Saturday 25^th July – Argostoli, Kefalonia

38:10.704N 20:29.378E

This morning we had a new neighbour arrive as we finished breakfast.  They had passaged over from Italy but had anchored over night just up the bay from Argostoli to rest before coming in.

This afternoon, as strong winds are due over the weekend, one of the nearby boats went out to reset its anchor.  This turned into a problem as the boat alongside it had laid its anchor rope across its anchor chain and with the afternoon breeze it got blown down onto the rope as it worked to free the two moorings, and deal with a problem with its windlass.

Unfortunately whilst freeing its anchor, the outgoing yacht used its propeller whilst still alongside the rope and ended up with it wrapped three times around the prop.  The yacht had taken Nigel and Rochelle with them to help them re-anchor and Nigel donned a mask and dove under to try to free it.  Needless to say the occasion became a spectator event.  Eventually Nigel managed to free two of the turns but one turn remained trapped securely in a gap between the prop and its rope cutter. 

Looking on, I felt sorry for the guy whose anchor rope was actually caught on the prop as he was effectively holding the trapped boat in his hands; he was having to balance holding the boat whilst trying to give the rope some slack to allow Nigel to try and free it.  Sadly his suggestions for what to do were also not getting through.

Finally, the hero of the day was a member of the crew of a large motorboat who was volunteered by his skipper to go and help; he free dived under the boat and managed to free the last turn in one dive.

Once this was done, the yacht was able to re-berth and the afternoon excitement was over – with fears of the building wind arriving, it could have turned serious but luckily no harm was done.  Looking on, I learnt some useful lessons today.

With the drama over, Richard was able to resume re-rigging the awning we have put across the boom to provide some shade.  It is now less of an obstacle course to get from the stern to the bow and hopefully the awning will be quicker to put up and take down in future.

We have also noticed that a number of boats have small generators like ours to overcome the problem of recharging batteries when there is no shore power.