In this episode of Sailing A B Sea Baz flys to the UK for a long weekend and Aannsha is alone on board during the worst time for changeable winds. The worst ...

Closed Captions (CC):
There's a little bit of concern from

both Aannsha and I about leaving Aannsha

alone with the boat particularly because

the weather is not steady

It's very changeable and today was a

good example of that. We had a squall

that came through and we had a complete

rain whiteout 40 knots of wind.

I am a little bit nervous because there's a

thunderstorm and winds gusting up to

about 36 knots today starting very early

afternoon and going right through until

early tomorrow morning so we know that

the anchor is set because I dived it

yesterday and it's really dug in so

that's good. We set it for the direction

that the wind is predicted to blow from.

There's not really a lot I can do to

prep the boat any more than I already

have

Baz and I went through that yesterday

before he left so I thought what I would

do now is I'm going to make myself a full

English breakfast and set myself up with

a nice cup of tea cuz I don't know when

I'm going to eat again!!

It's food time!

I've got a steak and wobbly ale pie, Big Geoff's got the hake, and the little Geoffs are going for the burgers

It's about 1:30 now

and the sky's got a lot darker. Again you

can see white caps out there and in here

it's pretty calm. I'm thinking actually

that when that cloud gets maybe a bit

closer in we might get a bit more wind

Talk of the devil

Yep here it comes I'm gonna batten down

the hatches now.

Saturday just after

lunchtime. Now Big Steve, or Big Geoff is

taking us to the next destination which

is the motel I've got to check in to for

tonight's accommodation.

Right, before we do anything else

here's a quick room tour, come this way

Bit of sleepless night last night. The

wind changed direction and picked up

again. It was coming from the West which

meant it was coming straight in through

the bay so it was quite rocky and rolly

and it also meant I was on a lee shore

just depending on the angle of the wind.

I watched a couple of movies then I

tried to sleep on deck because that way

at least I could see exactly what... where

was how, far away I was from anywhere, you

know. That lasted about two hours. I

actually ended up sleeping in the saloon

area because there was less noise there

Can you hear the waves?

I sort of lay there and fell asleep just as the sun

was coming up and then woke up in time

to promote the video because it's

Saturday. So that was good but I'm gonna

get on with my day now. I think it's

about 11:30. I went back to sleep for a

couple of hours after promoting the

video. I can't really string two words

together so I'm gonna stop this now.

So as you can see I'm still in three

metres of depth of water so even though

it looks close, things always look closer

actually on the boat, I've got plenty of

water under the keel because that's

three metres from the bottom of the keel

so - Just got to sit it out really. I'm not...

I'm okay now it's daylight but it's been

a good challenge for me being on my own

and just being responsible for

everything. Now I know what Baz goes through

every day!

Well this is it, Saturday night

we're at the venue of the Boro Club

in Bury in Manchester and there's a

few people inside already, more to come,

follow me inside.

We're gonna check it, we'll go and check it out.

Due to copyright laws I can't let

you hear any of the music that was

played at the venue on the night. Let me

just say this though there were nearly a

dozen of the best DJs in the world from

the 80s and 90s in the room that night

and the tunes that were banging out what

absolutely awesome

Now then, the man with the camera here, hello ... Barry Noble

Barry Noble. He sailed here, he's fudgin sailed here from Australia!

That is the journey of journeys. Big round of applause for that one! Come on!!

You've parked in Athens though didn't you? Yeah. He parked in Athens

It was a bit choppy round the Med

so he flew the rest of the way but

that's a sterling effort there Barry.

And he's not changed much either

apart from the grey hair

He still looks the same

Two o'clock on Saturday and we're

getting a steady 14 to 15 knots gusting

up to 17 knots. Depending on which

prediction you look at we could get

gusts of up to 35, in of course the

nighttime hours. I had a look at the

dinghy just to check that all the lines

were okay and I noticed that the back

line on the dinghy was chafing, so I took

the back line off and after chatting

with Baz about best positions I've put

the second line on the front as well so

both lines won't fail. Apart from that

the sun's shining, it's charging the

batteries. I'm gonna have an nanna nap

because I have a feeling I'll be awake

again tonight!

