Our skipper left today. He has done his 2 days. His name was George and he was a history teacher at "A" level grade. He skippers yachts in the Aegean in the holidays for extra money. He has been sailing these islands for 28 years and seems to know everyone on every boat in the area. It was very reassuring to be with him for the first 2 days. We rather hoped he would spend some time going over all the ropes with us but it seemed that skippering to him only involved taking us places. Fair enough.
I had been truthfull with the charter company about my sailing experiece and they had accepted my experience as sufficient although they did say that George would be given the task of determining if I was fit or not. George never really got an opportunity to see if I could sail as he did the whole job himself. I think he was only really interested in getting us to our destination. So now we are on our own.
This in itself is not a bad thing except that in Hyrda the harbour is only the size of a football pitch. This in itself is not a bad thing except that the harbour is filled up with millions and millions of dollars of swanky 100 foot motor cruisers. Again not such a bad thing but the Philipino crew of these swanky 100 foot motor cruisers start getting very twitchy when 32 foot yachts with inexperienced skippers start manouevering close to their hulls. You would not be able to do a runner if you scratched one of these things.
I didn't feel too bad as I had already seen some charter boats doing some very dodgy things. Most of the yachts around here are chartered to tourists. Most of whom have probably had years more sailing experience than I. But the thing is every boat has it's own characteristics which take some getting used to. The best thing to do is to go to a quiet bay and practice anchoring and reversing and get a feel for your boat (something we had planned to do today).
Well since I hadn't yet had a go with the boat (George having done his job) I was very nervous about taking the thing out into the harbour for the first time with no experience of the boat's turning capabilities or how quickly it might respond in reverse. This was going to be fun. Julie was at the anchor station and the boys were on the aft lines. The idea is that you slowly move the boat forward whilst the anchor person weighs the anchor and the linesmen let out the lines whilst still holding the boat under tension. It kind of went that way although at some point it looked like we were moving too fast over the top of the anchor chain which meant we could have damaged the hull of our boat. I reversed up a little and we brought the anchor home and then set off. I then had to do a 180 deg turn and pass through the small channel of the entrance to the harbour. It is such a busy harbour with all the ferries that come and go, I was half expecting to be hooted at by some enormous ship but we managed to escape without any damage being inflicted.
Over the chart table Julian and I had determined the bearing we needed to steer from the entrance of the harbour to our new destination. We made a heading of 272 degrees in order to make anchor in the bay of Skindou off the island of Dhokos. Typically the winds in this area at this time of the years are northerlies. This means that if you want to find a nice peaceful bay in which to stop to lunch you should aim to go to on the south side of an island or piece of land. That way you will be sheltered from any wind originating in the north and have a flat stretch of water in which to anchor. The bay of Skindou is on the north side of the island but happily the wind changed direction during our journey.
On this first part of the journey we did not have the courage to raise the sails and preferred to get used to running with the engine. In fact the wind was so light that the sails would hardly have filled anyway. About an hour and a half after we set off we arrived at the mouth of the bay and seeing that others had anchored, headed in.
We chose a spot in between two others boats that were about 200 yards apart. When the depth got down to 20 feet I pointed the boat into the wind and Julie released the anchor. The water was so clear that you could see the bottom. About 35 feet of chain went out and we waited for it to bite. After 5 minutes of checking our position against the other craft it was clear we were not moving or at least not moving quickly. I could kill the engine. We took a reading on the GPS as apparently it reads as closely as 2 feet and would tell me immediately if I was drifting.
The next job was to release the dingy and fix it up with it's outboard motor. We got it going quickly even though it's quite a job manhandling the outboard without dropping it to the bottom of the sea.
Having this little "toy" on board was greast fun. Sammy particularly enjoyed buzzing around in it. He loved the independence it gave him and the sense of control over a machine. He ferried the whole family, one by one, to the nearby island and took off on his own to explore the coastline.
The island which was half a mile wide and a quarter long, was inhabited by one household with several horses, a couple of donkeys, a very loud dog and (for some reason) one dead and one alive ostrich. We spent half an hour combing the beach and looking in the little chapel. The only other people we met we 2 girls who had swum ashore from one of the other boats in the bay. The boys were wondering just where one of them might have lost her bikini top. This was the boys first encounter with european lady's beach attire (that they could remember) and it lead to several interesting conversations.
Our boat and dingy from the island.
After returning to the boat and having some lunch we weighed anchor and took a new heading for our next port of call, the harbour of Ermion. This is really on the Greek mainland if you don't count the Corinth canal making it an island. It was pretty simple to follow the compass on our new course but then we decided to try a bit of sailing and found it was impossible
The wind, which was now blowing almost directly from our intended destination, meant that going in that direction could only be accomplished if we tacked from side to side. These boats are not capable of sailing very close to the wind. The best we could achieve was to sail about 70 or 80 degrees either side of it. Going any closer than this resulted in a considerable reduction in speed. The overall effect when you tacked from one side to the other, was that you almost appeared to be changing course and sailing in completely the opposite direction. It was after all a course change of nearly 160 deg each time we tacked. And whether you were left or right of the wind you were never apparently sailing towards your intended destination.
This was rather off putting for Julie who is always more interested in arriving somewhere rather than the getting there. It was my fault, I had failed to explain to her, prior to our departure, that this part of our travels was about the sailing and not the arriving. Anyway we were getting our first taste of hoisting and trimming the sails. Julian and Sammy took on being winchmen. Julian adopted the port winches and Sammy the starboard and we didn't loose any winch handles overboard.
After an hour or so we decided that the progress we were making towards our destination was so slow we probably wouldn't arrive this week. The wind speed was only in the 10 to 15 knots range and the boat was not really moving with any gusto. So we dropped the sails (both main and genoa were self furling which is really neat) and started the motor.
The engine on board was a Volvo marine 19 hp, 3 cylinder diesel. It gives about 5 knots at 2,500 rpm with very little noise or vibration and will deliver up to 8 knots if necessary.
We motored up to the harbour with some trepidation as this would be our first test of docking on our own. Luckily we found the harbour had plenty of empty berths and not many expensive looking motor yachts around. The crew got to their stations and we headed in. There were 2 pontoons projecting from the harbour wall and the boats were berthed aft in against these pontoons. It was a very tight fit. The distance between the pontoons might have been 4 boat lengths and there were boats against each pontoon. I brought the boat in and did a 90 degree turn with only a half boat's length of space spare fore and aft. It was a tricky bit of parking but Julie let go of the anchor at the right time and the boys flung the ropes across to waiting helpers. We were in. Our first docking.
We immediately set out to look around the small town and found wonderful croissants and a shop selling all sorts of fishing equipment. We bought 2 packs of line and some hooks for about 3 euros and the boys went fishing for the next 2 hours. It was Julie's birthday the next day and I managed to sneak out and find some flowers and chocolates that I stored in the fridge for the next day.
No comments:
Post a Comment