Up early today, another gorgeous day in the works. We heard our first weather forecast today, and only because the captain of the Cosmos told us what channel to turn to. It was difficult to follow but we are pretty certain it said Beaufort 3-4 today and tomorrow and possibly getting a bit worse on the weekend. We confirmed this with our friendly neighbour and feel confident about our next couple of days. We have some long hauls ahead of us to get back. Paros is about 35 miles or more depending which way we go. Mykonos is a fairly short hop from there, and then Tinos is only 10 miles after that, but then we have two slogs of over 40 miles to get back home.
We have decided against the ferry to Santorini, we will save that for next time. We are already planning our return trip. We have to do this again! If anyone wants to join a flotilla, start saving now! It would be a gas to charter several boats and do this as a group at this time of year. It is still very quiet everywhere we have been.
Breakfast and a quick trip to the market and we will be on our way.
Nothing is ever easy!
We got off the dock a little later than planned. We bade Luke and Pauline farewell, but not for long. Pauline had just finished wishing us a safe journey with no more incidents when Luke called out to us that our anchor looked as if it was caught in a chain. They came back and Kirk jumped aboard their boat for a look, sure enough, our anchor was firmly attached to a dead mooring block and chain at the bottom of the bay. Luckily, only about 12 feet down. We fought with it unsuccessfully for a bit before we gave up. Time for another swim Kirk! Donning mask, snorkel and fins, down Kirk went. It took about three or four dives to free the anchor and we were officially on our way again. It was nice to have the moral support of our friends, good to know if we needed some assistance, someone helpful was close by. We exchanged email addresses and I passed on the web site address so they can see if we encountered any more adventures on our trip (Thank you again guys if you do visit here).
We were perplexed at how we could have fouled our anchor, I dropped it in clear water and saw exactly where it had landed, I had also not snugged it up enough to catch that chain ….I never even saw it when we backed in and I watched the bottom the whole time. Then it occurred to us. The Italians that had come in that afternoon and had had so much difficulty, had apparently used our boat, and thus our anchor, to drag themselves in. It follows then that they dragged our anchor over. So, be warned your anchor doesn’t always stay where you put it when at a quay. And if it does hook, it might not be on what you hope it is. It truly is amazing that the harbour authorities do not clean up the sea bottom. They want to cater to the boaters, but they do nothing to make life easier or safer.
The good news was that Kirk finally got a chance to really look over the bottom of the boat while he was unhooking the anchor. We were still very concerned that there might have been some damage to the keel from our nightmare night. Nothing, there was no damage whatsoever which confirmed that if we did ground momentarily as we thought, it was in soft sand.
We parted company with Luke and Pauline and went different directions. If we had more time we would have loved to stay together for a bit longer.
We began the long trek to Paros, about 35 miles, with one straight long stretch of about 24 miles with no turning….and no wind to even play with and have fun. Just one long, straight, boring, motor.
Off in the distance we saw an armada of military boats and at one point we thought one had turned towards us …..wouldn’t that have been fun. But they turned back and continued on their way.
We arrived in Paros around 1530 and the quay was quiet. One yacht on the inside, one on the outside. We tucked into the inner harbour next to a British fellow. We shut things down and then restarted the computer to check the distances only to discover that the darned machine had wiped out all of our saved tracks and routes…not to mention all of our charts were gone. Have I ever mentioned that I hate this computer? It needs to be lobotomized again. Luckily I had backed the charts up in another location on the hard drive so I could reinstall them, but our tracks are gone. I have had to redraw them as best I can. That was a disappointment.
Heading into Paros we were initially disappointed in the town. It seemed to be a little ticky tacky and rather run down. We wandered off the waterfront into the back a bit and into Mavroyenous Square where we discovered an old church called the Ekatondapyliani church (or the “One Hundred Gated Church”).
We continued on and found Market Street in the Old Town and wound our way through some wonderful little shops and did a little bit of shopping, only the second time we have made a purchase that didn’t involve provisions since we got here.
We wandered our way back, found an internet cafe that promised wireless and went in to see how far it would reach. The owner seemed confident that it would reach to the boats but it didn’t so we purchased some time and even though he is closed, we will go sit outside to upload this. He did try his darndest to get it working for us, he was walking around the square with the laptop trying to get it to connect to his 8db Gain antenna outside. Seems like an incompatibility with this laptop, small wonder, never buy a SONY! Piece of junk …wondering when it is going to explode …hopefully it will hold off for another week. Anyway, this fellow was likely the most technologically advanced person we have met. We went back to the boat and a while later heard a voice on the dock. Our internet cafe owner was looking down into our cockpit, he and his girlfriend had come down to the dock to see if it was working or not. He brought his hotspot finder and it showed 4 out of 5 bars…but we couldn’t make it connect. He was so nice, offered us our money back. We said no big deal, we’ll just sit outside his cafe when we are ready and do our upload late tonight.
He was funny on the boat though, we invited he and his girlfriend on board while we were trying to make it work, she said no thanx, seemed terrified to walk along the gangplank. He came on and said “how do you move around on here?” We said “you get used to it”.
Tomorrow we are planning to head to Delos and then Mykonos, all weather dependant of course. It is getting a bit windier and that’s good…to a point. The forecast is calling for Beaufort 6 for Saturday returning to calm for Sunday. No worries, we will be safely tucked in at a dock somewhere……
Until then….
