Every country we visited after traversing the Indian Ocean had a boder dispute with someone. It was a trying time and our boat was struggling to keep us safe. But she did it. She got us past the pirates and the scammers, past the reefs and between the cargo ships and against the winds without a wind instrument, a seriously broken generator, a mainsail ripped in half and an engine suffering transmission problems. We splashed into the Mediterranean as if sea monsters were chasing us. A few days of fresh air sailing landed us in a much refreshed state of mind and a country that looked very much like Mission Viejo, California. Cyprus is a small Greek island nation that was invaded by Turkey in 1974. The two countries drew a line down the middle and they have been squabbling about it ever since. Now it seems the politics have worsened with the economy and no one is happy. Including us. With 1st world countries come rules and regulations and we had broken a golden one: boat insurance. They require 3rd party insurance to cover any mistakes we made, like sinking and polluting Cypriot waters. Reasonable. We tried to accomodate. But we struggled to find an insurance that would cover us without a haul-out and a survey and our finances were pretty much exhausted after our Red Sea and Suez Canal costs. Cyprus folks were really great to us, everyone we met helped reaffirm our belief in human kind. The officials gave us 15 days to provision and fuel up and we headed off to Turkey where we heard it was less stringent. We heard wrong. Not only did we need insurance, they wouldn't even sell us a sim card for internet to search for insurrance without insurance. A real life “Catch 22”. We landed without official blessing and found a back alley deal on a sim card and after more than a week of searching the web we found an agency in Greece that would insure us for the entire Mediterranean. It took another 10 days to get certified and almost all of our funds. We now had insurance and just enough money to check into one country. Greece was 20 miles away and we had had enough of Turkey by then. Onward to Greece. But first a little stop along the way. We entered the harbor of a lovely little island called Magisti and thought we had been dropped into paradise. Quaint buildings along the quay with notes of Avalon harbor if Catalina had sported an ancient castle. Real coffee, nice people, great food and we could see Ashika just 500 feet from our cafe table. Boats anchor stern to the quay here but with a gusty side wind and just the 2 of us, it was impossible and so we had anchored in the harbor. After a lovely walk around town we were ready to enjoy some down time in the cockpit of Ashika. Or maybe not. It seemed our luck had only extended to a single beautiful day. We were informed that we needed to either tie up to the quay or leave. So we tried again. I got in one of the kayaks and grabbed a stern line while Dois tried to back into a slot. Every time he adjusted forward I got dragged sideways and every time he reversed I had to pull in the line before it got sucked into the prop. I finally had the tie-up within reach, another 3 feet and we would be home free when suddenly the bow blew off from another katabatic gust rolling down the mountain blowing Ashika's bow toward one of the boats. Dois drove the boat forward, dragging me sideways away from the gold ring. It was growing dark and windier so we scrapped that plan and decided to go around the corner and find an anchorage. We were racing the light so we pulled the kayak on board but left the tender tied to rail to save time. As Dois dropped the anchor in the last remnant of light, I looked to the rail and saw nothing. The winds were gusting twenty knots or more and the line must have worked loose. I saw no tender anywhere. I alerted Dois and grabbed the binoculars and believed I could see it against the rocks on a small island behind an anchored yacht. That was the last time we could find it as the light had completely abandoned us. The moon wouldnt rise for another hour or more. Dois put out a call on the VHF radio and the yacht Unica, anchored a ways behind us, confirmed my sighting. We dropped the kayak and Dois donned a life vest and went on a quest to retrieve our wayward boat. I was an anxiety ridden bundle of nerves for the next hour. Skipper saw Dois leave in the kayak in the dark and mewled in complaint almost the entire time. syUnica called me on the VHF radio with regular updates but I could hear the anxiety in their voices and worry as the winds increased. This is where I asked Dois to tell his story.
The winds continued to blow for the next 3 days, pinning us down to the boat on anchor watches. The winds are called Meltimi winds here and they are a katabatic wind, also called downslope wind, or gravity wind. They occur at night, when the highlands radiate heat and are cooled and winds gain speed rolling down the mountains. We first encountered these enormous gusts in Baja California and we really haven't missed them at all. Meltimis are expected to remain in our way through September.
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