Missy Bear and the flotilla were anchored overnight in the very large bay near to entrance of Lakki marina. It was a calm and peaceful night, except when I got up at 04:00 to investigate a loud noise. I stuck my nose through the companionway hatch to find the bow of an enormous car ferry bearing down on us. I swiftly debated waking Richard, but the anchorage is well-known and clearly marked on the charts. At that moment, the ferry dropped its bow anchor and started reversing back away from us, towards the terminal quay.
I’d thought that we might have a lazy morning before heading into the marina but, no. Missy Bear was pointing into wind, as all boats tend to do when there is no tidal stream. So, this offered a great opportunity to take down our headsail ready for winter. Dropping the sail is straightforward. I ease out the halyard, and Richard pulls the sail down the track in the forestay and onto the foredeck. Then comes the harder part - flaking the sail so we can roll it into its bag.
Our dinghy takes up quite a bit of space on the deck, so we were limited to working on a small area of the side deck. The task is made more difficult by the sail material being quite slippery underfoot. A few choice words were uttered, and a few of them in my direction. It’s not my favourite job.
Money Penny and Infinite Blue were also getting their head sails down, [Ed – and similar utterings were heard]. The plan was to take the three sails ashore in Infinite Blue’s dinghy to deliver to Sebastian, who will wash and dry them, and return them - much more neatly flaked - in the sail-bags.
Even when we were moored up in the marina, there was no rest. R started to wash the dinghy ready to deflate it. [Ed – I told it that it had been a disappointing purchase, and it collapsed immediately.] I helped by throwing my weight across various bits of it to squeeze out the last dregs of air (although I’m so light that I’m not sure that works, ha-ha), and helping to pull the bag straps tight around it. Bags always seem smaller when you are trying to stow things.
We had ten days to prepare for winter, and I wanted to go and do some food shopping. But R had the bit between his teeth and wanted to press on, so that we could also have a day or two of late-autumn leisure and sight-seeing.
But we hadn’t accounted for Parkinson’s Law. Back in the 1950s, a naval historian called Cyril Northcote Parkinson published a number of essays in The Economist. One of them started with the sentence “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”. And so it was with Missy Bear’s work list. With all this time available R came up with his long list, and I came up with mine. For example, I thought it would be a good idea to wash all our cutlery, crockery and pans in hot soapy water (this caused huge mirth with Judith and Amanda). I also soaked all our acrylic glasses in a solution of white vinegar and water to sparkle them up a bit. Now, when you wipe out an empty locker, you have to leave the stuff out until it dries. But in the meantime, you want to start on the next one. So, the saloon and galley surfaces were always covered in stuff, ready to go back away, and the saloon looked like a tip every day, until everything was tidied into its proper home at the last minute.
Any clothing which was being left on-board was washed, dried, aired and stowed. Linen lockers were wiped out. In addition, I popped up every now and again, like a meerkat, to help Richard with chores that might need two of us [Ed – taking down and stowing the Bimini and sprayhood, for example.]
R’s long ‘List of Important Things to Do’, including, cleaning all the inox, oiling the teak, and servicing all the winches. The latter job filled him with some trepidation, as he imagined once he took the winch casing off, various imagined internal springs and coils would leap out and hurl themselves overboard and into the drink. He was not confident that if he ever disassembled one, he would be able to reassemble to myriad interlocking pieces correctly.
He invited me to join him in watching a You Tube video on the topic of servicing Harken winches. And he seemed quite hurt when I pointed out I had my own important things to be getting on with.
But the video was obviously a good one. He went to the chandlers to buy all the correct branded, super-expensive pawl oil and grease. He bought a long artist’s brush for applying the grease. He donned his blue surgical gloves, and carefully laid out the various cogs, bolts, pins, shafts etc., onto a towel on the cockpit table in an order. He surprised himself totally, by succeeding to take apart all four winches (one-by-one, he’s not that stupid…), clean, oil and grease them, and re-assemble them at the first attempt. And, no, there were no bits left over at the end.
The only grumpy utterance was when he couldn’t find an Allen key he had literally just put down.
To be fair, it wasn’t all work. We did head out for coffee or aperos late afternoon on a few occasions, and also continued our Yahtzee championship with our friends. We hired a couple of cars and had a day out – a lovely walk long around a headland, a lunch on the beach at Pandeli, followed by ice-cream and enormous amounts of chocolate cake on Infinite Blue.
Due to Parkinson’s Law, the day before haul-out felt rushed. Where had all that time gone? R, rather snippily, pointed out it had only taken us three days last year to prepare the boat for winter. But we had undertaken a lot more jobs this time. Those winches were due for their service!
Our friends on Money Penny and Infinite Blue flew home on the Tuesday, together with quite a few other people from the marina. We hauled out later that day. The next flight from the island was Thursday, and we were booked on the short hop to Athens, and the onward flight to Heathrow.
And on the Thursday morning, I wandered from our hotel at dawn for a last espresso in the little fisherman’s cafe. The sky was cloudy and heavy. The weather was turning. I posted it on Facebook, and a friend who lives in Greece wished me, “Kalo cheimona”, that is “Have a good winter”.
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