Between Menorca and Sardinia there is space, where no one can hear you scream.
Two hundred miles, 33 hours of non-stop sailing and no one else around. But nature abhors a vacuum and the space soon got crowded with pirates on jet skis and freighters mowing us down.
Spinnaker flying with life jacket and harness at the ready on our way from Spain to Italy.
Nothing like creating some time and space to see what your mind’s really up to. Sailing from Spain to Italy set the stage for our first night crossing.
At sea, alone, in the dark. Sitting ducks.
Paranoia? More context perhaps.
The year I left high school Ridley Scott nailed a new film genre, sci-fi horror, with the release of Alien. The genius of the film is matched only by the epiphinous tagline, “In space, no one can hear you scream.”
The idea has stuck with me, Sikaflexed to my amygdala, where all the fight, flight, freeze stuff comes from, for 46 years. Always there, ready to jump out in the dark and say, “boo!”.
Space, in this case a long night at sea, and nothing and no one around.
Scream, well, you get the picture.
Back to now.
We set off from Mahon, on the eastern tip of Menorca, a large, deep anchorage controlled by the British for 100 years and only handed back to the Spanish in exchange for hefty taxes. And claimed by proud Menorcans to be the birthplace of mayonaise.
Barely a cloud in the sky.
Not a breath of wind.
We cranked the engines up to 2200rpm and slid across the glass doing 8.5 knots.
Another yacht, FRED, left Mahon ahead of us and we passed them, motoring, about two hours into the passage.
There was next to no wind for the first few hours. A few puffs here and there that never filled in, until a solid 15-18 knot sou’wester piped up around 1330. We hoisted the gennaker (large white sail at the front), stopped the engines and made a steady 8-9 knots under sail. “Super”, as they’re fond of saying in Spain.
Early in the passage a few container ships and tankers muscled themselves over the horizon and close enough for us to change course a little to give them a wide berth. Generally, though, there’s not much traffic once you get away from the Ballearics. There’s not much of anything.
I was a little wary of weather changes as we’d downloaded the forecast models from the night before but they were now 16 hours old. And once we were out of mobile range there was no way to update them. I studied them thoroughly for clues and spent time scanning the horizon and cloud watching for tell tale signs of change. The wind held steady and the waves stood up a metre or so.
Jo tackled a book of jumbo crosswords and we talked about our chances of getting a visa extension in Italy. We’d written to the Australia embassy in Rome and to the Italian embassy in Australia. Both had replied with boilerplate answers advising us to manage our plans with our initial 90 days in the Schengen zone. We were on day 77 already (how time flies).
Ideally, we could get permission to stay in Italy longer and explore. If not, we’d have to skip along the Italian coast and sprint across the Adriatic to Montenegro - over 600 nautical miles in a little over a week. Possible, but it could mean pushing our luck in bad weather for the sake of a deadline. There was nothing more we could do about the visa issue en route to Italy, we’d just have to see who we could talk to when we arrived.
Over the next few hours the wind shifted clockwise to WSW so we swapped the gennaker for the spinnaker (even larger white sail) and picked up speed to 9-10 knots.
Crossing the half-way point and entering Italian waters with full mainsail up (left) and spinnaker flying (right).
We crossed into Italian waters at N39º35.828’ E6º17.310’, 95 nautical miles from Mahon, 95nm from Sardinia, roughly 200nm from Tunisia and 350nm from France. A pod of Italian dolphins immaculately dressed in shiny grey suits with white shirt fronts greeted us on the other side. What a reception!
Hours ticked over and we made good progress. Jo got stuck on 28 across for a while - Total astonishment and shock (12 letters).
By 6 o’clock we were making plans for dinner, spaghetti bolognaise in honour of our hosts, and setting ourselves up for sailing at night. Spinnakers and huge, powerful sails that can be tricky to handle with wind changes, especially at night and short-handed with only the two of us. We decided that when the sun went down so would the spinnaker, and we’d put up the jib (much smaller and easier to control) and reef the main (make it smaller) as an added safety measure. Safer, but slower.
Jo’s bolognaise was bellissimo and 28 across proved to be stupefaction.
I stayed up on first watch ‘til 1am scanning the instruments - radar, chart plotter, AIS - and scouting the horizon in the moonlight. Jo slept on the sofa, close by in case we needed both of us to spring into action.
Nothing happened. No one appeared. No ships. No other sailing boats. No loud bumps in the night. The wind and waves stayed remarkably consistent and we sailed along at 6-7 knots for hours. Jo took over from 1am ‘til 4am while I dozed off and on. Again, nothing to report. There it was, the vacuum. Space. Dark. No one to hear us scream.
3:16am. Nothing to see here. No other boats on the chart, or radar. Just us.
I took over the night watch at 4am just as the winded upped to 20 knots, thick clouds rolled in to block out the moonlight completely and make the sky as dark as pitch. The radar suddenly threw up two ships closing in on us. AIS data showed them doing 15 and 20 knots respectively and getting too close for comfort in the next two hours.
If we could see them, could they see us? Would they alter course as power driven vessels should to give way to boats under sail? Was anyone on watch? Where they asleep at the wheel? Or drunk? Or struck down by a bizarre illness not seen since Season 2 of House? By the time both ships were within 8 miles of us I fully expected to see them lit up at night. One was clearly visible, the only lights on a squid ink sea. The other one, where was it?
Sleep deprived and silly, Ridley Scott made his move. The second blob on the radar was not a merchant ship at all, but a marauding band of pirates on jet skis in tight formation, lights out, stealth black paint, and cutlasses clenched between their teeth, hellbent on boarding and taking all our worldlies, including Jo’s book of jumbo crosswords. My mind was like 52 down - Variety of ice cream (5-6).
Tutti-frutti.
But sunrise changes everything at sea.
The second ship turned out to be a ship after all. We could see them both at dawn and while they were too close for comfort, we altered our course and put more distance between us all.
We took turns sleeping near the nav station in case we needed all hands on deck.
By mid-morning we could see the coast of Sardinia due east of us about 30 miles away. I screamed “land ho!” and no one heard me, not even Jo who was busy tidying up below deck.
We’re now in Carloforte, a seafaring and tuna fishing town on Islo do San Pietro, a couple of miles shy of Sardinia.
Until next time, smooth sailing to you and yours,
Craig and Jo xxx
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Hey Jo and Craig. Congratulations on the first overnight crossing. That is a big one and not for the faint of heart!
Thanks for sharing your adventures only just noticed you can comment You both look tired but very happy