Easter weekend in Greece this
year appears to have fallen a week later than Easter in the
UK and
Spain.
A further anomaly was that the sun shone all over the weekend, with
temperatures around 25-26 degrees at 2pm. The rain didn’t start until 10 o’clock on the night of Easter Monday. At first it was
not easy to discern that it was raining as the drops fell intermittently and
infrequently. Lying in bed, sleeping lightly as I do, I could hear the rain
falling steadily during the night and it was still falling for most of the
following morning.
The sun struggled out from behind the clouds about lunchtime and the
mountains, to the south, came back into view. It felt quite cool and with the
early afternoon temperature not rising above 21 degrees, I donned my
thermals.
The rain gave me a respite from polishing the bits of boat that the
workmen at the marina had not done. The marina had charged us the same price for
polishing our boat as they charged for a monohull. Bearing in mind that only the
smooth surfaces which could be reached with an electric polisher were actually
polished, even that was probably too much.
A fishing boat moored in front of us and another rafted up to it. They
filled their tanks with diesel, delivered to the quayside in a small tanker.
Their catch was very meager, no more than a dozen assorted fish.
A berth in the marina became vacant, just opposite where we were moored
on the outside wall. Rather than delay and miss the opportunity, we swiftly
moved our boat into the more protected area of this unfinished marina, just in
front of an old, fly-bridge motor cruiser.
The clouds disappeared and we could see snow on the top of the mountains
when we looked NNE. Wow!
The old, fly-bridge, motor cruiser moored just behind us, had sunk
overnight. Only the top of the fly-bridge is above the water. It is most
disconcerting. The whole area has been cordoned off with pale blue floats. A
diver went down during the morning and looped two straps beneath the hull, in
readiness for the crane which arrived after lunch.
The fire brigade arrived with a pump. A digger, pulling a trailer, stood
by, as did a police car.
The crane, lifting the boat, halted its operation until the firemen had
pumped the water from inside, then continued to lift until the boat was out of
the water. The hull was thickly festooned with muscles. They were so heavy that
some clumps fell off into the water and onto the quayside.
Some of the muscles were thrown back into the water, they were still too
small to be of culinary interest.
The boat was loaded onto the trailer, made secure and driven away, with
police escort and flashing blue lights..
Within half an hour a monohull had taken up the vacated berth. It had
been tied up on the quayside, outside of the marina. With the wind blowing from
the south, it would have not been a very comfortable mooring.
Walking back from the supermarket, I picked an orange from a tree on the
roadside. The fruit turned out to be mandarins rather than oranges. It was so
sharp, like a lemon. These are obviously fruit trees of the ornamental kind. I
should have guessed that there had to be a reason why there was still so much
fruit on the tree.
A 62foot Azimut flybridge, motor cruiser arrived just after 6pm, flying the yellow Q flag. The boat, with 9
people on board, 8 men and one woman, circled the marina looking for a space. It
eventually moored alongside, opposite us, on the outside wall of the marina,
just where we had berthed before moving inside.
The motor cruiser rolled uncomfortably from side to side and when the
captain returned, after an unsuccessful attempt to get his papers stamped, the
boat was moved to the marina on the other side of the bay, where our boat had
spent the winter ashore.
At 9pm, a trawler tied up in
the space vacated by the motor cruiser. A load of goods were manhandled to the
trawler, from a van which was waiting on the quayside. Then, over 4 dozen
polystyrene boxes of fish were passed back from the boat and loaded onto the
van.
The trawler left some time during the night but returned again about 24
hours later, possibly repeating the same procedure. Certainly the van was
waiting on the quayside about midnight
but when I looked out at 4am, the
trawler was there but there was no sign of the van.
Meanwhile, the Azimut motor cruiser was back before 9am, the morning after it had first arrived from
Italy, when the
captain had tried unsuccesfully to get the travel log. This time the captain was
more successful and the boat was off on the next leg of its journey.
With a dry, sunny weekend, we were able to wash and dry the winter
covers. The light morning wind was of assistance, as we checked and adjusted the
sails and sail-bag, none of which had not been done correctly by the
marina.
Below:- Flybridge motor cruiser below the waves and being hoisted,
showing the bottom festooned with muscles
