Porto Kayio to Kapsali on Kithira (approx 31 nm)
 
Kithira info
 
A glorious morning, but we appeared to be hemmed into the bay by some fishing buoys, so we let Moli go first and then followed her route. Well no point in both of us getting caught on lines. Glad to say we got out of the bay without incident. Sails up we were reaching 5 knots and it wasn’t even 10.00 am everyone was getting very excited, maybe today would be the day that we’d sail to our destination. To get to Kithera you need to cross a shipping lane, all was looking good. But guess what? The wind died and a big big big ship was heading our way. Decision had to be made do we turn? But if he then turns that’s not good, he’s bound to turn isn’t he, he isn’t turning, surely he’ll turn in a minute? He’s still not turning. ‘Engine on floor it’. At this point we received a call from Moli to check all was o.k as we had suddenly started heading very quickly the wrong way. Big ship avoided we went back on track. Later that day we saw some dolphins, Flipper and his mates were in high spirits and put on a good show for us. The rest of the day was motor on motor off (no change there then). We entered the harbour, once again very picturesque and very deserted. But who should we see anchored in the middle the Hobbits. Apparently they’d been there during the storms and their lickle ickle Hobbit boat had taken a bit of a bashing. We decided to go for something to eat and had been told that the village was about a 15-20 minute walk. No problemo we could do with a bit of exercise. Well we went for the complete workout, the road went up and up and up and up, there was no pavement and it was pitch black. Surely you had a torch I hear you ask? I think you know the answer to that one bloggers. We reached the village and found a supermarket to stock up on supplies and a nice little Greek taverna, full of Greeks always a good sign. We even managed to get a taxi back to the boat. Now we’d obviously had far too much to drink because somewhere along the line everyone agreed to setting off at 7.00 am the next day. It would still be dark and by doing that we could pretend we were doing a night sail (for half an hour or so). Look you’ve just got to humour us. There was a bit of a swell in the harbour that night but that was the least of our worries. In the night Captain Miles and myself were woken by a grinding sound. That’ll be the anchor dragging or so we thought. We looked out of the hatch to see a 70 ft fishing boat trying to come alongside the quay that we were stern to on. It was an interesting manoeuvre as there was only about 30 ft of quay left. Their bow was practically touching our stern and they were almost pivoting on the end of the quay. Captain Miles sent me out to carry out some negotiations. Our concern was that we had moored in their spot and they were going to squash us. I went up on deck in just a teeshirt (not my best look). There was lots of shouting going on as they were edging closer and closer to us. I shouted up that we could move, in fact we wanted to move. But they were saying it wasn’t a problem and they didn’t want us to move. Staring up at the bow of this monster boat, I really felt it would be best if we moved. But luckily they then decided that there wasn’t enough space and they moved to another part of the quay. Back to bed early start tomorrow Love from Stella Maris XXX
Thursday, 19 October 2006