Tsunamis and Sand Storms

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Mother Nature has kept us on our toes in recent weeks. Sand storms are to be expected at this time of year but somewhat naively we hadn’t given any thought to the risk of tsunamis, despite Greece having the highest seismic activity in Europe. 

A little before 2 am on Tuesday 13th May our phones received a Citizen Emergency  Alert.  The jarring alarm ensures you have no chance of sleeping through it.  The notification was a tsunami alert following a 6.1 earthquake near the island of Kasos, which was not far from us on the island of Crete.  The advice was to “move away from coastal areas immediately”.  Not quite sure how we were supposed to do that on a boat. 

Our first thought was to raise the anchor and head out to deeper water, but we also had to consider the concerns of anchor maneuvers in the middle of the night.  We might be safer staying put.

Mike got online and into research mode, quickly assessing our risk while I kept a lookout to sea for any unusual wave activity and ashore to see if hotels and guesthouses were evacuating guests.  All was quiet and peaceful in both directions.

Mike very quickly determined that it’s generally viewed that an earthquake has to be 6.5+ to generate a tsunami and 7+ for it to be significant.  They travel across oceans at over 500mph and coastal waters at about 100mph. This earthquake was 60 nautical miles away from us so if a tsunami was to occur, it would have already reached us.  To be safe, we sat up on watch for a couple of hours before deciding the coast was clear.  Literally.

And then the sand storms began. For the first day or two we thought the weather had turned very cloudy despite forecasts showing clear days….and then the orange dust began to settle on the decks.

Sand storms are nothing new in the Mediterranean.  Strong southerly winds carry the dust across the Mediterranean Sea from North Africa. 

Saharan dust particles are very fine, almost flour-like and can penetrate into almost every nook and cranny on board and cause damage to the boat’s exterior and machinery, so these storms are a boat owners torment as it means cleaning relentlessly until all traces of dust are gone.  

After us both working hard to combat the dust, Dreams no longer had an orange tinge and we felt she was sufficiently clean.  Within 24 hours the dust was back again, then to add insult to injury it rained early the next morning and what dust had settled became like mud.  More cleaning!  Last year the dust storms stopped in June so fingers crossed the same is true this year.