The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2005, Qupperneq 16

102
THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 59 #3
States since the Turks respect it very much.
We thought it would be safer to sail under
that flag. We didn't have any problems, and
sailed staight out of the harbour.
Without Navigation Equipment
When we got outside the three-mile
limit we headed south of Cyprus and now
we finally had the opportunity to inspect
the ferry further. It turned out there was no
automatic pilot on the ferry, the radar did-
n't work, and neither did the depth
recorder. All we had to go by was the com-
pas and the North Star.
We passed Cape Gata, the most south-
ern point of Cyprus, we headed west by
the compass, which we really didn't know
if it worked properly. Those who had
nothing else to do could finally get some
rest and go to sleep.
Around 10.00 hrs on Sunday morning
a British military helicopter flew over the
ship. Later we were told that the Turkish
military command had asked them to keep
us under surveillance.
In the afternoon of Sunday, June 5, we
had all started to recover from the events of
the night, and got to check oil supplies and
provisions. We found out that we would
have to slow down to 6 knots if the oil was
supposed to last us to Italy, but until now
we had been going 9.5 knots. That was very
disappointing. Neither did it make us any
happier or more optimistic to discover that
the food would only last us for two or
three days. But there wasn't much we
could do about that.
We also decided to paint over the
ship's name, which was written in big let-
ters on the front of the bridge—GIRNE.
We waited excitingly to see some ships,
becuase be badly needed accurate location,
mainly to find out if the compass worked.
Sunday passed without a sign of any ship.
On Monday morning we finally saw a
ship ahead and thought about asking for
location. When the ship was about 2 miles
away from us it stopped. They seemed to
know the ferry, even though we had paint-
ed over the name on the bridge. They called
us up by the name GIRNE. We thought it
suspicious and decided not to answer. Then
the ship sailed a big circle around us and
then went away. We thought that was
strange behaviour and wondered what was
the reason, but didn't come to any conclu-
sion.
Around that time we found our situa-
tion uncomfortable. We had no definite
location and could only guess where we
were. Around 18.00 hrs we got lucky. We
met a German freight ship on its way to
Cyprus. They called us up and asked for
the difference between Greenwich and
Cyprus time. We told them and they then
gave us the correct location of our ship.
According to that we were 29 degrees 477A
and 34 degrees 34 degree 316N and were
heading in the right direction. Everything
looked better after this information.
That day we connected "Hellas" radio
in Greece. We were afraid to tell them the
right name of the ship in case they would
track us down. That is why we gave them a
false name and call sign. We named the ship
OLAV and gave them a Norwegian call
sign OLWW (oscar lima
double whisky). Erling
could call collect home to
Akranes and talk to his
wife. This was the first
word our families got
from us since we left
home. They were getting
anxious and had been
worried. Erling told her
everything had gone as
planned. We were on our
way to Italy and the trip
would take longer than
orginally planned. He