It's called Character building!

Kythinos Port

All night I had found it difficult to sleep. The wind was up and fortunately Steve had pulled us further off the dock. Kythnos port is usually quite a sleepy place. We had visited a village during the day. We planned to leave the next morning to sail to Kea. By the 11 June we needed to be near the boat yard adjacent to Corinth canal to get the new generator. So tonight was to be our last in Kythnos.

During the night I moved from bed to bed. The wind had increased.  I got up at least three times to check the lines. All seemed fine for us. Our neighbours to starboard were less prepared. They were in a 29.2 ' Jeanneau, a Sun Odyssey rather like Papalagi, the boat we had chartered in 2011. They were nudging against the dock. On one of my "vigils"  I saw them trying to pull off the dock. They then went to bed. The boat was still against the dock . The wind was strengthening. Our lines were straining.

At 2am I again poked my head out of the cockpit. I was horrified to sea the Jeanneau leaving the dock and was being blown our way. I screamed for Steve as I tried to hold the boat off. His bimini was not a good hand hold. His bow was pushing against our starboard side. Steve raced up on deck and we managed to fend it off.

I watched as the Jeanneau was jostled around by the wind, seemingly  pilot -less. The skipper seemed to have no control. They cavorted in the sea near us and turned 180 degrees to face us. What was wrong ? Why hadn't they hauled in their anchor and made away?

They've caught our chain! No sooner had I said this, they appeared stuck, then  careered wildly towards the boat to port, a 43' Lagoon. I screamed to the Lagoon crew to wake up , or else they would find a rather small boat ramming their starboard hull. It seemed ages before they appeared on deck, apparently bewildered by all the commotion.

As the Italians on the Lagoon tried to fend of the Jeanneau we realised that we had a bigger problem. They had snagged our chain and were now dragging our anchor from about 30 metres off the dock to around 4 metres to port, right where they were cavorting with the Lagoon.

 Steve was trying to keep Pavlov off the dock. Our port stern crashed into the concrete dock. The crunching was loud and forceful. Steve yelled for me to fend off. I raced from the bow to the stern grabbing a fender to try to protect Pavlov. Part of our teak cap strip and chunks of gelcoat revealed the fibreglass beneath.

The Italians yelled to us to get off. They managed to get our anchor released.  Pavlov was swinging to port in the wind , towards the Lagoon. Longer lines were  found and thrown to some gallant Australians who had arrived to offer assistance. Steve planned to straighten Pavlov and try to escape from the dock. He had managed to haul in our chain and anchor. All this was done in his underwear and I had on a sarong. The bruises took a few days to come out.

As Pavlov straightened he yelled to drop the lines. I pulled them in to avoid our new rope cutter on our propeller shaft. We motored off the dock. The Jeanneau had anchored further out. We too would anchor and wait until morning to confront the skipper of the Jeanneau, and get his info for our insurance.

Our next problem was that the chain was knotted. We did anchor but could drop little chain. Steve had hurt his hand falling down the companion way so I tried to beat it into shape. Finally it unknotted. It was 5 am. All this had begun in earnest at 2am.

We were exhausted but as soon as we could be brought up the anchor and pulled alongside the ferry dock. After dealing with the Frenchman, we took off for Kea. But that story is for another blog.

the next morning- near the scene of last nights drama