Light winds, gentle sail

15 nautical miles

I had Melvin, a friend over from the UK, plus Peter, a sailing friend from the marina is returning to the UK this week, so invited both of them for a sail. Really of course, it's as much a social gathering as a sail in the light winds we had today.

The regular crew of me, Tim and Jacob was down to just me and Jacob as Tim is still in Thailand on holiday.

When I say light, the predicted winds were 8-10 knots, maybe gusting 12 knots.  We headed south and that was all we got!

This was great in some ways as it allowed me to let Melvin take the helm with no concern at all that there would be any problems. Even the odd accidental gybe was gentle! It was a great teaching day for a first sail.

Peter, of course, was playing with the sails. How many knots could we get out of the the new sails in such light airs?

The answer was we could get about 4.7 knots 9 knots of wind at 60 degrees (close hauled).

It was all really gentle.

We turned back and cooked up our traditional sailing lunch of haloumi, pittas and tomatoes. The haloumi we have found from the fruiteria and is the best we have found in Cyprus. 

We passed the Zenobia dive sites and one of the dive boats fell in alongside and then passed astern of us. Not remarkable you might think, except that the so called 'rules of the road' are often ignored in Cyprus and it's really nice to have a courteous skipper from a power boat.

As we were sailing back the wind picked up. So we headed north for half an hour just for a bit more of a blow and then back to the marina, since Peter had some work to do on his boat before flying to the UK on Sunday.