Makarma's log

Troubled waters - Cruising partnerships

Recently I came across a post by an English guy on one of the sailing forums asking if any sailors would trade in their present partner if they found one who was a better sailor.

What a cheek! Once I got over the urge to find this male chauvinist and scuttle his boat, I felt I ought to stand up for women cruisers everywhere. Most of us have left a comfortable home, family and friends to travel the world with our partner in - let's face it - not the quickest and most comfortable way there is.

We may not all be like Ellen Macarthur, but we don't cower in the corner when the boat heels, we don't moan when the weather stops us going where we want to go, we cook hearty meals in rough seas without throwing up, we wear the same clothes for days on end and skimp on showers to save water. Generally we cope pretty well, I think.

The trouble is, sailing is inherently hierarchical. There's a skipper who takes charge and a mate who takes orders. That wasn't a problem in the old days - the skipper would always be the bloke. In this post-feminist age, nine times out of ten, it is still the bloke. What's going on?

Even if we've had successful careers ashore, we women are happy to stick with the domestic stuff and leave anything stressful like berthing or reefing to our partner. Partly out of lack of confidence and physical strength, partly to avoid getting shouted at. One of the most common off-putting experiences for women is seeing one's partner/husband turn into a red-faced, bullying Captain Bligh figure. There are still plenty of them about.

I asked some cruising friends for their thoughts. 'I have become a domestic goddess,' observes Anne, who used to hold a high-powered job in education. Round the world cruiser Julia plays down her role by saying, 'I am not a sailor. I love a sailor.' A number of women told me, 'I'm in charge ashore, but I defer to my husband while we're at sea.'

A woman's work is never done.......

How does it work for us? We have no secret formula. We joke that Leighton's the skipper, but I'm the admiral. To be honest, we muddle along trusting in each other's ability, although we've been known to lose it and shout at each other from time to time. Leighton keeps the engine running and fixes things that break. He climbs to the top of the mast. He pulls up the anchor and hoists the sails. If it gets rough or windy, he takes over so I can go below. I do the navigation, canvas work, washing, cleaning, painting, varnishing. We both do the shopping and take it in turns to cook. We both do our fair share of sailing the boat with the rule that whoever's hand is on the tiller is the skipper.

Leighton will give his take on how we work together in another blogpost!!

Cruising Essentials Old & New

Pothia, Kalimnos - 20th May

Leaving aside the boat's electronic gizmos, each of us has favourite bits of kit onboard that we use day in day out. Leighton has two - an orange handled screwdriver with interchangeable heads and his Feinmaster multitool.

My latest cruising essential is a predictable old favourite, and the other is fast becoming the must-have for all cruising folk who enjoy a bit of reading. Both are so useful that I would go so far to say that if the boat were sinking I'd rush back and rescue them.

First up, that old cruising stalwart, the pressure cooker. I was always put off by those terrifying stories of pressure cookers exploding and refused to have one until now. Since many cruisers swear by them I changed my mind and bought a six litre stainless steel one the other day. I reckon it'll be perfect for quick, comforting meals on long passages. It conjures up in my mind the era of good old-fashioned home cooking, of making do and mending. The first all-in-one stew we cooked in it took me back to the plain, nourishing fare we used to get for lunch at school.

Since then I've been gathering some more inspiring recipes from our neighbours. Dishes like chicken korma, cassoulet and risotto. Did you know you can bung in a whole octopus and it'll come out really tender after 10 minutes? I'm going to love it.

The second was an instant hit when Leighton gave it to me last Christmas. My Kindle.

What a wonderful piece of technology. I'm over the moon with it. I will never have to worry about running short of something to read ever again. No more reading mindless rubbish from book swaps out of sheer desperation because there's nothing else available. No more asking family to lug out loads of new books for me when they visit. I have everything I need right here on my Kindle. It is scarily easy to order another e-book online from Amazon's Kindle store, and there are loads of free reads about. Best of all - they take up no room at all on the bookshelf. Leighton's a fan now too - he's got one as well.

Farewell to Crete - from Astypalaia 12th May

Sailing away from Crete is a losing game, but we have to do it. It's almost always upwind and the best you can hope for is not too much wind and swell and that the forecast turns out to be right.

We've just spent a gusty three days anchored in Spinalonga lagoon off the tourist town of Elounda. It's been fun to have Meanderer and Pacific Star close by and we made the most of the lulls in the wind to visit each other's boats. On Sunday we hotfooted it back to Aghios Nikolaos in time for one last BBQ, ready to collect our new liferaft off the Athens ferry early Monday morning (thanks Vernon!).

