Front Surfing

From: Agrapidia bay, Antipaxoi island, Greece
To: Palaiokastrita (Alipa), Kerkyra (Corfu), Greece

Our alarm sound of this morning was a gentle grating of our boat against the anchor chain of another boat. The wind had turned during the night. The other boat had less chain out than we did and so their turning circle was smaller than ours. Result: Our boats were getting really intimate with each other.

When I came on deck, I saw the other captain trying to stare me to death. We had three options: shorten our chain, reanchor or leave. The staring captain had obviously no intention of letting out a few meters of chain to disentangle our boats. I could almost hear him think: “I was here first, I’m not moving a single inch.” Barbara said, “If we reanchor we’re gonna be wide awake anyway. The wind is good. Let’s just go.”

We pulled in the anchor, deployed the gennaker(a large light sail that is used when the wind comes _from the side_ of your boat) and sailed off. Barbara gave a little wave to the grumpy captain, who was still busy giving us the death stare. He didn’t wave back.

The wind wasn’t much, but it came from behind us and the sea was flat, so we made about 3 knots. I wanted to change the gennaker for the spinnaker(a large light sail that is used when the wind comes _from behind_ your boat). This was a good decision. Our speed increased to 6 knots and our estimated time of arrival changed from 23:30 to 17:30. Very rewarding for 5 minutes of work.

After a morning of very pleasant spinnaker sailing, we saw a front approaching from behind. The front was pushing a thunderstorm with our name on it. It was thundering ominously.

We rolled in the spinnaker and turned the engines on. If the boat gets hit by lighting, it’s impossible to start the engines. But being diesels they don’t need electricity to keep running once they’re started. I also steered closer to land to have some high mountains near us to act as lightning rods. Just our luck that we were passing the lowest point of Corfu right then.

The wind picked up. It started pouring down. We closed the door and let the autopilot take care of it. Barbara discovered the forward berths have a pretty good view even in heavy rain. It becomes impossible to see out of the saloon windows if it’s raining heavily.

Because of the wind, a large swell was building, and Vite & Rêves started surfing down the waves. We exceeded the 10 knots a few times. It was hypnotizing to watch her hulls glide down the waves. Our ETA(estimated time of arrival) went down to 16:00. Nice!

We anchored in Palaiokastrita bay on the west side of Corfu. The sun tried to come out again but didn’t succeed entirely, only just before sunset. That was all we needed.