Have you ever had the problem that you arrive in a place and then you don’t want to leave again? We have to admit that this has just happened to us. We have great memories of Abelaki Bay from 31 years ago, when we visited here on our first flotilla holiday, and it’s still a great place! Back then we made friends with a couple called Nat and Dave and have stayed vaguely in touch since, visiting them in Cornwall as we made our way to France last year. Dave was a bit of a practical joker. He filled our dinghy with pebbles when we were having a bbq at Abelaki Bay. When we discovered this, we let nearly all the air out of their dinghy. They really struggled to get back to their yacht that night and it didn’t help that we threw the pebbles from our dinghy into theirs as they rowed!
Anyway, enough reminiscing; back to the present. We arrived here on Monday, anchored in the middle of the bay, then went for a lovely swim, then explored the bay by dinghy. The silence of the electric outboard makes it a real pleasure. The water was lovely and clear and we could see many fish around the boat. We have become quite friendly with them and can’t resist feeding them crumbs of bread, which they get very excited about.
The problem about not wanting to leave is that there is everything we need here, so why leave? There is a beautiful, quiet taverna, with showers, wifi, washing machine and (most importantly) toilets. So we are back and forth from it in the dinghy a lot. One complication of a long-term anchorage, as some of you might imagine, is the toilet (‘heads’) on the boat. There are obvious rules and etiquettes about using a toilet on a boat in a beautiful swimming bay. Not so in the UK, interestingly enough. There, everyone just pumps straight out into the sea. Here, we need a holding tank, which I installed (a horribly expensive and complicated boat job) before our voyage last year. It’s a 60 litre tank, so only lasts a few flushes. Our options are to sail out to sea every few days to pump it out, well off shore; or just hold it in; or use the taverna toilets. We have opted for the taverna toilets, which means a trip across in the morning, with the excuse of having a coffee, but I’m sure the staff have worked out the real reason by now!
On Monday night we had our first disaster (there is another to come). After a lovely meat variety meal at our taverna (Minas), we dinghy-ed back to Barberry and, as Kerry was bending to tie up the dinghy, her reading glasses somehow fell in the water. She hooks them to her top, sort of down her cleavage, so when she bends they slip out. We watched them slowly sink to about 6 metre depth. That’s more than Fraser can dive to without running out of breath and Kerry is far too buoyant to dive. I would need to tie concrete blocks to her, which has some disadvantages in the longer term. So now she is wearing my spare glasses. We are like twins!
We had breakfast out at Minas on Tuesday. We were all excited about the special treat, but we are a bit more slow and clumsy first thing in the morning. For some reason Kerry’s getting out of the dinghy technique went wrong (second disaster). She has stiff joints and sore knees and sometimes limbs do not work as planned. She very nearly missed the jetty completely and went for a swim, but unfortunately she hit the jetty, quite hard, and didn’t bounce much. She was really shaken, although yogurt and honey, with the compulsory trip to the toilets helped a bit.
The day got better (for me anyway). I went for a jog over to the village of Vathi to suss out the route. It felt good to be running, although the heat was concerning! A swim afterwards and then we thought about moving Barberry closer to shore with ‘long lines’. The idea was to get out of the way of other boats as the bay can become very busy and if everyone is swinging about on anchor then there is a chance that boats can swing into each other. Long lines ashore means we don’t swing. We have three points of contact, one being the anchor on the sea bed and the other two being long lines tied to rocks on the shore.
We had never tried the technique before but sort of knew what to do, in theory. It actually took us what seemed like most of the afternoon and we were exhausted afterwards. The manoeuvre starts with lifting the anchor and moving into position nearer to the shore, then dropping anchor again, with Kerry reversing towards the shore. This seems a critical point as the boat has no steerage or means of staying in position if the wind gets up. Guess what? The wind got up exactly at that point. As soon as Kerry got the boat into position, I grabbed a long line and jumped in, swimming frantically to shore whilst trying to drag the line with me as Kerry payed it out.
All was going well until Barberry was blown sideways and drifted away from shore. The line started to get really heavy and, as I turned to look I could see Kerry on Barberry, a really long way away. I kept thrashing for shore and eventually got my feet on the seabed (amongst the thorny sea urchins) and started dragging the 6 tonnes of Barberry towards me as Kerry pulled from the other end. I had fortunately already located outcrops of rock that I thought I could get a line around, so I wrapped it around a few times, tied it off, then set off back to Barberry to collect the next line. After much tweaking and pulling and adjusting we were finally happy with the position. It does work, but it’s a lot of time and effort. It really makes you wonder why some people complain about just reversing a car into a parking space!
The next day we walked over the hill to the little village of Vathy. There is a scenic gravel path, then a road to follow. We were reliving the memories of 31 years ago, when we also walked to Vathy, but back then there was no road and we had to find our way through thick woodland and ancient stone terracing. We had lunch there, then some food shopping, feeling bad about only spending one euro at the bakers on two biscuits. We told the shop keeper we would be back for bread, but when we returned they were closed.
When we got back from Vathy, Kerry had a go at flying her drone. She was a bit rusty, so it was good that we had time to do this with our extended stay here. She was nervous about flying over water for the first time. To be honest I was more worried about the overhead electrical cables! It was a short, but successful flight and she planned to try again the next day to get some better footage.
I went for a swim on my own that evening as Kerry was still quite sore after her fall. There is a bit of a risk about swimming on your own in the sea, but reassuringly for me Kerry told me afterwards that she was listening to my snorkel breathing from inside Barberry. Presumably if she had heard it stop she would have rushed out, dived in and rescued me?
On Thursday we had morning coffee at Minas (you know the reason why by now). Kerry flew the drone with more confidence today and got some great footage of Barberry in the bay. I went for another run, this time around a beautiful coast trail to a nearby fishing village, Port Atheni. It really was like heaven. No people or cars, just all sorts of butterflies. When I got back, I went for a swim with the underwater camera as Kerry dropped bread crumbs from the boat to encourage the fish. The fish are like me, they love bread!
Later in the day we let out a bit more anchor and tightened up our long lines as wind is expected on Friday and Saturday . Looks like we might be here for the Greek Easter!
