The Golden Hour

It’s been a while since I last wrote towards the end of the summer 2024. We took an unplanned trip to the UK back in October and ended up staying all winter, so apologies for leaving you hanging.

We are back on board now and have been preparing Ziggy for the summer. Lots of jobs have been done including some engine work among other things, and she has been sanded, cleaned and polished. With her new shiny look, we’re ready to set off.

Our plan this summer is to head in a different direction than our usual route, but first, I’ll update you on how we got to where we are now. You may recall when I last wrote we were just planning to leave Greece having had some stormy weather.

The sea was dead flat calm as we left Lefkas island behind and set off on a 280 nm passage towards Sicily. A lone dolphin swam past very serenely in the morning sun.

After a couple of hours the swell picked up, thankfully it wasn’t too uncomfortable. There was a light wind coming from in front so we put up the sails and sailed off course, of course!

Unfortunately there wasn’t really enough wind to fill the sails and they started flapping, it wasn’t long before we’d had enough and the Genoa came down. We continued motor sailing with just the main up, and managed to get back on course.

By late afternoon the wind finally came, we had a force 3 northwesterly wind increasing to force 4. Ziggy was ploughing through the waves at 5-6 kts. It was very comfortable sailing and we had dinner while watching the sun go down.

The moon was almost full with thousands of stars lighting our way. We sailed through the night until the wind dropped when the sun rose, our speed reduced to just 2 knots and again the sails were flapping. We persevered for as long as possible until the engine was fired up once again.

The morning started with another spectacular sunrise through some early clouds, we had completed 122 nm in the first 24 hours of the passage which was pretty good, it had been quite comfortable and uneventful, just the way I like it.

On day two we tried putting the sails up several times only to take them down again fairly quickly as there just wasn’t enough wind to power us. It was very hot and sunny, by late afternoon we had passed our half way mark and the sea was like a millpond. We stopped the engine so that Paul could check it over and we also took the opportunity for a quick dip in the middle of the ocean, one at a time obviously!

The evening clouded over a bit and the sunset wasn’t quite so clear behind the clouds, but still brought a very colourful sky.

The moonlit night was interesting with a lot of ships around to look out for, there had been hardly any so far in the journey.

We noticed a flying fish on the deck but Paul returned it to the water before I could take a photo. By midnight we could see thunder around and lights on the coast of Italy in the distance.

On day three, the sun rose through hazy cloud, a big black rain cloud went over us giving a little shower. Thankfully it only lasted for approximately 10 minutes before the cloud cleared and the sun returned for another hot sunny day.

By midday we were just a few miles out of Siracusa when we saw dolphins again briefly, they gave us a quick performance of jumping out of the water. Unfortunately they disappeared as soon as I got the camera out. The blue sky clouded over just as we arrived in Siracusa and anchored in the large bay. We had travelled 54 hours and had the engine on for more than half of that.

Feeling rather tired, we had time to relax ready to go ashore the following day to revisit the city.