Overnight sail

65 nautical miles
(12 hours night sailing, average speed 3.8 knots, max speed 8.2 knots)

This was our first night sail on King Malu.

We had hoped others might join us, but in the end it was just Tim and me. Which meant... since we had enough food to feed two more crew, we had way more food than we needed. This was especially true since we came back before rather than after lunch on Saturday.

We left the marina just before 5 pm, having spent longer dropping off the 'day crew' because our friend Chris had a problem with batteries, so we lent him two of ours.

This meant we had just about an hour of daylight before sunset. We checked all the navigation lights and set back to enjoy the sunset.

One of the pleasures of sailing is seeing the beauty of God's creation - from sunsets, the stars without the clutter of 'light pollution', moon rise over the sea and dawn coming up. These were all pleasures we could see on this night sail. I was particularly impressed by he stars. I don't think I had ever seen them so clearly in my life. I could see the main stars, some dimmer ones and constellations.

As we sailed we did see 'sky glows' from the cities. I don't know how far we were seeing, but it looked like we saw the sky glow from Limassol. Though it was beautiful from a distance, the excessive energy waste from over illumination not only robs people of the beauty of the stars, but costs a huge amount. The un-necessary over illumination in the USA, for instance, reflects 4% of the total energy used, or about 5 million barrels of oil per day.

The plan was to push out south east, then wherever we had got to by 2am to turn and head for home. 2am being approximately the half way point by time. Since the wind was from the south west we had a glorious beam reach out from the marina. To start with the wind was at about 8-12 knots and we were gently sailing along at about 3.5 knots, which is reasonable for a ketch of 15 tonnes.

Originally I had planned spaghetti bolonaise for the crew, but since Tim was still on a diet, I just cooked up scrambles eggs and ham, with pitta bread for me (Tim was not allowed the bread on his diet). I had also got an apple pie for desert... expecting two or three to eat it, but it had thawed so had to be cooked. This was the first time we had used the oven on the boat so it smelt slightly of burning plastic. However, it tasted good when it was cooked and was obviously something relatively easy to cook onboard.

After dinner we put on our 'foul weather gear'. Not that the weather was foul, just when the sun dropped the temperature dropped and the wind on the sea made it feel really cold. Around 8pm Tim decided to take a two hour shut eye and so I took the first watch. Sailing along in King Malu with the stars as you don't normally see them and nobody else on deck is something magical. I wish there were some way to capture this and share it with people, but you have to experience it for yourself to know what it is like.

Around 9:30 the wind started to pick up and King Malu started to increase her speed. It felt to me like she was finally saying thank you to be back in her element. I was seeing wind speeds of 13, then 14 knots and boat speeds of 4, 5 and finally 6 knots. It was gusting quite a lot so steering through the gusts was fun. I decided that when it reached 15 knots wind I would call Tim to reduce sail. We are both conservative sailors, so having reduced sail after dark is what we both consider prudent.

Just as I saw the wind gauge hit 15 knots and was about to call Tim, he came on deck and we thought about furling the genoa slightly, but I decided I would rather drop the main totally and sail on genoa and mizzen sails. She balanced beautifully on that and Tim looked at the max speed on the GPS and found that before we had reduced sail I had actually touched 7.1 knots SOG.

Actually, both Tim and I were very tired when we started the sail, so after an hour in the cockpit together, we tacked and I put my head down leaving Tim sailing alone. When I got up a couple of hours later he pointed out to me the golden crescent of the moon rising over the sea. We swapped watches and he headed for a lie down. When we are sailing two handed the person off watch sleeps in the saloon so they are ready within a few seconds to be on deck and help if needed. It allows the person off watch to sleep on port or starboard side depending on the tack we are on.

The wind hand turned and so through the night whenever we changed watches we also tacked... it was not coming from the north west - exactly the direction we wanted to sail.

The radar worked well: We had it set to be doing 20 rotations every 3 minutes so you got a snapshot of what is happening every three minutes. On transatlantic passages it might be possible to be longer than that, but since are in an area with a small amount of commercial shipping we feel it prudent to check every 3 minutes. At one stage when I was on watch I noticed three targets, one of which looked like it had a CPA (closest point of approach) that was closer than I could judge by eye, so turned the radar on to continuous and use the MARPA tracking to do all the calculations. It turned out to be a tanker than was on a reciprocal course to us and passed by about 2 miles off. With AIS (one of our next additions) we would have known even the ships name and passage plan.

As we were heading back the boat was pitching somewhat into the waves and I needed to use the toilet. Not an easy task with foul weather gear on and as I found out... a quick way to make you feel sea sick! Back on deck I threw up and then offered to take the next watch so I could hand steer to take my mind off it. An hour later or so Tim came back up to see how I was and we swapped watches. I went below, but felt worse down below and came up on deck and threw up again. This time I decided that drowsing in the cockpit was a better option.  Drowsing? Well... I slept quite deeply this time and it is probably exhaustion that made me sea sick, since I have only been sea sick once before and this week has been frenetic with only a few hours sleep many nights. I had started off the sail already very tired!

While I slept, Tim sailed and I woke to find that he had started the engine and was motore sailing to allow us to get closer to the wind. Since the wind turns somewhat round Larnaca bay anyway this meant that he could keep pinching the wind more and more till we were able to motor sail directly towards the marina. A few miles out the wind pick up and had turned enough that we sailed the last few miles without the engine.

I took the helm as we came towards the marina. Another yacht was sailing northwards past the marina entrance. Both of us were on port tack, they were slightly more to windward of us, so we had right of way, but I changed course to allow them to pass since we were wanting to go into the marina. Suddenly they turned towards the marina itself and furled the genoa. So, that meant now they were ahead and had right to go into the marina... but no they decided to motor across the marina entrance. Meanwhile a yacht and power boat were coming out. We furled our genoa and I went port-to-port with the power boat towards the marina. This other yacht now suddenly uses power and tries to push us to increase speed. No! Now they are the overtaking boat so they should keep clear and we have right of way.  We motored in and moored easily.

What would have been better is that if after getting to the waypoint south west of the marina we were heading I had then turned more southerly from a beam reach to a close hauled. This would have turned us back towards land and therefore close hauling northwards would have been a better return passage.

But all it was great: Aall our best sail to date.