We lifted anchor. No heroics. A reef already tied in before we left the anchorage. Headsail rolled smaller than pride would prefer. The engine ticking quietly beneath, ready to help if needed. This wasn’t about proving anything — it was about arriving with everything still attached.
Outside the shelter of Rhenia the wind made its strength known. The rigging groaned — not in complaint, but in effort. I found myself watching the mast more than the horizon. “Easy,” Ian muttered, easing the main a fraction. The boat responded instantly, grateful for the kindness.
Whitecaps streaked past like fleeing animals. The short Aegean chop slapped the hull, not dangerously but insistently. It was the kind of sailing that keeps your jaw slightly clenched without realising it. And yet —
Every time we tried to edge her up into the wind, Elvire 3 would lose way, the sails flogging in protest. She just wouldn’t climb. Not today. Not with that sea. Not with that gusting force 7 pushing hard and threatening more./p>
And slowly — it became obvious. We were going to miss the main harbour entrance to Mykonos. Ian looked at me. I didn’t say anything. I was already tracing the chart in my head.
To leeward lay the rocks. Ahead — the narrow gut between Baos and the island itself. A gap of maybe 200 metres. Not the usual route. Not the comfortable option. The sort of passage you glance at on a chart and quietly ignore.
“That's shallow,” Ian said.
“Not for us,” I replied.
One of the quiet advantages of being a catamaran — 1.5 metres of draft. Shallow enough to go where deeper-keeled boats hesitate. Today that suddenly mattered.
The wind had built again. No longer playful. Now it was punching — hard gusts easily touching force 9, flattening the sea into streaks and sending spindrift skittering across the surface like smoke.
Once committed, there was no half measure. The sails filled and Elvire 3 accelerated instantly, freed from her futile attempt to claw to windward. The apparent wind shifted forward with a howl and the speed climbed fast — faster than was entirely comfortable given what lay ahead. The gap rushed toward us.. Then we were through.
And suddenly going far too fast .. Ahead, the low curve of Little Venice appeared — the same place we had drifted lazily past in the summer sunshine months before. Back then it had been all warm light and clinking glasses, music drifting from balconies.
This time it was shutters slammed tight and seaspray exploding against the walls. Main sheet dumped. Headsail rolled in hard. Engine on.
Behind us, the narrow gap we’d just shot through looked impossibly small.
With Elvire 3 finally safe at anchor, the tension drained out of us in slow waves. We’d made it. It was time for food.
We pulled on jackets — a sharp contrast to the linen-and-sandals version of ourselves from summer — and took the dinghy ashore. More cats than people. “Low season,” Ian said quietly. By the second drink, the tension had dissolved into that particular sailor’s satisfaction: You faced it. You judged it. You got in.
written : 2023
