One of the most delightful forms of entertainment is being safely moored up, not going anywhere, and then watching other yachties trying to tie up or leave.
For some voyeurs, it’s schadenfreude, but for me, it’s “there but for the grace of God”.
We have all done stupid things when mooring, or leaving a berth. It’s very easy to get distracted, and we have learned to take it easy and work through our checklist. But mistakes or bad luck can still happen.
We had a delightful stay in Nafplio. On our second evening, we met a lovely couple who invited us on board their yacht for aperos. Incredibly, we actually had a bottle of chilled wine in the fridge, so we suggested that Jane and Michael come to ‘Missy Bear’ for a glass. They introduced us to a new word – a “docker”. This is the drink you have in the cockpit when you have safely moored up. As we were all going ashore to eat, it made sense to continue our new friendship over dinner. But that did not stop us from getting up at our normal time (07:15) to start our sail down to Spetses.
A couple of boats began heading out. We got everything ready to leave, and realised that a large cat was nipping out before us, so we waited. And waited. And waited. These guys had an anchor wrap. They had been in early the previous day, and a monohull had laid their own anchor over the top of the cat’s chain. To add insult to injury, the crew on the monohull saw this was happening, stood and looked for a few minutes, and then wandered off to do some shopping or sight-seeing.
We waited some more. What they really needed to do was the ‘Indian rope trick’, but they were the only two people on a massive cat and couldn’t reach the offending chain from their deck. Richard would have gone to help, but we would have had to re-moor, launch the dinghy and mount and assemble the electric outboard. Why they didn’t get out in their own dinghy, I don’t know, but we were rather hoping another boat with a dinghy already on the water would go out to help them. The frazzled skipper finally rang someone who flubbed out to him and freed his anchor. But it was 09:15 before we eventually lifted our own hook and departed.
With the wind not playing ball, we had to motor to Spetses and into the old ship-building harbour that R likes. It’s not an easy place to moor. There’s not a lot of room, with large wooden yachts parked liberally around. The water taxis zooming in from the mainland create a bit of slop. And you have to take a long-line ashore to a rocky wall, which requires Ursa Minor. So, I wasn’t keen, which R appreciated, so we pushed on to Ermioni. The wind was F3-4 and on the beam for much of the way, which gave Missy Bear the opportunity for a great afternoon’s sail.
R was under the impression there would be plenty of room, but the south quay was full of a flotilla, some very large catamarans, and some huge monohulls. [Ed - There was a mini-flotilla of five Finnish boats whose crews were all doing Finnish folk dancing on the quay.] Missy Bear would be like a small tender in comparison. But there was space on the north quay, so we went stern-to there. We just managed to get loads of chain out and tie up as the Fast Cat ferry roared in creating its own mini tsunami. Our anchor, tightened in the nick of time, ensured we were not pushed back to the concrete quay. And our new rubber snubbers (that give our mooring lines some extra elasticity) meant the ropes weren’t snatching violently at the yacht’s stern cleats.
We hadn’t been there very long when the skipper of a large monohull eyed the gap between us and the next yacht, and decided to go for it. R jumped ashore to take his lines, and asked me to fend off. But the Israeli skipper was extremely competent and brought her in well. R asked one of the two women to throw a line to him, but she didn’t even unravel and coil it, and just chucked the bundle of knitting in his direction. R managed to field it, but she just walked back into their yacht looking bored.
Their cockpit table had a few beer cans on it (usual stuff for charter boats) but also half-empty tumblers and a nearly empty bottle of Abelour whisky. We now have a new word for it – ‘pre-dockers’! And - we’re not making this up – the next morning they were drinking glasses of wine with breakfast.
Later that morning, one of the couples laid down on their bow, and - I’m not kidding you - I was blushing. She was in a bikini. He was lying beside her on his side, and where his free hand was roaming was sooooo embarrassing. What made it worse, R sent me forward with the hosepipe to fill the forward water tank. I was far too close for comfort, and I certainly kept my eyes right! R was smirking from the quay.
Ermioni was a great place to be. We ate ashore at Ganossis, which was about 50 yards from the boat. The owner Joseph and his wife remember us from our flotilla days and always make us very welcome. I had my usual – Rabbit Stifado. We also walked over the peninsula to the south quay for a swim and then to our old haunt the Millennium Bar to see the big and jolly owner Nektarios.
Loyal readers may recall that last season we complained that we never met anyone due to Covid-19 quarantine regulations. This year, we have met so many people, and have enjoyed so much company. We ended up talking to yet another British couple who were in the bar and moved over to join us. He had been a captain with BA, and she had been cabin-crew, but had also been a teacher and had run her own petrol station. After some great airline-related laughs (they also listed to ‘Cabin Pressure’), they kindly invited us to join them for dinner. Regretfully, we declined as we wanted to a fairly clear head for our early start.
Slipping our stern lines the next morning, we had a problem with our anchor windlass, which does not like pulling the bulky knot attaching the warp (rope) to the chain. R had laid out all 60 metres of 10mm chain plus a few feet of warp. Sometimes one of us has to reach into the anchor locker and pull the knot through the hole from under the windlass. In the middle of this manoeuvre, a large catamaran cast off without looking and drove off the quay towards us and straight across our bow as we were sorting ourselves out. “Hey, look next time”, we yelled at them to make them realise we were there. I think they did a double take.
The next night we anchored in a lovely, rocky pine-fringed bay not far from Poros. Before dusk a couple turned up in a very new, expensive and powerful motor boat. For an hour, we sat and watched her drop the anchor while going forwards the reversing at Formula One speed. He was zooming around like a loon in the tender trying to take a long line (he'd tied to the speed boat) to the shore. Bad technique; you always tie the line to shore first and bring the tender to the mother boat, who can also reverse towards you in perfect harmony.
As he was struggling with the miles of line in the tender, she was still working the throttle and gear box like a someone demented. The anchor was down throughout and the windless occasionally made horrendous straining and graunching noises.
They then had a loud, blazing row. Finally they managed the job just before it got properly dark.
In Epidavros, R was worried about further anchor crossings, and so he persuaded me to move Missy Bear off the quay and to anchor quietly in the harbour. I reluctantly agreed, but it did give me a premium location from which to watch yachts and catamarans arrive to moor stern-to or to anchor.
It was complete carnage. New arrivals laid their anchor chains over those wishing to leave. And some new arrivals decided to move from one spot to another. Anchor chain spaghetti.
One Swedish yacht had lifted someone else’s chain. Instead of doing the Indian rope trick from the bow, a fit young blonde in a bikini top and a thong as thick as a reefing line (they aren’t thick) paddled around to the bow on a paddle board. She proceeded to balance on all fours on the board to help unhook the chain from the anchor, with her bottom pointing directly at Missy Bear.
R had the binoculars out, because he said he wanted to study her technique.
But as she didn’t turn around, he never saw the, er, 'funny' side…
Cut.
And that’s a wrap.