Sleepless nights in Greece
Patras is probably off the beaten tracks because the city doesn’t have the charm of little Greek villages, the ruins of major archeological sites or the beaches of the islands, yet it has the second largest museum. We feel that it would be a missed opportunity not to visit it before we go. An early start turns into a late start, a quick walk into a lazy stroll across a huge fruits and veggies market and a simple plan turned into a mission. The museum is totally worth it with stunning mosaics having been lifted off the ground and displayed vertically which puzzles us as to how this sorcery was achieved.
By the time we are ready to set sail it is past midday and the afternoon breeze is at a solid 15-20 knots, right into our nose. Mike is excited about the prospect of finally sailing again and we are always happy for a good beating into the wind. We criss cross the gulf of Patras as we tack trying to go west. Not wanting to arrive after dark we have to motor the final stretch. Our first anchorage of choice is taken by a navy ship so we have no other choice but to return to the last anchorage we went to before reaching Patras. Today however, it is exposed to the strong westerly which has been blowing all day. The anchorage is huge with a gentle sandy slope, good holding and no one to bother us. We conclude that it should be alright and that it will be a piece of cake for our trusty Rockna.
It is my first of many failed anchorage choices in Greece.
The wind is not such an issue but the swell is noticeable and coming from a slightly different direction. The night is dreadful, probably our worst night ever on board Kujira. Needless to say we all wake up shattered the next day. I am up at 7am or so, which is almost unheard of, and go for a swim to the beach and a walk. Once Kim and Jana are up and had their coffee they decide to take the dinghy to shore for a walk and some painting while we wait for the wind to kick in. Once it kicks in, it really kicks in and we are treated with another solid sail. Having Mike on board is great for sailing; he is experienced and is keen to drive the boat. Neco, our autopilot, is temporarily dismissed to our greatest enjoyment. Having Jana on board is great for eating as she is always keen to prepare a greek salad. I even start to wonder whether that is the only dish she knows or whether she simply loves it. This time we get to sail all the way to our anchorage as the wind doesn’t die off and while we are again beating into the wind, we are not beating as badly as the previous day. The bay I picked for the night is allegedly meant to be protected for the forecasted conditions. We drop the anchor where the anchorage app, Navily, tells us to and we find ourself almost surfing on our anchor. We are somehow sheltered from the swell but not at all from the wind.
It is my second failed anchorage choice in Greece.
Just before sunset we realise that 200m further north, closer to the hill on the far side of the bay seems to be blocking the wind a lot more. I guess anyone with the slightest knowledge of fluid mechanics would have been able to see that right away but it took us a few hours to come to this conclusion. So here we are, pulling up the anchor and re-anchoring like newbies.
The night is better than the previous one but still not sufficient to fully recover from a couple bad nights. But as long as there is wind, it doesn’t matter. We are here for sailing after all, not sleeping which is good because it is another day of solid wind. Today we are going west, so of course the winds have shifted from a northerly to a westerly and we find ourselves beating into it once more. Fortunately Kujira is handling it like a boss, probably wanting to impress Mike. For the night, I have picked Sarakiniko on Ithaki Island, a lovely little bay with a good reputation for snorkelling. Navily, the anchorage app, is predicting good shelter from the wind and the swell, the only issue is that we need to do a “Wild Med mooring”. I have previously described how Med mooring, that is, dropping your anchor while madly reversing towards a town quay, is a bad idea. Well, “Wild Med mooring” is even more stupid!
Wild Med mooring, as I call it, consists of reversing your boat at considerable speed toward a cliff like the wild coyote chasing road runner. As in a Med mooring, you need to drop your anchor at the right time otherwise you may run out of chain before reaching the cliff and you will find yourself hooked like a tuna or, not having enough chain to hold your boat in place resulting in the liposuction of the backside of your boat. However, unlike a town Med mooring, it is up to you to assess where it is safe to drop your anchor and onto which rocks/trees you will attach the ropes to.
Rocks: the anchor may get jammed and you won’t be able to retrieve it
Sea grass: the anchor may drag and you will crash your boat into the cliff
Hard sand: the anchor may drag and you will crash your boat into the cliff
Silt: the anchor may or may not drag and you may or may not crash your boat into the cliff
Sand or Mud: you are in luck, it should work
Once you assume that you have found the magical location for your anchor all you have to do is reverse at full speed until you are a few meters away from the cliff, hoping that your chart is accurate and up to date and that no hidden rock will smash your rudder like a mad orca. Up to this point, it was only the warm up, now the fun part begins. Unlike a town Med mooring, you don’t have bollards or rings to attach the stern ropes. Unlike a town Med mooring, you don’t have a neighbour or a bystander to catch your lines and help you tie the lines, only a few lizards or a goat if you’re in luck. And unlike a town Med mooring, you can’t just reverse until your crew can step off onto a quay as there is no quay and you would likely beach your boat before you can get close enough for someone to step off the vessel.
