There’s a reason that yacht owners pay professional crews to deliver their boats from A to B. OK, some owners don’t have the time, but more often it’s because they don’t fancy doing the trip themselves. It may be the wrong time of year, or simply that the voyage would be against the prevailing winds and currents. In short, it would be a tiresome slog, so better to pay someone else to endure it, and then return to your yacht when it is in warmer or more favourable climes.
And so it was, about 18 years ago, that I flew out to Sicily to join my fellow crew for my first professional delivery. Well, I wasn’t being paid, as I wasn’t the skipper this time. There are plenty of amateur crew out there who need experience and to ‘build miles’, and who are prepared to do that for free, in return for free board and lodgings for a week or two. And I was one of them.
I can’t remember the skipper’s name, but he was about my age (36ish) and from Lancashire. I think the other crew member was a Polish chap. We got into a taxi at Catania airport and headed to the marina to find our ward. She was quite old, quirky and only 30-odd feet long. She had a tiller, of course, not a wheel. She was definitely a live-aboard, as she was crammed full of general paraphernalia. There was barely enough space to store our meagre luggage of a few clothes, a sleeping bag and a life jacket.
We spent a day checking and familiarising ourselves with the boat, and provisioning for our 600+NM delivery to Marseilles in France. The boat was very quirky, but the quirkiest system was the heads. This was a Heath-Robinson affair with loads of valves and levers and pipework, mostly in inaccessible places. And it seemed to work by vacuum/suction. This meant you were supposed to close the loo lid, switch some valves in a precise manner and pump like crazy. There were even some instructions, but none of us could make head nor tail of them.
The poo was supposed to end up in the holding tanks, before being released later to the outside (by opening a different combination of valves), when we were a mile or so offshore. Generally, we pumped and pumped until the resistance was too great, but the holding tanks did not fill. In the worst instance (and I hope you are not eating while you read this), the foul contents of the system would be ejected at high velocity from the weakest joint in the system. We eventually, managed to bypass the holding tank; bad for the local environment, but good for our own personal hygiene and laundry bill!
We had a full tank of diesel, as we would need it. As I was to learn soon enough (and now treat as common knowledge) the prevailing wind in the summer in the western Mediterranean is a north-westerly. This can often be the strong Tramontane or Mistral. And Marseilles is pretty much north-west of Sicily. So, if we were to sail, we would have to beat (tack) our way there, putting far more miles on our journey.
And that was not really allowed. Delivery skippers are pretty much given a daily budget, based on the miles a boat of a particular size should make in a day. I can’t remember exactly, but I think our budget was a 6-day delivery (based on 5 knots and 125NM a day). The only way that was ever going to be achieved was by motoring, or at least motor-sailing, where we were able. We topped up the spare diesel canister to ‘brimming’ and, cast off, and turned to port up the infamous Strait of Messina.
As you will know from the blog about Missy Bear’s maiden voyage, one piece of data a skipper needs to know pretty accurately, is the fuel consumption in litres per hour. And the capacity of the fuel tank. I think we knew the latter, but not the former. And there was no fuel gauge. To check the fuel levels, we had to life the teak grating in the cockpit sole, undo the inspection chamber of the fuel tank, and use a dipstick to judge the amount still in there. Not an exact science. Especially when the boat is rolling and the fuel is sloshing around.
We were intending to make southern Sardinia in our first leg, but we were so unsure about the fuel situation that we put into the remote Isola di Ustica to top up. We managed an hour to walk up into the old town. And very charming it looked too. I started to get a pang that it would have been nice to stay here a while longer. But the delivery clock was ticking.
We sailed up the eastern side of Sardinia up the Tyrrhenian Sea, using a 3-man watch system: 3 hours off; 3 hours stand-by; and 3 hours on. ‘On’ meant you were at the helm, navigating and making log entries etc; ‘off’ meant you were supposed to be asleep or at least resting; and ‘stand-by’ or ‘mother watch’ meant you were resting or doing galley work, like preparing a meal. If there were any manoeuvres that required all three of us, the cry was “all-hands-on-deck”.
Then we arrived at the Bocche di Bonifacio, the narrow strait between Sardinia to the south and Corsica to the north. We turned to port, and were immediately blasted by the wind that funnels and strengthens in the gap. We passed the Arcipelago di la Maddelena, and skipper noted how beautiful they were supposed to be. I felt another pang that it would have been nice to take a cruise around for a look. But we pressed on.
Not too far though, as the fuel situation was in need of remedy again. We rolled into Bonifacio, a remarkable, hidden-gut of a harbour, sheltered by tall, pale, limestone cliffs, with houses built right to the very edge of the high precipice. I swear some are overhanging! What a remarkable location, built as a fortified town in the 9th century by a Tuscan, who had been fighting the Saracen pirates of north Africa. Inside the harbour you could not see the sea, and it felt snug and comforting. I yearned to stop and explore, but as soon as we topped up with diesel, off we went, and out into the blow.
We crawled up the western coast of Corsica, now in the western Mediterranean Sea. We gradually drew further from the Corsican shore, as we made towards our mainland France destination. The wind grew. I now know that it was probably a Tramontane or a Mistral blowing. Then, I just thought it was just wind. And it kept blowing. We were motor sailing, but soon put in one reef; “all-hands-on-deck”; and then a second and then the third. The wind increased and the waves increased. And we were heading straight into them.
And then the autohelm stopped working. It was a rudimentary piston affair, fitted across the cockpit and attached to the tiller in the centre. But the big seas had put it under too much strain, and it gave up the ghost. So, it was manual steering from now on. We reduced the watches overnight to 2 hours as it was tiring work.
And still the wind blew and the waves got bigger. The little boat felt smaller and smaller, and we were barely making any forward progress. We were getting tired, so I suggested to skip that we hove-to for a while, to catch our breath and think things through. Skip agreed and after a couple of hours, we decide it was better that we run for Calvi and sit out the storm.
And so, we did; we turned the little boat and ran away from the big seas on our quarters. We made Calvi, all quite tired but relieved. This time we had a day to sit out the winds and we managed to explore the town a bit. It is a charming town, with a sandy curved bay, with a stunning backdrop of Corsican mountains. It was so nice that I took Alix there on a land-based tour of Corsica years later.
With the wind calming and the seas soothed, we ventured back out and eventually we made port, not in the pretty old town of Marseilles, but in part of the large commercial port further east.
We had achieved our goal, but we had over run our fixed price (?) budget, broken the autohelm, and heaven knows done what to the archaic, onboard sewage system. Anyway, I wasn’t the skipper, so I didn’t have to write the report to the boss back at the yacht deliver company, who would then have to deal with the owner!
It was a great learning experience. I did deliveries after that, but I don’t like the tight deadlines, which mean you tend to push yourselves and the boat. And you don’t get to spend time in all those lovely places that slip by. So, you can possibly now imagine my pleasure in sailing back through those infamous straits on Missy Bear 18 years later, and towards the Maddelena Archipelago.
And noW, we do have some time, and we will stop and explore, and anchor up and enjoy the pink granite and the sunsets.
Even today, although we are protected from the swell and waves in our anchorage in Stagno Torto, the wind is gusting Force 6, as we feel the tail end of the Tramontane, and watch it funnel and blast through the straits to our north.
