Loutra, on Kythos.

May 21

Still, we are now settled and the big wind that will hit in 24 hours can do it’s thing. It has to be said that had we moored alongside and OUTSIDE the marina as planned, the boat would have been in a swell and we would have been quite uncomfortable.
Hmm.. so you have to make choices.
When you only pay 10 Euros/night you can’t expect much. You don’t get much either.

The electricity was a rats nest!  Wires everywhere and doubled up all over. The one water stand for the twenty boats was in constant use.
That’s why it only costs 10 Euros night.

Loutra is a picturesque village with restaurants and little shops all around. We planned to hire a car and tour the island.

The next 36 hours was so bad we didn’t dare leave the boat.

Soon after we arrived the harbor official at the port  told all the boats in his harbor to hang off each other i.e, attach warps to the bow cleats of each boat to the adjoining boat.

In general I see nothing wrong with this plan but in our case we were substantially longer than everyone else. The net result was we had over 7 boats all smaller than us effectively sharing our anchor as well as their own because they were ‘behind us’.  When the wind started to howl our boat was now being pulled back into the wall by all the other boats hanging of us.

The immediate thought was to disconnect all the boats hanging off ‘Timeless’. This brought on 7 protests that the harbor official has told them to connect to each other (and us). Any and all reason was given to ensure that they could hang off the back of our cleat.  We compromised. We tied a line from our port side to the dock - a length of over 100 meters. Next step was to tie a line from the bow of the boat and go directly across to the other side of the port ahead of us another 100 meters.  The boat next to us supplied the rope and the dingy to do this.
Another boat down from us also tied a line directly in front of him too. Now there were so many lines in the water the fisherman were trapped like the rest of us until the storm died. What a stupid fiasco!

The boats on the outside wall were in a huge swell.  
The wind really blew.
John went up on deck for every squeak and every hour to check on the tackle – as did every skipper in the harbor!

As soon as the wind died we set all the other boats free and vowed NEVER to ever allow boats to tie to ‘Timeless’ again! The wind did build again but no one dared ask to attach themselves to ‘Timeless’. The ‘Timeless’ anchor proved itself to be a worthy piece of equipment.

Boats started to leave.
As each boat left it was roulette as whether or not your own anchor was going to be lifted too setting you adrift.  Lots of shouting again. Always as a boat left or arrived the skippers would be back on their decks to protect their anchors, their gel coat, their chrome and their sanity.
Just a nightmare.

Loutra the village, was actually very nice.
As always in Greece the food was mediocre and the coffee left something to be desired. (But then after you have sampled enough French and Spanish coffee all coffee leave something to be desired! Although in Greece they seem to think that Nescafe is coffee?)

It was a shame that the harbour in Loutra, like most harbours in the Greek islands are so old and tired such that they cause more stress than is really needed. We didn’t feel that we wanted to stay any longer after the truma so after another day we were on our way again.

First though we had to lift our anchor hopefully not lifting anyone else’s anchor. The anchor did come up after some effort (it had really dug in). It was really caked in the stickiest most solid mud in the biggest ball I have ever seen on our anchor. The harbor was tiny so rather than mess around in the harbor we reversed out all the way and de-coated the mud off of the anchor in the ocean.

Oh! I learn another thing about the boat too. The anchor switch by the helm position had been wired in reverse such that UP on the switch was really DOWN! You don’t want to learn that whilst maneuvering with your anchor in a tight harbor.

We wanted to visit the island of Paros. We hoped we might berth in the harbor at Naousa but it was more likely we would be anchoring in the bay.

This was Greece remember, it’s a roulette wheel.