Leighton unpacking our new liferaft

There's a 24 hour weather window on Tuesday evening and we’re going for it to make passage to Astypalaia, some 95 miles NNE. At 1800 on Tuesday we get a noisy send off from the remaining live-aboards blaring hooters and foghorns to wish us on our way. We're going in company with Tony and Anne on Argosea (in a 47' Moody, they'll go much faster than us). At first we sail closehauled in a light breeze until around midnight the wind goes ahead and we motorsail on into the northerly swell, which slows our progress down.

It is sobering to think that 70 years ago this month Cathy's father was out in this bit of sea serving as a 17 year old midshipman on HMS Kingston, taking part in the naval battle for Crete. Without air cover the warships were constantly at the mercy of Luftwaffe divebombers and many were sunk with considerable loss of young lives. The Kingston was hit but came out of it safely. Cathy's father was one of the lucky ones.

Next morning finds us still 40 miles away from landfall and the pressure's dropping. The fine sunrise shows bad weather's on the way.

As we approach the island the wind freshens from the north. This puts Vathi our intended destination bang on the nose. So we tell Argosea we won't be joining them and check away to Maltezana on the south of the island. We anchor in the bay in a rainstorm.

Today we realise we've snagged our anchor in a mooring chain on the seabed. On the plus side, for the next three days of 30+ knot winds we're not likely to drag, but Leighton's not excited about having to dive down and extricate it before we can leave. Ah well, we won't have to do anchor watch in the meantime.

Crete in Spring

When you think of Crete in the spring, you think of wild flowers. They have been especially good this year because of the wetter than usual winter. The bees have been out in force making the most of it.

These are some of the flowers that we've seen on our walks.

We've roamed widely with Anne Bouras's indispensable 'Circular walks in East Crete' as our guide. We've gone on the regular marina group Thursday walks too - sometimes the demanding ones led by Robin and sometimes the gentle ones with Hilary and Ann.

We've walked along Minoan trails that are several thousand years old; we've followed donkey paths and irrigation leats through the aromatic scrub; walked up the riverbed of gorges that cut deep clefts in the landscape - all the time keeping an eye open for killer goats that might dislodge rocks far above our heads.

Taking the aquaduct across a gulley

The riverbed in the Kritsa gorge

Chain Reaction

Aghios Nikolaos 29th April

There's an old saying in the Royal Navy, 'if it moves salute it; if it doesn't paint it.' It's a constant battle onboard to stop things from corroding. Painting is one way. Prevention with a regular spray of WD40 is another. But what do you do when your anchor chain gets rusty and starts messing up your deck like this?

The answer has been a bit of a running saga this winter. Leighton spent some time browsing metalshop chat rooms on the Internet, populated as far as I could see by good ole boys and characters that looked like Z.Z. Top. He found out how to get rid of rust by soaking the offending bits in molasses. 'Oh yeah?' I hear you say. 'How's that ever going to work?' It was the same reaction from cruisers here too. Leighton insisted the molasses chelates the rust out of the chain and leaves it clean, so he wanted to try it out.

As it happened we'd also got hold of some free samples of a non-toxic liquid called Metal Rescue that apparently does the same trick, but quicker. So we decided to do a bit of an experiment and compare the two.

To a great deal of scepticism on the pontoon, we filled an olive pickling barrel with 10:1 water and molasses and put all the chain we could fit into it - about 45 metres. Chelating isn't an overnight process, so we sat back and left it to brew for one month. The smell of fermenting sugar which filtered out through the lid led us to believe that maybe something was happening inside.

We treated the rest of the chain in a bucket of Metal Rescue. This only takes 24 hours to work, so we left it to soak in the brew a short length at a time.

And the result? To no-one's great surprise the opening of the olive barrel was a bit of an anticlimax. We still have a rusty anchor chain. Not as bad as before, but it still has quite a bit of rust on it in places. The Metal Rescue did a better job. It cleaned up small items really well, but the 5 litres we had couldn't cope with the amount of chain we had. It would probably work if you used enough of it, but it isn't cheap and the cost would go quite a long way to paying for a new chain.

We've not given up on it yet - other cruisers have told us their tricks for dealing with the problem that we can try, like dragging the chain along behind us over a sandy sea bed; turning it end to end; re-galvanising it. And if all else fails we can buy a new one!

A Shot across the Bows - Aghios Nikolaos 23rd April

If you're looking for a gentle cruising ground, you don't come to Crete. It is pretty windy here much of the time and there are not many secure harbours and anchorages along the north coast, and almost none on the south coast. But the marina here in Aghios is a good place to overwinter - the price is reasonable; showers and laundry facilities are excellent; the town is on the doorstep; and there's a good liveaboard community. But book ahead - don't turn up on spec and expect to get a winter berth.