So there you are, reversing like a mad dog, hoping your chain will hold in place and suddenly stop the boat, putting someone on a dingy or a paddle board with a rope and a lot of determination to take that line ashore and find a suitable location to attach it.. on a cliff.. a sharp cliff. And now try to do this with a temperamental old whale.
So, here we are, in this lovely little bay, fairly early in the afternoon for once, hoping to have lots of time to relax, swim and play cards. There are a few boats already anchored but plenty of space is still available. As we get closer and closer, the depth is still way bellow 20m, much too deep for me to free dive in case of a fouled anchor. Moreover, we need no more than 15 meters depth to have a chance of identifying the sandy patches. While Kim and Jana are studying the sea floor like we are about to attempt a moon landing, Mike and myself are trying to find a suitable piece of cliff to attach lines to. A tiny cove seems to be the ideal location.
And that is my third failed anchorage choice in a row.
Mike and Jana jump in the dingy with our longest rope to attach it in advance onto the cliff while I manoeuvre the whale and Kim gets ready to drop the anchor. It is now show time and Kujira is just about to miserably fail his audition. I start reversing at low speed which means that the wind is significantly pushing us to one side, which of course is the same side as the prop walk, the natural turn induced by the rotating propeller. Kim starts dropping the anchor once she sees a patch of sand like a crew on a B-52 except that it takes some time to drop 15 meters of chain and she misses the bull eye. Meanwhile Mike and Jana are on their way back towards the boat having found a place where to hook up the line.
Having chosen a little cove instead of a flat section of cliff means that the side on wind is blowing us towards a side cliff.
I believe that once we get the shore line attached we will be able to keep
Kuijra in place. I reverse until I start feeling uncomfortably close to the cliffs and wait for Mike and Jana to hand us the line. Except that they are as far out as the line will allow it and are waiting in the dingy for us to reverse to their position.
We fucked up but haven’t yet realised it. We decide to attach a rope onto the boat and throw it to them so that they can attach both ropes together. Except that we are far apart, way too far apart. There is no way Kim will be able achieve this, she didn’t grow up on a ranch in Kansas after all but on the Kapiti coast.
That’s when Jana decides it is a good time to play G.I. Jane. “I can get it!” She shouts. She jumps in the water fully dressed and starts swimming for the whale.
Kim throws the ropes at her, using her Kapiti coast kids camp skills.
The rope falls in the water a few meters behind Kujira, many meters from Jana. Jana swims like a champ!
The rope starts sinking.
But G.I. Jana puts Michael to shame, manages to grab the heavy waterlogged rope and bring it back to the dingy. Meanwhile Kujira is desperately trying to rub his fat belly against the cliff on our port side.
By the time the ropes are connected it is getting very hectic on board. I won’t be able to keep Kujira off the rocks much longer and I only now realise that the rope is aligned with the boat, not to the side and therefore offers only very limited power to pull Kujira off the cliff. I shout to abort the mission, for Kim to drop the rope in the water and for Kujira to stop being an ass.
We have to pull up the anchor, Mike and Jana have to re-coil the rope and find a new place where to attach it and we need to re-do the whole shenanigan from the start…
The second try is better, Jana is still jumping in the water and swimming around like a G.I., Kujira is still being an ass trying to turn to the side but this time we manage to attach a first rope with an angle big enough for keeping the whale under control. We start winching his skinny ass into the place we want it to be, meanwhile a second line is being taken to shore. Jana keeps on jumping in the water, climbing onto rocks like she is in a Spartan race or Takeshi’s castle or something during which time Mike is wondering whether he might be getting a little bit sunburned on the dingy. I guess that is what feminists have been fighting for for so long, right?
After well over an hour, the beast is finally safely secured in place and we can enjoy a swim, except for Jana who had enough of it for the day. As the sun goes down and we enjoy a lovely sunset, another delicious dinner and a game of cards, we are pretty happy with ourselves and our anchorage. It is a strange feeling to be anchored so close to the shore but the wind has died and it looks like we are finally going to have a good nights sleep.
That is until the bloody Meltemi night wind started blowing like crazy. It is coming straight at us, pulling on the anchor. If it drags, we will find ourselves “beached as” in less than a minute. As if it wasn’t enough, Kujira starts bouncing like a wild stallion in a stall. The ropes on shore are rubbing up and down against the sharp rocks. If one of them was to snap we would likely end up against the side of this bloody little cove. I go on a night mission in the dingy to put some protective tubing around the ropes and then decide to stay on watch until the wind dies off, allegedly around 3am.
