First night sail of the season

We left early from Kalkan aiming for a long overnight passage to Simi in Greece. Out of the bay, round the point , past Patara Rock and motor along Patara beach. Plenty of activity on Ch16 with the Turkish navy calling up several boats. Then what do we see in the distance but said Turkish warship heading our way.

"Yacht off our port bow, this is Turkish warship".
"Turkish warship this is Petronella over".
"Live firing is due to commence in this area, please turn around and follow a course of 090 degrees".

So that is just back from where we have come from. An hour later later we have flown downwind  and are allowed to turn onto 180 degrees, only 90 degrees from where we want to go. Ah well, at least we can sail. We tack back towards where we were when we were forced to turn around and about nine hours setting off we are level with where we were when we turned around. Not a good start as we still have 60 odd miles to do.

So, evening comes, we prepare dinner, get washed and take in a reef. After the meal the sea begins to build and the wind is right on the nose. Engine on and we struggle to make 1.5k as we bash onto the waves. Night falls and we start 2 hour watches. It's too swelly for the autopilot to work so we handsteer right through the night. It's a beautiful full moon though but that is about the only good thing of the night. It's short, sharp waves and a 20k headwind. At 1.17am with the moon beam tracking from the horizon to our port beam the silhouette of a big bird flies through. Magic. I pretend it is an albatross.

Finally morning arrives. The engine is still thrumming away (is that a new noise we heard and why has the rev counter stopped working?) and we are creaping forward at 2k if we are lucky. Dawn comes. We have both got some sleep and we celebrate a hard night sailing. The wind slowly dies as we approach Rhodes and so gradually we push up to 3, then 4 then 5k. We start to eat up the miles. Perhaps we can still make Simi today. The new AIS tells us all about the ships that approach and which ones we might hit. As we are transmitting too the other boats see us too and we see them take avoiding action well ahead of us. A great new toy!

Finally after 27 hours we turned into the gorgeous Panormitis Bay on the SW corner of Simi. We anchor and slowly put Petronella to bed. Then a beer. 10 minutes later we have a visitor. Richard from Breakaway dinghies over and we are invited to for drinks and a weather forecast. Then to bed for a well earned rest.