Tuesday 29 September 2015

Monday 28 September 2015 – Arki

There was supposed to be a lunar eclipse last night.  So we set the alarm to wake us up at 4am to see it.  When we got up we could see no moon at all, but that had nothing to do with the eclipse.  It was entirely clouded over.  Not only that but as we put our heads outside the cabin it began to rain!  So we gave up, took down the wind scoop so that rain did not come in through the forward cabin hatch and went to bed.

We were awakened by a lot of noise and shouting on the shore.  When we went to see what it was about we saw a large group of immigrants, presumably rescued from the sea last night on the balcony of an official building (Police Station?) with policemen trying to organise them.  Eventually they all seemed to have been accounted for and then they went to the ferry terminal.  There was the usual majority of young men, but also this time a lot of children and some women.  On shore Richard heard someone say that over 100 had arrived over night.  That is probably more than the population of this small island.

The morning was very grey with a bit of rain.  So we took it easy and had a very late start and did not get away until 11:30.  When we got up to the cockpit we were a bit surprised to find it covered in bits of black thread-like bits.  We thought at first that is might have been left over from the BBQ last night.  But as we left the harbour we saw that there was a big bush fire on the hills outside and the bits were from that!  Later we saw a seaplane scooping up water from the sea and dropping it on the fire!

We were pleasantly surprised to find 11 knots of wind blowing just outside the harbour and for a change it was not exactly on the nose, but was an upwind sail.  However we were able to sail all the way to the island of Arki, about 15 miles away.  It was a nice force 4 all the way.  We only had to turn the engine on to get into the bay itself.  We are in a little place called Port Stretto.  There are two parts to the bay.  We went into the first, which has a taverna which has mooring buoys.  We hoped to be able to pick one up, but found there were only 4 and they were all occupied.  The book suggests you can anchor there, but there was little room and the bottom seemed to be mostly weed.  So we went to the other side where there were 4 or 5 boats anchored.  The book suggests that the holding is good, with sand and weed.  This was not our experience.  We tried three times to get the anchor to bite, only to find it dragging.  We then went further in and put the anchor down, but we are still not entirely convinced that it has dug in well.  We are swinging a lot and there has been more wind than expected - about 10-13 knots.  The real problem is that we are quite close to another boat behind us.  We have set the plotter to show if we move and so far it looks OK, but we might have a worrisome night!

This would have been a lovely spot to swim off the boat, and a number of the occupants of the other boats were swimming.  However, it really is too cool for me.  There has been a lot of cloud, so the sun hasn’t warmed things up a lot.  With that and the wind, I am quite chilled and neither of us fancied a swim.

This is another episode which won’t get posted for a couple of days.  We have certainly used up all our credit on the internet machine.  Richard used his UK phone, paying the £3 a day charge for international access.  That was OK in Agathonisi, but here there is no 3G signal!  So we are not connected to the outside world.

One other small matter.  My telephone with the Greek Sim has lost its telephone function.  It is nowhere to be found on the machine.  We don’t know how it got turned off – or how to turn it back on.  A phone that doesn’t make calls is not a lot of use.   Another reason we need to find a Vodafone shop!

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