Time to Turn North Again – May 17th

Last night the winds came up again and the boat positively howled inside. It came in from the North though so it was being taken on the stern where we had four lines out. I always hate it when it comes over the bow because then I spend all my time wondering how well the anchor is in and wake up hourly stick my head out the hatch like a gopher to make sure that we are still the same distance from the closest boat. Makes for a lousy night sleep. But it was over the stern, and the flag stood at attention, and the boat howled, but we were nice and secure.

We got up for a relatively early start and I could hear waves hitting the other side of the breakwall. Hmmm, we really do want to leave Zakynthos, but the sky is not altogether friendly either. I hop off the boat and peer over the breakwall but all that there is are relatively large swells, most likely leftovers from last night’s wind. As I turn to go back to the boat I see the fellow who initially came over and more or less laughed at us for paying when we landed. He is the one who refused to pay anything to Mr. Marino and was rewarded with threats of line cutting. I am appalled! He is scurrying out and unplugging his power cord and putting it away. So! Not so high and mighty are we! Stealing what we refuse to pay for? Considering that power is virtually non-existant at 99% of the docks in the Greek Islands, when you encounter one and choose to use it, I feel no reason that one should not expect to pay. But our little chirpy friend there was stealing it at night when no one was awake. I’d put money down that he filled his water tanks too! I find that a bit obnoxious!

A quick cup of tea, a discussion on where we will go. We had thought Argostolis, but it’s a long way out of the way and we’d have to double back again around the bottom of Cephalonia so we think instead we will return to Poros for the night because it should not be too busy. Being Sunday, it is a changeover day for the charters and Poros is a long way from any charter base.

The church bells are pealing and the sound is lovely across the harbour. They seem to ring forever and when they finally cease, the singing begins. I suppose it is chanting actually, not being Greek Orthodox I am not familiar with the terminology… but it is being broadcast out over the entire town on speakers and it is simply a wonderful sound on a Sunday morning. I’m rather non-religious, but I appreciate it for its beauty.

Kirk releases the lines and the boat shoots forward, oh yes, that anchor was well dug in! I begin to bring it in and as it comes it, it brings quite the selection of weeds that I am picking and flinging back in as we go. As the last bit comes up with a boatload of mud and the anchor appears at the edge of the roller….I am not quite sure what happened. I apparently wasn’t paying attention to what I was doing, or I wasn’t yet awake, but the next moment I am staring at the tip of my index finger firmly lodged between the anchor chain and the windlass. It’s a bit disconcerting to see that…and rather painful! Rather than let out a holler and inform everyone in the vicinity that I had done something rather stupid, and risk Kirk leaving the helm and rushing up front…I had the foresight to push the down button on the windlass and my finger was free. I looked at it and wondered if I had broken it…it had a good sized dent in it, that was for sure! But it had rolled in right at the first joint and that still flexed the right way. Red, painful, no skin broken, apparently not crushed though. I returned to the cockpit favouring it and Kirk asked what happened…did I want to turn around? He knew where the doctor was. No, no, I’m fine, stupid, but fine. What did it feel like? Go into your workshop and find a hammer, them bash yourself on the tip of your finger. I’m sure we’ve all done it…that’s pretty much what it felt like. And have you ever noticed that when you do something like that….every personal injury you suffer for the next 24 hours will be in that exact same spot? Only hours later I dropped the lid to the Nav table on it.

So off we go. The next four hours slide by uneventfully. The sea is rolly, large swells are coming down from the North and it is not the most comfortable ride. The wind comes up for a bit, but it is directly ahead of us and dies off as quickly as it arrived. The weather has been decidedly “Un-Ionian” these past days. It is normally calm in the morning, windy in the afternoon, prevailing winds form the North, and then calm at night. Lately though, it has been calm all day and then blows all night meaning you have to get from A to B under power and then have an uncomfortable night.

The skies were grey and moody when we left Zakynthos but when we rounded the harbour it looked positively cheery compared with what we were heading into. A black sky ahead, a dark grey sea, obvious rain towards the mainland. Oddly, as we travelled a small patch of blue hung above us and the sea around us stayed that Mediterranean blue. The nasty looking stuff ahead simply slid to the West and we never encountered it. There were virtually no other boats on any horizon and that always leaves us with that “What do they know that we don’t know” feeling. A large double masted sailboat appears ahead, moving towards us….we pass close each other…but there is no one at the helm, on deck, anywhere….very strange. We feel like we have passed a ghost ship. Obviously they are below decks, but gutsy to not have a lookout on deck. That’s faith in autopilot!

As we motor in a straight line for Cephalonia, I read aloud to Kirk from Bill Bryson’s The Lost Continent – Travels in Small Town America It proves an interesting way to while away the hours.

Eventually we arrive at Poros and not only is it not crowded, we are the only sailboat in here. We line ourselves up, drop the anchor and head for the quay. When we are tied off we look at how we are lying and are unhappy with it, a bit cockeyed off the anchor line and if others come in I’d rather be straight out from it to reduce the chances of a crossed anchor. It’s windy in here so we have to do this carefully to keep the stern of the boat off the concrete. so we untie one stern line and move it over, then the other and let the boat fall to one side. Tie it off and look. Nope, still not straight. We move over another set of rings. Nope, try again. After about the third shuffle over we are happy that we are on a good line with the anchor.

