Too depressing to be included in Part I

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After motor sailing in light breezes most of the way from San Vito lo Capo we dropped anchor in a large bay at Campulongu on the southeast corner of Sardinia. We’d had some weather moments along the way, including a couple of almost-waterspouts, and though the night was fairly calm it was also kind of creepy. There was a lot of high level lightning, and we both felt it was a little surreal: like we were stealthily slipping through a veil. We were finally in Sardinia though, even if instead of having a week or so to explore the southern coast before moving on to Mallorca, we needed to keep going. We did take ourselves to dinner in Campulongu and got a good night’s sleep there before leaving the next morning for the western corner of the island.

It was a slog and took longer than we’d expected. As the day wore on the swell grew, and the wind which started on our port changed to straight on our bows. No one likes a bash, and this couldn’t be described any other way. We pulled into Cala di Piscinni with relief – not all the way to the southwestern tip but close enough. It looked like the winds were going to calm a bit the next day, too – but only long enough for us to get to the west coast proper for jumping off to Mallorca as soon as we had a longer window.

That window came two days later, and we set out in a sweet breeze on the port bow and sailed happily that day and into the night. The second morning out dawned much calmer, though as the day went on the wind whipped up, the swell developed into huge peaks on our bow, and we had only just enough angle to continue sailing – with the engines on and the main and head sails reefed to as small as they would go.

That second night was hell. Slamming into ever larger swell, 25+ knots of wind mostly right at 45⁰, very occasionally 80⁰, sometimes 60⁰, and sometimes 30⁰ on the port kept us jumping to the autopilot for tweaks, and we spent our watches hanging on with both hands to whatever we could reach to keep our balance. At one point our lazy jacks on the port side snapped, and the extra (reefed) sail held in the sail bag at the boom flopped down, blocking any view off the port side. It was too rough to turn into the wind even temporarily to take down the rest of the sail or try to tie up the flapping sail. Uncomfortable and exhausting, and relentlessly terrifying. Our progress was also agonizingly slow, and instead of 38 hours it was a full 46 by the time we found our anchorage in the bay at Pollenҫa at 6 am. In the dark.

We will never, ever try to anchor in the dark again. At that point there wasn’t a breath of wind, so the other boats in the anchorage were floating eerily around us. We had no obvious way to determine where their anchors were, and no one was awake to point out the line of their chain. As I mutinied on the idea of anchoring anywhere near other boats and turned us toward the open bay, at least until sunrise, Peter suggested to a spot a little further out. We managed to set the hook well enough to get us a few hours of sleep before having to worry about enough wind to drag and collapsed into bed.

In retrospect, I can’t think about that crossing without flinching. Without a pit in my stomach, and utter and complete dread in my heart. It left me with a strong disinclination to experience anything close to it again. Unfortunately, it happens, we won’t always be able to avoid it, and that makes me want to jump ship immediately and run screaming for the hills.

But we’d made it to Mallorca, where we had family, friends, good food, beautiful surroundings, and a little bit of time to get our groove back. Just like that, September, without question the most frustrating and scary of our life on Flying Fish to date, was over. (And October gets a bit better.)