View from the marina of snow on the mountains

This winter we've had two big storms bringing gales and icy rain, and snow fell on the tops of the mountains. In the marina here at Aghios some boats broke mooring lines, others sustained minor damage, and the sea-scout hut got blown down.

The damaged scout hut

Hail lying on our decks

When we drove up to Kritsa to see the snow for ourselves, we copied Greek drivers and made a snowman against the windscreen of our car - it seemed to be common practice but made seeing out tricky!

Sheep looking for shelter from the snow in December

We've stayed safe in our berth, but the pontoons are laid out so that the prevailing winds (NW or S) blow beam on either one side of the boat or the other. It makes for exciting berthing. When we get strong southerlies the wind howls in everyone's rigging making sleep elusive. In northwesterlies a tiresome surge gets up in the marina, making the pontoons and boats lurch uncomfortably backwards and forwards. Apart from being annoying, it makes getting on and off the boat a bit of a balancing act - and try woodworking when what you're cutting is moving about!

Sailors say that Crete is easy to get to but very hard to leave. You might think it has something to do with the island's undoubted attractions, but what they actually mean is the prevailing NNW wind, the dreaded meltemi, makes it an easy downwind sail to get here but a bash upwind to sail off again - especially when it blows strongly in the summer. So yachts tend to leave here by May or they run the risk of getting stuck. At the other end of the scale there are some sailors who decide to stay here for good because they fall in love with the place. They buy a house or an olive grove and put their boat up for sale. After enjoying a day's hospitality from Roger and Birgitta sitting beside their infinity pool, we can understand why they've settled here, but it isn't for us, however tempting.

The view from Roger & Birgitta's house

We planned to leave Aghios before Easter. But we've just had the sort of wake-up call that everyone with elderly parents will understand. We learned Cathy's mother has suffered a minor stroke. She is now back from hospital and is undergoing physiotherapy at home. She is making good progress towards recovery. We think it's better to stay where we are for a while because we can leave the boat safely here in case Cathy has to fly home to help look after for her. We'll take each day as it comes in the meantime. Let's hope we can get going before the meltemi makes getting to the Dodecanese a long slog to windward.

Winter in Crete

Aghios Nikolaos 14th April

Hello again everyone! Yes, I know it's nearly Easter and this is the first time we've added to our blog in 2011. We have some catching up to do, so I will try to summarise what we've been up to while we've been here in Crete.

If last season's cruising was all about places, this winter has been all about people - making new friends, joining in social events and being a part of the small liveaboard community here in the marina which is predominantly made up of English with a few Swiss and German sailors. We've also made friends with a few of the expat locals.

There's a communal BBQ every Sunday; a boules tournament on the beach every Wednesday; and walks often followed by raki and mezedes at the Two Brothers taverna on Thursdays. Somehow we've fitted in twice weekly Greek conversation lessons with Stratos and all the usual boat maintenance as well. Oh, and Cathy has published her book Paulina Annenkova on Amazon!

Making friends on the pontoon

A taverna stop on one of our walks

Greek conversation lessons with Stratos

The Rainbow Choir concert

Leighton, Clare and Alois on Schironn B for the New Year's Eve party

Molly helps celebrate Leighton's 65th Birthday - New Year's Eve

We've not missed out on exploring the island either as we've had a third share in a hire car for most of the time we've been here. Crete is a beautiful island with magnificent scenery. It is mostly mountainous but lots of different wild flowers (anemones; orchids; ox-eye daisies; vetch; daphne; asphodel; sage and thyme to name a few) bloom all through the winter and into spring and bring colour to the landscape. Winter in Crete is like early summer at home - lush green everywhere - with abundant harvests of olives; oranges; spinach-like horta; avocados; artichokes, etc. etc.

We are big fans of the legend of the Minotaur. This is from our visit to Knossos.

Bull jumper fresco from Knossos

Bull Jumper fresco from Knossos

Palace at Knossos

We've seen the olive pickers harvest their crop, walked up dramatic rocky gorges; followed Minoan trails several thousand years old across the hills; and hunted for fossils and shards of Minoan pottery (is that inscription Linear B, or does it say 'made in Taiwan'?). A highlight of the winter was a visit to Chania and learning about the Battle for Crete (which took place 70 years ago this May) in which Cathy's father played a significant part as a midshipman in HMS Kingston. Here are some of the sights: