time the gene could spring into action. Massive amounts of ear and nasal hair spontaneously sprout. Eyebrows take on epic proportions. One day you wake up next to a jolly broom-toting shopkeeper. Then I locked her in the boat.
A fellow named Ken from Tennessee enhanced this already great Sicilian experience. Ken had been following our story since the beginning and made it his habit to buy our first round whenever we arrived in a new country, an endearing quality. He has family in Sicily, and not only did our trips coincide, but we landed only 30 minutes away from his Mom’s village. So what do you do when life throws an improbable string of coincidences at you and the next thing you know the guy materializes on the dock behind your boat saying “Hello Slapdash!”? You put him to work! Ken grabbed a brush and a hose and seemed genuinely happy spending the afternoon mucking around on the boat, which led us to believe that he was really a great guy or a deranged lunatic. Fortunately he turned out to be from the former category, so when he invited us to go back to Butera with him we jumped at the chance to see a little more of this incredible country.
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Butera was stunning. Like, really stunning and being “with Ken” meant that we were instantly swept into its local scene. He was our kind of people; the kind that can spot a good street side vendor for dinner, and knows that drinking takeaway beers with locals is usually way more fun then spending 3 times the money for a generic experience without the chance to meet anyone new.
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So in the spirit of street-meat adventure, Ken led us over to a street side cafe to grab some dinner. How ‘bout a Panini? The guy behind the counter asked what we wanted in our sandwiches. I asked about these veal cutlet looking things in his display case. We had about a two word Italian vocabulary at this point, but Jaime has a bit of French. When the guy said “cavallo” Jaime whispered to me that the French word for horse is “cheval”. I looked back at the vendor and said “cavallo? Like this?” and started riding an invisible hobby horse on the spot. Perhaps excited by the moment of clarity and understanding amongst all parties the old vendor abruptly yelled “SI SI, CAVALLO LIKE THEES!” and began trying to outstage me by riding his own invisible hobby horse. Then another guy got into the act eventually showing us both up by cleverly adding surprisingly life-like horse whinnying sounds as he repeatedly slapped his own invisible hobby horse on the rump causing it to buck around in a little circle behind the counter.
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Jaime grew up with horses. She comes from a long line of cowboys and other assorted types of horse loving people. But what can you do after a multi cultural improv performance like that? You each order the damned horse meat sandwich that’s what! And you want to know the scary part? You like it. Then you wash away any lingering horsey remorse with the best damned Gelato on earth.
So after our horse meat Panini’s, we bagged some bottles and hung out with the local hoodlums in some beautiful centuries-old courtyard which, judging by the strong stench of urine in one poorly lit corner, gets used for these informal gatherings fairly regularly.
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After we shut down Butera at like 5am, Ken took us back to Likata and the next day we made loose plans to hook up again and said our goodbyes. Sadly the lack of good anchorages pushed us a little further down the coast than we initially expected killing off any hope of another night in Butera.
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Capo Bianco was a beautiful anchorage 40 miles west. We stayed there overnight underneath this beautiful limestone cliff face. The water was pristine, unfortunately it was also teeming with giant jelly fish. That combined with the total lack of protection kept us moving.
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The next day we sailed on to Sciacca and spent two nights in a marina, a dirty overpriced marina that smelled like a sewage treatment plant. When a marina welcomes you with a little basket containing a bottle of wine you know you’re in trouble. When they wanted to charge us double for being a catamaran I was forced to go through an old dance routine that I’m really sick of. Basically it consists of refusing to pay this ‘catamaran tax’ based on our tiny dimensions. Many modern mono hulls are as beamy, or beamier! We would be paying double the price of a boat beside us that takes up more room than Slapdash. This is something I’ve actually had to demonstrate to some marina staff: walk them down the dock, point at tiny Slapdash in her tiny slip and say you want to charge this boat 60 dollars and then pointing to the 50 foot mono hull with a 14 foot beam dwarfing us with her dimensions, that boat 30 dollars? The great thing is that it’s impossible to justify the cat tax in the face of this logic, and if the marina staff are reasonable (eight times out of ten they are) they don’t charge us, or just tack on 10% to save face or something. I just get really tired of having to run through this stupid charade every time.
Eventually we won the Sciacca marina people over to our way of thinking. We also found a place with dollar beers outside the marina so things were looking up.
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I guess a positive side to the anchoring and marina drama in Sicily is that if it wasn’t for it we would probably still be there having fallen prey to a ‘too good too easy’ combination that can turn travelers into stayers if they aren’t careful. Sicily is too good. Danger.
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