Sail-World's Blackwattle Onward to Crete

by Nancy Knudsen on 31 Jul 2006 (END OF STORY - SEE NOTES FOR CRUISERS)
We’re in a miserable anchorage at Faros on the Island of Sifnos. The wind skips over us at 30 knots without abating all night. The morning glares bright with flying white caps, and the boat yaws and tilts with the heavy gusts.

We look at each other.
'Ya wanna go?'
There’s no question.
'Yup'

We had planned to leave in the afternoon for an overnight sail to Crete - it’s about 100 nm(200km), and we like to arrive mornings – but why not get away from this lee shore and dawdle our way south?

Again the Cyclades have turned us away – and again, within 15 minutes we have a gentle 20 kt northerly, on the quarter, and with just one headsail up, and Blackwattle zooms away south towards the largest of all the Greek Islands, that home of the earliest known advanced civilisation of the Minoans, which was then under the yoke of many passing masters – Dorians, Romans, Genoese, Venetians, Ottomans before ending up as part of Greece.

It’s Crete, and with its colourful history it’s no wonder that it is often told that the inhabitants are first and foremost Cretan, before being Greek.

As we’ve left too early we have a single headsail up do a drift to the northern port of Xania overnight. By the time the night watches start (three hours a piece – day time watches are 4 hours), our bliss is palpable.

It’s like standing under a cool waterfall after a fiery hot day – the breeze is refreshing, the water and sky are velvet dark, and only right overhead – above the horizon haze are there any stars to see. Blackwattle sways along through an invisible whispering sea, and a hazy red moon appears low in the sky at the 1.00am watch change.

'I give you the moon,' I whisper to wake Ted for his watch. ' Mmmgrh what what – ghrmhmm, ' is his rather unromantic reply.

But the reality of the carnage occurring just a few hundred miles away in the Middle East bites when the Coalition Warships in the area continue to announce bluntly on the emergency VHF Channel 16 that the Eastern Mediterranean is a ‘no go’ area, and vessels not adhering to instructions to stay away will be ‘destroyed’.

'Okay, okay you don’t have to be so explicit' I retort, 'Blackwattle wasn’t going there anyway Mr Bush….' But the microphone is closed.

………..

' Xania Port Control this is Yacht Blackwattle.'

Three times and no answer. We wait. The port had no published communication method, so we have no booking for the port.

Finally, after several more calls we hear 'Harrmphao Xania Port Control'

We perk up – there’s some life finally. ' Xania Port Control this is the Yacht Blackwattle, we are a sailing vessel, 13 metres, and would like a berth for a couple of nights please'

'Harrmphao' – and nothing.

Xania is on the north of the island, the weather side, so the surf rolls in on a rocky shore. It’s an ancient Venetian manmade harbour and the only shelter anywhere close. We really need that berth!

So we approach the narrow entrance, infamous for its potential danger in a bad sea, getting our lines ready for any kind of landfall.

Inside, we find a splendidly circular port with graceful old buildings behind a boardwalk lined with curved streetlamps and plush antique sulkies being pulled by sleepy horses. It’s crowded with pedestrians and the harbourside restaurants are spread with people, even at this early time of day.

We find the only break in the line-up of boats, and go bow-to to the quay without invitation, among a mixed bunch of yachts, gulets, local boats and glamorous motor cruisers sporting Asian deckhands.

There’s no sign of any authority, and a passing pedestrian kindly takes our bowlines and hands us our stern mooring line from the quay.

After tying up, a local marine chandler materialises from his chandlery on the wharf and says ‘Welcome to Xania’.

Thank heaven for commercialism. He explains how to check in, and how to get water and electricity. We’re here, finally.

Ted, who on a previous adventure flew a small aeroplane from Sydney to London and stopped here both ways, is delighted that he has now sailed here, and can’t wait to show me one of his favourite ports of call.

……………………

If Mykonos is a tarted-up once-beautiful old showgirl on the make, and Nouassa is her more naturally aged sister, then Xania in Crete seems like a graceful old lady slightly perplexed by the hordes of tourists who swarm over her lovely harbour sides, shopping till they’re dropping for nonsense goods.

Instead of the pristine white of the Cyclades, Xania is light and earthy toned, her elegantly aged buildings crammed tightly around the port. Venetian ruins have been faithfully preserved without interfering with their reality, and even at first glance, it is obvious that Crete treasures and protects her past ferociously.

An incredible one quarter of all tourists to Greece come to Crete – and at some stage of their holiday, it is obvious that they also come specifically to Xania. The frantic consumerism of the 21st Century is displayed nowhere better than here, where the tourist junk on sale looks like some kind of colourful disease that sprouts from every shop – no Turkish bazaar could beat this place for the variety of useless items for sale. And from mid-morning until midnight, it’s difficult to scramble through the crowded streets.

However, the eating is wonderful, and we relish all the Greek specialities – moussaka, Greek salad with the very best feta, grilled octopus and calamari and the mouth watering galacta boureki.

In life we find serendipity always around the corner. Neighbouring boat in the port is Dave Ross, single-handed Canadian sailor and former resident of many countries from Turkey to England to South Africa, whom I last spoke to by phone when he was in Oman on the way to the Pirate Zone, Red Sea bound.

At that time he afforded Sail-World readers a first hand account of the latest on the happenings in Pirate Zone for 2006. With the easy familiarity of the long-range cruising world, we enjoy sharing company, boat wisdom, weather reports and the occasional meal with the ebullient Dave, who is also headed to Malta.

There are more gales in the Aegean – what a year this has been! We hear the forecasts and get emails from yachtie friends who have been hanging on in 50 kts in anchorages.

The gales are affecting this area with four metre seas, but there’s no way we can leave anyway, as the port exit has become too dangerous, white water lashing the entrance.

Every day we pace the harbour side peering at the entrance to see if we can leave. Every day we, and other boats, stay. Finally, one German flagged boat leaves, but returns after a couple of hours, claiming the sea state outside was just too nasty.

So we take a car and tour the island. Xania gets snow in winter, and the Samaria Gorge is a glorious 18km trek through spectacular high treeless mountains. We wind through the villages festooned with bougainvillea and alamanda. The Greeks love their gardens, unlike the Turks, and each village looks as though it’s in a competition for ‘tidy town’. Higher and higher we go, with perilous switch back roads and thousand-foot falls, until we are swathed in clouds, and the goats and sheep have right of way on the bitumen – they looked as well cared for as the children….

The trees have given way to stumpy windblown things, and then they too are gone a