Well, that was was an excellent night

It's now probably quarter to 3:00 in the

morning, people are still at the venue

and the DJ's are still playing and the

diehards are still dancing. You can

probably hear from my voice that the

music was very loud as it should be and

to converse we had to raise our voices

and I haven't raised my voice that loud for a

long long time which is why it's gone like this.

It was a great night - absolutely

loved it. Now I'm gonna get into bed, I'm

gonna put on like - I know it sounds

stupid - but I'm gonna put on a David

Attenborough Wildlife Channel and just

chill out learning about wildlife while I drift

off to sleep.

That was a great night, loved meeting

everyone. Fantastic to see all the old family again

and just absolutely brilliant.

Thanks Paul for putting it on and thanks to

everyone who attended. It was just lovely

seeing you all again.

It's Sunday morning

and my eyes feel like pee holes in the snow

they're that small because I really didn't

get a lot of sleep last night

It started to blow again quite hard. I

clocked it blowing at 32 knots ... I mean

it's not big in the overall scheme of

things but I'm on my own, I'm on a lee shore

and so I slept on deck,

well "slept", there's a word! So I stayed on

deck for most of the night. It's still windy. It's about 8:30

This is what I'm looking at this

morning. I'm going to check the wind

prediction sites now and just see what

we've got in store for the rest of the

day. I'm hoping it calms down for the... for

tonight because it'll make it a lot easy

to pick Barry up off the beach in the dinghy

This is the morning after the

night before and we had arranged to

meet downstairs for breakfast at 9 o'clock

it's already 09:12 so I'm

a little bit late but - well we didn't

get in till - I don't know 2:30 and I didn't

get to bed till 3:00, had to have a little

wind down after the night so better get

down there. Where's the keycard? Oh it's in here

Get down there, get breakfast sorted out

because we get kicked out at midday so

that'll give us time to have a breakfast,

chat, debrief, pack up, bugger off and I

think Creepy Crawly is gonna take me to

the airport. Ooh! Time to go obviously

It seems all my lessons have been

learned and now I am treated to some

beautiful sunshine and calm seas check

this gorgeous place out! Now I can enjoy

it in the final few hours before Baz gets back

It's been a great experience for me and

even though I was literally terrified

the day before Baz left, thinking about

all the things that could possibly go

wrong, I'm very very grateful for the

experience because it showed me how calm

and capable I actually can be.

I'm really looking forward to hearing how Baz got

at his reunion, hopefully he had a fabulous time. He

certainly deserves it because as captain

of A B Sea, he really does make all of the

difficult decisions and takes everything

on his shoulders squarely and just these

last two or three days have given me the

opportunity to understand how much of

that possibly feels like a weight on his

shoulders you know when things do get a

bit rough. It's given me more confidence

being on my own here and obviously it

wasn't a really bad environment ...it... but

it was enough for me to feel tested and

also gain a sense of confidence on the

other side of it so that was, that was

good. So it's been a really great

experience for me and hopefully Baz

has had a fabulous time meeting up with

old friends and colleagues

Well that was breakfast done and I got

my old mate Tony Walsh to drop me off

at the airport which was excellent,

cheers Tony you're a chap and now I just

got to find the EasyJet check-in at

Manchester Airport and check-in and sit

around for a couple of hours until the

flight gets called and we fly back to Greece

It's been a whirlwind, absolute whirlwind!

We woke up this morning to a bit of a

lee shore here, wind's coming out of the

north, well mostly out of the north and

it's gone a bit choppy but today was the

day we planned to head out west to Poros

anyway which is a very protected anchorage

which will save as from all this northern

stuff. Right now though with this

bouncy bouncy you probably can't see it

too much on camera we gotta, well I've

got to get in the dinghy and attach the

davit lines and then we've gotta haul her up

and hopefully there won't be too much

bouncy bouncy while we're trying to do that

So we've just left here and we're

heading way down here to Poros.

