I hear you knocking
Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Thu 20 May 2010 20:38
Woken by the unusual movement of the boat which turned out to be because the bottom of the rudder was caught between two rocks. The pressure had risen in the night and the sea level had dropped quite considerably since we had moored up creating this situation. Debated various options but could not drop back any further from the quay as our boarding plank was already only just able to reach the land. Only solution was to back out of the mooring and turn round so we came in bows to the quay. We had to summon a marinero in a joker boat to help as we were trapped in our mooring position by the angle the other boats were all moored at. This was soon all resolved and around 10 am the lad from the sail makers arrived to collect our mainsail for repair. He promised faithfully that he would be bringing it back at 5pm but not for one minute did we fully believe him.
The next person to come knocking was the local agent for Viking Life rafts whose van we had spotted yesterday by chance. Our life raft is due a three year service and we were going to have to get this done in Gibraltar, but this chap can get it transported up to Izmir and will deliver it back to us in a few days time in Alanya, hopefully.
We all got a few jobs done during the day, but an hour or so of the afternoon was taken up by a presentation that the entire rally had to attend in which the organisers gave us further details of rest of the rally. It all looks very interesting and exciting if not rather daunting.
A phone call initiated by us around 5.30pm spurred the sail maker into rushing back with our repaired sail around 6pm and we got it back up the mast and ready to go shortly before we were due out to the next social function which was another cocktail party followed by the first of the rally?s formal dinners which was outstanding. A really wonderful meal beautifully presented in an outdoor beachside setting with music supplied by the group who had so entertained us all a few nights ago when we had all ended up dancing in the streets. I gather that they will appear a few more times before we reach Syria. The food was excellent and the wine flowed rather too well, particularly bearing in mind we all had one eye on the clock knowing that we had to leave around 5am for the 68 mile trip to Alanya in the morning.
Returned to Serafina around 11.00pm and took down all the flags etc. ready for our very early morning start.