Refuelling is such fun!
 
We left Gouvia and went to the petrol station just outside the marina to refuel. Now our committed blog readers will know that last time we did this we had all sorts of problems with alarms going off and us panicking etc etc. We approached the station with Mr W senior on board and all appeared to be going well. We had filled up and were getting ready to leave. Miles was putting a fuel container into one of the cockpit lockers. He didn’t see that steaming towards us was a rather large yacht (50 ft), sails up and crew looking in somewhat of a panic. Mr W senior and myself started shouting at Miles to warn him that he was about to be rammed by said yacht. I don’t know how it happened but as we were bracing ourselves for the bang at the last moment the skipper (German) managed to avoid little old Stella Maris (and importantly Miles). It was at this point that we realised he had an engine problem and that was why he was coming into the refuelling station with sails blazing, only something that Captain Birdseye or the insane would attempt. At the stern of the German yacht was a line that was attached to one of the marina dinghies, the marina man had probably gone out to give the skipper of the yacht an earful about coming into the marina under sail, then realising there was problem tried to help out. We all jumped onto the quayside trying to catch lines to pull this rather large, but very nice out of control yacht in. The German skipper was shouting ‘schnell schnell’ amongst other things. Eventually the yacht was pulled alongside, the crew were very thankful and explained that whilst they had been out at sea they had been worried that the engine was overheating and may catch fire. All this excitement and we weren’t even out of the marina channel!! We set off to Benitses and I’m glad to say the rest of the trip went without incident, other than a few pirouettes when Mr W senior took over the helm!! But I’ll say no more about that. Out for now Captain Miles, Crewman Dennis & Deckhand Karen XX
Tuesday, 29 August 2006