One of the things we've got to do is got to get

across this traffic separation scheme

this is the Athens traffic separation

scheme and the boats going north go

on this side and boats going south go on

that side. When we hit the outer edge of

this boat way we've got to go directly

straight across that traffic separation

scheme as fast as possible and also

avoid any traffic that's coming or going

At right angles, Yeah we've got to go

directly right angle across yeah we

can't do this this angle that we're

currently on. Those are the rules of the

road. Boats of interest to us are this

one here. The other boat of interest for

us is this bloke coming north and his

closest approach will be about just over

half a nautical mile in 14 minutes

I'm down here so that the wind doesn't

affect the microphone! We've had a

cracking sail so far from Kavouri bay

which is on the mainland and we're

heading towards Poros today because

Poros has got a lot more sheltered

bays than the mainland area where we

were so we're heading for Russian Bay

and that apparently has got pretty much

all around shelter. When we came out of Kavouri Bay

the wind was quite high it was higher than had

been predicted and at one point it was

up around 27, 28 knots and we were flying

along anywhere between six to eight

point one knots we clocked at one point

so that's really cool

so what we thought was going to be a

five-hour passage may well turn out to

be more like a three-hour passage. Having

said that as I speak now and we're in

the lee of Aegina Island

the wind has dropped and I can feel that

the speed has gone down a bit so Baz

what's the speed now? Five point two

Five point two. Well it's, you know, it's respectable

That's kind of what we usually base our

average speed on when we're working at

how long the passage is going to take

anyway, about five knots. So I'm going to

have a cup of coffee now and film a

little bit more of where we are so that

you can have a look too

Quite busy

Poros is quite busy with yachts. One of

the reasons being, well (A)

it does have charter yachts here and the other

one is that we're very close to the

Corinth Canal and people often come here

as a stop off point before or after

crossing through the canal

That was an interesting sail wasn't it Baz?

It was quite different yeah. We're in

Poros now, the Greek island of Poros

very close to the mainland - Beautiful

island - it is a lovely little village, lovely

little harbour - it's green. We have been here before

We came through here when we were on our

way to Turkey from Spain last year so we

thought we'd come back. So we cross the

traffic separation scheme in the Athens

Bay without any incident. There was just one

ferry that we let go before we passed

behind it and then after that there was

really nothing coming north or south

which was really good

We tried to anchor closer to Poros village but we

weren't happy with the depth and we

weren't happy with the fact that there

are several moorings there, empty

moorings, for charter yachts and the

depth was 15 metres wasn't it? And you

know we were at 3 to 1 in 15 metres. The

holding was good but I don't like three

to one and I certainly didn't like the

idea that we were that close to the

charter moorings that if the charter

boats came in and moored, they'd be not

swinging the same way as we'd be

swinging so yeah and the only way to get

out of their way would be to shorten our

chain and we were already less than the

ideal anyway. So we moved

from there and there's a little bay just

up there from us but I just didn't like

didn't like the depths in that one either

so we've moved to this teeny tiny little

bay with a nice little island behind us

and I'm happy with the depths here, we're

in 7 metres and we've got 35 out - yeah - so is

this Russian Bay or is this next to

Russian Bay? I don't know this could be

Russian Bay. It could be a part of Russian

Bay coz I think Russian Bay's got a few

little doodads. Yeah. So we're here we're here for

a few days I think ... need to get some

work done and I'd really ideally like to

wait for the weather to clear up and get

some sunshine and find out which way the

wind finally wants to blow before we

head back and head in the direction of

the Evia Channel. Right now though it's

time to open up some hatches on let the

hot air out from the inside of the boat

I think we'll have a beer. We'll have a beer.

I think we deserve a beer and then I

might have a nanna nap before I do the

editing of the video that should

actually be going out today for our

patrons because they get it earlier but

I'm sorry. We had such a different kind of weekend. I'm still recovering from the weekend. So am I!

Next week on Sailing A B Sea we take some time to

check out Poros town and we also reveal

our plans for the winter.

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