Shortly thereafter another boat comes in and berths to our Starboard. We grab their stern lines and she quips, “You looked lonely in here”. Over the next 30 minutes they do the “three ring shuffle” too. Because of the wind and the crawl of the boat, it’s often hard to get a straight line off the anchor, and if you are not straight, and the wind kicks up, the boat has more room for sideways slide. So we feel better since they appear to be hardcore sailors where we are not, and they did the same bit of shuffling that we did. He is grumping about the weather and how it is not doing what it normally does. She says there have been forecasts for extreme weather on their NAVTEX the past few days and they have been holed up in Sami…but the weather never came. They have apparently explored the length and breadth of the island by rental car waiting for the good weather report and finally just gave up and came here since nothing ever really materialized. We said we had a good blow last night, but that we haven’t seen anything particularly bad. He’s grumbling about having to motor everywhere. They ask us where we overwintered the boat, they think it is ours. We set them straight and get a bit more advice on destinations. We want to get into Fiskhardo and they tell us the quay was badly damaged in the winter and that if we want to get in there we will need to arrive early in the day. Good to know.

Two more boats come in and everyone pays the assistance forward. By that I mean that we helped the people beside us, they helped the next boat, and so on…

The heat has been turned up again. We decide to go for a walk, it’s that or sleep. We head for the Port Authorities, he zipped by on his scooter and looked our way…and we didn’t go in last time we were here….. We find the office, ring the bell, and he opens the door and seems surprised to see us. We hand him our papers and he sits down and makes a show about poking through them. But he is not looking at the usual things, and doesn’t pull out the one that we know he is supposed to. Eventually after making quite a show of poking through things…he hands them back to us, smiles and waves us off with a shrug. He doesn’t fill in any of the paperwork we know he is supposed to and doesn’t charge us anything. Apparently, as in Zakynthos, because this is a ferry port, he doesn’t really concern himself with us.

We meander up the road and over the hill into Poros proper. We think we will pick up a couple of things for the fridge, some ice, and then head back. It’s not to be. There is apparently no ice left in Poros (we even ask at the Taverna and are told “Ice finished”) and the grocery stores are closed. Sunday or siesta time, we aren’t sure. So, no ice for an afternoon rum drink, and no yogurt for breakfast (Greek yogurt is simply the best in the world…there is no comparison…period!). We walk down to the beach and are accosted by a kid, about 9, looking for a light for his cigarette? Is it just me or is this just plain wrong! He’s a pushy thing and doesn’t speak English. He keeps pointing at our pockets, we keep saying no and finally just walk away.

When we turn around and head back we walk through town and see a truck piled to the sky with chairs of every type imaginable. We had seen a similar truck, maybe the same one come off the ferry when we were here last time. We thought it was a delivery truck, now we see it is traveling chair sales. As we return to the harbour we see a taverna with tables on the water in the shade and decide to stop for a glass of wine. The wind has picked up and is blowing straight at us and we are cooled off quickly. Then strangely, the wind temperature increases by several degrees! Very strange. The direction did not change, it is still coming off the water, but I’m not cold anymore.

As we walk back to the boat the chair truck drives past, hawking his wares over a loudspeaker, and our cigarette kid is sitting on one of the highest chairs on the truck. The strangest thing is that we see a glass door on the side of the truck about midway down the bed and there are three children inside staring out. We feel like we have just seen gypsies and the children almost appear to be wares as well. It was all very surreal.

We thought the days entertainment value had ended, but after a great onboard pasta dinner, a bit of reading and a short nap in the cockpit we were awoken to some yelling. It wasn’t the blackest of night yet, there was a hint of light left in the sky, but in came one more boat for the night. Not sure of the language, definitely of Germanic origin, just not sure which. It is a charter boat, I saw them at Zakynthos too, and they arrived late then as well. Gutsy on a few levels. They put their anchor down and are wheeling about a bit, not in the greatest control of their boat. It’s hard to tell where they are aiming for on the quay but someone comes off another boat and starts yelling some guidance at them. They must have come in awfully close to one of the other boats because Kirk says he sees one of the men on it leap onto another boat, to fend off we assume…or maybe to get to shore…we aren’t sure. Eventually after a bit of wild maneuvering they are ashore. Seven men, we’d guess ranging from mid-50’s or so, that don’t particularly look the sailing type (one man is in tight blue jeans with a silver buckle on his belt, and a plaid shirt), pile ashore and congratulate themselves and take photos of their boat at the dock. They are an odd collection and they charge up and down the quay a bit before re-collecting at the stern of the boat and doing a bit of back slapping before heading off to the taverna.

Time for bed. The winds have died down for the most part, although there are gusts, and we check everything before retiring. There is a surge in the harbour and the boats are bucking a bit. The stern lines groan with each tug and the water slaps the hull. I see a fitful night ahead.