Double failed anchorage.
We survive another night but I desperately need a swim in the morning to wake up properly. After 3 days of hard sailing, we decide to treat ourselves with a one hour motoring around the peninsula to go anchor in the sheltered bay of Vathy. It is for such places that people go sailing in Greece. A small village by the water, a few old churches and a handful of tavernas. The bay is small yet large enough to easily drop anchor without running into your neighbour. Arriving early in the day, there are hardly any boats and we drop the anchor without any major concerns. Once the anchor in place, I reverse to dig it in.
I reverse.
And reverse.
Are we dug in? We are not sure but we conclude that we are simply over-reacting. I go for a dive to do a visual inspection but as I reach the 7 meters line I enter a cloud of silt and lose all visibility. I try a few times but I am not really keen on blind diving so I give up and assume that a silty bottom should hold the anchor pretty well. We have a greek salad for lunch and decide to just relax on the boat for a few hours before hitting the town. It turns out to be a great choice as the wind picks up to 20 knots and suddenly we find ourself dragging on the anchor.
That is my fourth failed anchorage .. in a row. I am on a roll and unstoppable.
We have no choice but to re-anchor. By now the bay is getting pretty busy so we decide to go just outside the town in a subsidiary little bay. This time Rockna holds on like a boss and for some reason no one seems keen on being here so we are on our own. But having just moved the boat I don’t feel at ease about leaving it alone while the wind is still so strong, so I volunteer to drop everyone off to shore and do some boat work for an hour.
The brand new manual bilge pump has a leaky outlet hose which is annoying me. All I have to do is unplug the hose, put some sikaflex, a mixed between silicon and glue, and put it back in place. It should be an easy quick fix .. famous last words!
I have to disassemble the entire pump, sikaflex ends up everywhere and nasty bilge water flows into the saloon. BiIge water is a combination of waste oil, diesel, shower drain water, and whatever else the whale decides he wants to be rid of. It is “the bog of eternal stench” as Kim calls it. I sweat, I swear and in the end it takes me well over 2 hours. By now the wind has eased somewhat and we haven’t moved a bit so I feel comfortable to join the others on land. That is of course exactly when the wind decides to go for another round of 20ish knots.
I stay on the boat a bit longer and end up going to shore just in time for dinner at Agathi. Had I missed the dinner it would have been a shame as the food is absolutely amazing, elaborate, tasty and perfectly cooked. It is by far the best meal we’ve had in a long time and a perfect way to celebrate a few days early our 2 years of officially no longer having the right to kill each other or something like that (our wedding anniversary).
After a morning walk to the local bakery and a little exploration of an island with a small church on it we decide to aim for a white sandy beach, Gidaki, for lunch before heading north. The lunch stopover is lovely and we find a submerged snorkelling mask which we add to our “boat treasures”. But the wind doesn’t seem keen to show up today so we have no choice but to motor sail to our first anchorage of choice, option A. As we approach our goal however, the wind suddenly picks up and it doesn’t feel right not to let Kujira have some fun so we decide to go with option B, a highly rated cove a couple hours away. The sailing is excellent and even Jana has a turn at helming. Everything would be awesome if it wasn’t for the brand new bilge pump I sikaflexed the day before that decided to snap elsewhere. While we are heeling like crazy, I have to fight a slow but steady leak of stinky bilge water into the saloon.
As we get closer to the cove, I stop playing plumber and get on deck for the final approach. I start counting the masts as they become visible around the corner: 1, 2 ,3, .. 15, 16, 17 … 21, 22. They are all but 2 doing wild Med mooring which seems reasonable as the cove is really deep, 20+ meters on average. We are a bit puzzled because one of the reviews on Navily was stating that it wasn’t necessary to have shore lines, that you could simply drop an anchor in the bay and watch morons trying to do wild Med mooring in gusty conditions. So we turn and turn trying to find a place shallow enough but without any success. Meanwhile one of the boats that was anchored decides to attempt a Med mooring but the wind is still blowing at 15 knots and the poor buggers are struggling like hell. Not wanting to reiterate the madness of 2 nights ago we decide to push on even further to an anchorage we know in Mytikas which offers enough space for a hundred boats on anchor on a shallow sandy bottom. As we leave the cove I am at the helm and we get hammered by a first gust, then a second then a third at 25+ knots. With 2 reefs in the Genoa and the mizzen fully out we go over 7 knots! Being between 2 islands we also need to tack and tack again while keeping an eye out for the next gust we can see approaching on the horizon. It is very active and demanding sailing, but so much fun because the sea state is completely flat.
