Passage to Sardinia from Ponza Island

Wednesday 4 July.  Wow where do we start? 

Maybe with the ending... here we are sitting in Porto Brandinghi just south of Isla Tavolara - SARDINIA!!!  Long and Lat:  40°50.10N 009°41.40E.

Yes yes, we have made the crossing and arrived yesterday morning after weathering the most almighty gale on the way over (all night), which we do not see on the grib files (or Lamma) at all and 3 ships which we are on a collision course with which requires us to take drastic action.  The forecast is for mid 20 knots but turns out to be mid 40s with ginormous sea state. 

An early departure means no wind so we motor out and its not until midday that we are able to start sailing.  We attempt to send emails with our trip report to family members, but get a message from MailASail that our account has been cancelled as we have not paid our subscription to their site.  The emails are not delivered.  We manage to get a grib file weather forecast for one day only.  Fair enough, but it’s a bad time to find this out.  We have not used the Sat Phone much as it was mainly to be for our cancelled Tunisia passage at the beginning of the season.

Our first indication that something is ‘happening’ up ahead is the arrival of long thin bands of cloud punctuating the clear skies above us with the sun getting lower in the sky in the background.  We sail on in a gentle breeze aft of the beam, making 6 knots easily.  Richard takes a rest down below for a couple of hours.  He is still not feeling 100% since the virus which laid him low.  There is a white sort of haze on the horizon.  Later on we read somewhere that this is a clear warning sign of a pending mistral. 

Suddenly the wind falls away and for a little while we are without much breeze, but soon the sea state starts to change from fairly flat, to small swells, increasing fairly rapidly in size.  As darkness falls, the wind fills in steadily from the north west and freshens considerably over ten to twenty minutes.  We reef down once, then soon after again, until we are sailing on the wind with three reefs in the main and a scrap of headsail.  Richard has been able to eat a hasty dinner, but Pippy snacks on fruit, is not hungry and is suffering from a small nervous knot in the pit of her stomach. (Intuition perhaps?)  The sea state continues to worsen.  We are now sailing into massive waves.

Ships in the night: 

Probably ships are not expecting to see any sail boats out there in such conditions. We are able to tack away from a massive oil tanker early on, which is not so bad as it is not yet dark when we encounter this first ship.  We figure that will be it for the night as averages go.  As darkness falls, the full moon bathes us in a ghostly light.  The sky is clear and starry and the wind screams in fury.

Richard does not feel well, does not look well, and is soon throwing up in the gunnels, clipped on to the binnacle.  This is really bad.  One crew member down and conditions worsening.  The knot in Pippy's stomach is now a football!  It is now not safe for us to tack over.  The sea state is enormous.  We have breaking waves on our starboard bow, crashing over the top of the boat.  Miraculously we are dry behind the dodger and under the bimini, but standing in the companionway is terrifying watching the waves rise up then tumble towards the flimsy canvas along the top of the deck.  We must be almost invisible to a ship in these conditions. 

The boat is sailing well on autohelm and Pippy is able to stay on watch and keep an eye on the AIS.  However, the autohelm is chewing up the batteries and so the fridge and the chartplotter is turned off and the computer with AIS and Open CPN charts on the screen left with the lid closed on standby.  The AIS is new to us but has paid for itself over and over, warning of approaching ships more than 1 hour away and plotting their course in relation to ours.  We are receiving, but not transmitting our position to them.  The screen gives us all the information we need ie Ship Name, MMSI number, course and speed plus other relevant information.
 

It is fully dark when we see lights approaching on our starboard side and our AIS shows we are close to a collision course.  We have been watching this ship, the Norwegian Star, close on us, beginning when they are 30 minutes away with .5 of a NM CPA (closest point of approach) but as they get within 15 minutes this changes to .1 - too close.  Pippy calls up the bridge on Channel 16 VHF.  Our first question "Can you see us?" followed by "We are unable to get out of your way".  It is comforting to talk in good English to this ship and they are really co-operative, changing course to avoid us.  There is no way we could have safely tacked over.

Our third incident comes hours later.  Cannot recall what time but Pippy is very concerned about Richard who is still vomiting and unable to keep even sips of water down.  He is tucked up under the dodger and keeping watch while Pippy searches for our Simrad user manual with instructions on making a DSC call to emergency services over the VHF.  She searches frantically for it but it is missing from its usual place. 

Back on deck and Richard reports lights off to our port side.   It takes a minute to fire up the AIS which then shows us .01 of a NM CPA (closest point of arrival) with the ship (another cruise liner) less than 11 minutes away.  Another call to the bridge, very difficult communication as no English, but they report they will change course, which they do.  It is truly terrifying to watch the AIS figures then change from .01 to .00 - collision course.  We switch on every light outside the boat in an effort to make ourselves as visible as possible… and pray.  We call them again but they do not answer.  We can now see the bow heading straight for us - very close. 

We are on deck together when we realise they are swinging the ship from passing in front of us to passing well behind us.  When we see their port light we know we are safe.  Once they are clear away we call them up again and say thank you.  They tell us we will have these conditions until the morning… just have to hang on until daylight.

The boat is fantastic.  Best of all…Richard’s addition of a 3rd reefing point which we move into fairly early on, autohelm, which works very hard set to sailing on wind angle, uses up 50% of our four domestic batteries but is a godsend.  SY Matelot ploughs through everything including massive waves over the top, a first for us.  We are totally okay and mostly dry with bimini and spray dodger up.  The boat slams down hard off waves frequently but comes through it all with a totally dry bilge and not a drop of water inside.

Quite annoying is the alarm on the AIS which is probably an Open CPN Setting..  Once the alarm bell starts to ring it is impossible to turn it off.  Playing around with the settings does not help.  At one point Pippy is trying to talk to the bridge of a ship, with the alarm ringing as she transmits information from our AIS.  The only way to stop it is to mute the sound on the computer which is not ideal either.

As for the Simrad user manual.  It was right where it was supposed to be but squashed sideways under some other stuff.  Thank goodness we did not need it.

The dawn finds us around 40 miles off the coast with 35 knots constant and we find it better not to look at the huge sea still coming at us.  Richard is a little less sick and on the helm again.   Closer to land, the sea state flattens out.  Pippy crashes on the teak in the cockpit and sleeps - no pillow. 

Porto Brandingi, Sardinia, 40°50.10N 009°41.40E

We make it to Brandhingi around 1300H and are surprised (chart says nature reserve, absolutely no anchoring) to find quite a few anchored boats here so drop the pick ourselves carefully in a sandy patch, do a quick tidy up, swim, food, then instantly to sleep for the remainder of the day. Wow what a beautiful place - calm water, crystal clear and turquoise.  Hard won but really lovely!!!