Bisou de partout: Crossing from Malta to Greece

They say that in the Mediterranean you either have too much wind or not enough – weather prediction (as I have explained before in this blog) is not an exact science and you have to be very flexible. Our intention is always to sail as much as possible, but it’s not often possible. Our French friends from Tunisia suggested that we wait another day to catch the Westerlies predicted, that would push us across the Ionian, but we were impatient to leave and headed out with very little wind. The positive side of light winds is that the seas are calm so even though we had to motor for most of the first day, it was not unpleasant. We did manage to get about three hour’s sailing in the afternoon, but the rest was motoring or motor-sailing.

Leaving Malta/Gozo required a good lookout – lots of fishing vessels, cargo ships and even yachts criss-crossed our path for most of the first 24 hours. Luckily the skies were mostly clear and visibility was good both during the day and night. We had some excitement as well on this passage – our first day we were visited by a small brown owl-like bird which landed on the end of my fishing rod. It looked at me with its huge yellow eyes and I wondered what it was doing out this far at sea and in the middle of the day! Our next ‘visitor’ was a small turtle that we saw swimming on the surface of the sea – we went past it too quickly to be able to identify what kind it was. Finally, while preparing dinner, we had a pod of four dolphins join us on our bows. For the first time since entering the Med, the dolphins seemed friendly and actually stayed with us, showing off and playing for about 10 minutes. They swam through the water, leaped out and did belly rolls. What a treat that was! It did cause Robin to almost burn the dinner as she left the sausages cooking while enjoying the spectacle!

Our second day at sea was another calm one – very little wind and what we did have was very close to the nose so not much use for sailing. Fewer boats in this isolated part of the Ionian which meant not having to keep such a close eye on things. Robin took advantage of the weather, washing a couple of loads of laundry and baking some cookies (thank you Nancy Wood for your wonderful recipe!). The night passed quickly and uneventfully and shortly after the sun rose on the third morning, we could see the mountains of Cephalonia.