Results day

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Fri 19 Jun 2009 17:02
39:22.1N 26:10.1E

Friday 19th June

We invited David and Kate from a beautiful Australian boat moored close to
us, over for drinks last night and had a really enjoyable evening. Kate is
Australian born and David is from Italy and they bought the boat in a
rundown condition in Trieste and then shipped it to Australia from where it
has been sailed back to Turkey then Greece by way of India and the Red Sea.

This morning, after several readings of the weather forecasts we opted to
head up to Molivos, despite the misgivings of some of the other boaters.
(One of David's nuggets of useful information last night was the saying,
"Indecision is the key to flexibility"!) Bit of excitement first as I had to
cycle back through the town to the Port Police to get the ship's papers
stamped and discovered the absolute braking distance of a Brompton folding
bike when the motorbike I was following in heavy traffic just stopped
without any warning at all. Could not swerve with the cars alongside me so
quite a testing moment. The other rule I forgot was the obvious sub
paragraph in the highway code that makes all cars ignore oncoming traffic
that wants to turn across the flow, so they have to wait for a space, unless
of course the vehicle wanting to turn across the traffic flow is a scooter
with a pretty girl riding it. Suddenly speeding cars stand on their brakes
to allow her to potter across and no one notices the small Brompton
slithering to a standstill inches from the underside of a 4 x 4. Think I
might add an occasional section to this blog entitled 'Brompton Abroad'.

No wind when we finally got off but the sceptics might have been feeling a
bit more cocky as the wind rose soon to 25 knots and the sea became quite
rough and progress became very slow for a while, but in due course it all
settled down and we finally arrived at the delightful town and little
harbour of Molivos around 2.30pm. We really love this place, but it is small
and quay space is at a premium, so we were more than a little put out to
find a huge (but very smart) ketch rigged super yacht taking up the whole of
the main quay and a small gaggle of normal yachts (!) moored stern-to on the
dodgy quay opposite with the tavernas. Fortunately there was room on the
inside of this group for one more, so we dropped our anchor and slowly
reversed into the space. Turns out that some of these boats had been moored
on the main quay when the super yacht arrived the other day and they were
all made to move by the port police, but there is no one actually living on
board the big yacht, apart from the basic crew and it is going to just stay
there until early July! Money talks....oh and did I mention it has a British
flag, well possibly a tax haven one at least? Envy is one of my less
redeeming traits.

Results day: Well this is the moment we discover how much flannel Ewan has
been giving us about his last three years at university. Of course they had
the leavers ball last night and when we could not stand the tension of
waiting any longer (we are two hours ahead of you as well), we texted him
for an update. He called to say that he did not have the results just yet
(2.30pm UK time) and to be honest he had not yet been to bed! Anyway just 30
minutes later he called with the wonderful and quite remarkable news of a
2:1 (Geography at Manchester Uni) which has left us both delighted and very
proud of his achievement. Graduation ceremony is in early July and we are
flying home for that from Istanbul assuming all goes to plan.

Very hot and still afternoon and evening and we are pretty certain that we
are moored with our stern pointing directly at the entrance to the No.1
nightspot in the village, so sleep might not come easy. 35 miles to do
tomorrow and a forecast for no wind at all.