We sailed from Kalymnos to Astypalea which is our last island stop before heading home to our marina spot in Crete. Our friends and neighbours from Crete were there and we were looking forward to seeing them again. Astypalae port is quite popular, so we were not guaranteed to get a spot and wanted to arrive as early as we could.
We were a few hours away from Astypalae. We monitor radio channel 16 (the emergency and hailing frequency) when sailing of course. I heard ‘pssssss calling vessel pssssss’…….then ‘pssssss calling vessel psssss’…..repeated a few times. I picked up the handset and put it right against my ear, and I heard ‘psss calling vessel S….zz…’. Someone might be trying to talk to us!
I responded ‘Calling vessel this is Spruzzo’, and got a ‘switch to channel 8’ back. I switched to 8 and said ‘Spruzzo on Channel 8’. And I heard ‘This is warship psssss, please change course’. They had been pronouncing Spruzzo incorrectly!
I looked around the boat and I saw nothing. Was this a mistake? On the radio I said ‘This is Spruzzo. Where are you located?’….They replied ‘This is warship psssss, we are beside you’….I replied ‘Port or Starboard?’ I’m looking around and I still can see nothing.
The ship replied after a pause ‘To your starboard’ (my right side).
I looked around to my right, and sure enough there was a totally grey military boat a few miles away. Not so easy to see! The ship said ‘Do not pass between our convoy’.
After a few more back and forths I was told there were 2 other boats in their convoy. I said I was just trying to get to Astypalea but they didn’t care, they just said go around. I asked them how fast they were going but they never responded. Finally, I saw the 2 other military boats behind in a straight line and responded ‘This is Spruzzo I will go behind the last boat’. They replied ‘This is warship psssss Thank you Captain’.
We had to pull in our sails, turn on the engine and turn into the wind to wait for the boats to pass….which probably took about 15 minutes….we bounced up and down in the waves. I saw 2 other sailboats sail in-between the warships. The warship could call us because our name is broadcast on our AIS signal. The other boats didn’t have AIS.
So they never actually threatened to board us but they could of if they wanted to!
We also had 2 big container ships come close to us on this trip. This one I had to turn on the engine to make sure we passed ahead of them (always much safer to go behind but I was positive we were going to pass ahead of him anyway).
And another big container ship passing in front of us:
We finally got to Astypalea with a 15 to 20 knot side-wind in the port. We had to dock twice because our anchor didn’t set the first time, and the second time we found out that one of our mooring lines was too short to reach the far-away dock cleat. We moved to another spot the second day, and again we had a docking adventure with the side-wind.
Here is our current view. This is a great island and has possibly my favorite restaurant in all of Greece AntiKastro (below the castle).
The worst winds are supposed to be today. 3am on Wednesday morning we will leave for our last very long trip to Crete!
Adventures on Spruzzo 