After an hour we reach our anchorage and just like magic the wind dies to a gentle breeze. The place is as beautiful and peaceful as the previous time we stayed here. We can hear the bird song and frogs in the distance instead of people partying on their charter boats and there are no nightclubs blasting rubbish music until the dead awakes. Life is great! I finally broke the curse of the failed anchorages and we all get a good night sleep.
Today we want to go once again through the Lefkada channel, refuel at the Lefkada Marina, do a quick run to the chandlery to buy a new electric bilge pump as the new electric bilge pump also died a few days ago and then cross the infamous Lefkada bridge before heading north for quite a distance. Unfortunately the wind is already really strong, 22+ knots. While it makes for some fast sailing and a top speed of 8.1 knots with only the main and a reef in the Genoa, we decide to change our plan. Trying to refuel in these conditions would probably result in another scar in Rockna. We pick another long sandy beach, Bathyabali, and enjoy an afternoon at anchor.
With an early start we believe we have outsmarted the wind, but for a change it is early this morning. We can not afford to wait another day and leaving without partially refuelling seems like a dumb idea. Fortunately, being 4 makes the docking a lot easier. Despite having only 90 litres left and a capacity of 500 litres, we have planned to put about 200 litres, which is already a hefty 450 euros, instead of filling up the tank which would be about 410 litres. Instead of a conventional pump, it is a pump attached to a small truck and as we start feeding the whale some dinosaur juice the meter seems to be going in slow motion:
1
1.1
1.2
1.3
After a few minutes we are only at 10.3 so I tell Jana and Kim to do a quick dash to the super market as it will take at least 25 minutes to reach 200 at this pace.
They leave.
The pump is locked in as Mike, rightfully, doesn’t feel like holding it for half an hour. After a few more minutes I turn around and noticed that the pump has stopped. That’s bizarre as the meter is only reading 41.1. Have we reached the end of the tank of the truck? That’s just our luck. As we try to reactivate the pump we notice some diesel on the deck but it’s too late! Mike’s already squeezing it and diesel splashes out of the tank as if the tank was full .. and that’s when it clicks, the meter wasn’t counting in tenth of litres! We just put 410 litres in for 900 euros. Mike had offered to pay but rightfully changes his mind when he sees the bill.
The upside of this hefty bill is that the marina manager accepts that we walk the boat around the corner and leave it there for half an hour while I go to the chandlery.
They have the pump I want. Great!
I want some hose too but get stuck with a temperamental Scottish vendor who complains a lot about her staff. She refuses to sell me meters of hose without me first taking a sample back to the boat and making sure it is the right diameter. That’s very nice of her but absolutely useless in our situation. I leave with a pump and a couple rings of hoses. This hard negotiation meant that we missed the 11 o’clock bridge opening by only a few minutes.
We wait on the town quay until 11.30 and cast off, wanting to be certain not to miss the noon bridge opening. There are a couple more boats on our side of the channel, waiting like Moses for the sea to open itself in front of us. The wind is decently strong, side on and the channel fairly narrow. Keeping Kujira in place is like trying to tell a toddler to sit still at the doctor’s waiting room. He goes back and forth, to the right and to the left, wants to turn and so on and so forth. At precisely 12.00, Jana starts filming the bridge like a magic trick is about to happen.
But nothing happens.
12.05
Nothing.
We can see the bridge master moving inside his control tower.
12.10
Nothing.
We are all ears out, waiting for a siren.
Nothing.
12.15
Every time we stop seeing cars on the bridge our hopes rise but fall again in a few seconds as we realise it was only a hole in the traffic.
12.20
Obviously, the bridge master stood up to his infamous reputation: “sometimes, he won’t feel like doing his job and will not open the bridge on the hour, just like that.”
We call him on the VHF
“Lefkada bridge master, Lefkada bridge master, Lefkada bridge master this is Kujira, Kujira, Kujira, do you copy?”
“Yes?”
“Can you tell us when the bridge will open? over”
“1 o’clock”
“Ok, not before? Over”
“1 o’clock”
Alright, I guess that settles it. We have no choice but to do a U-turn in the channel and go hover for another 35 minutes. We hear one of the other boats trying to reach the bridge master on channel 16 without success so we reply and let them know that it operates on a different frequency.
We swap to this frequency and listen with amusement to this Brit picking a fight with the bridge master.
After 90 minutes of doing donuts and other shapes on the water we are finally able to cross the bridge and get onto the open sea. We start our sail north, beating into the wind, racing every other boat that crossed the channel at the same time as we did. I have picked for the night what looks like an amazing bay with a sunset cabana perched on top of a hill. It is pretty much the only anchorage in the area which is offering some protection from the strong wind. What could go wrong…
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