Bad night on a buoy (Nafpaktos)

 

6th July 2020 ( Nafpaktos ) 

Arrived here yesterday and anchored just outside the walled fortress harbour. It’s (yet another) gorgeous looking place, with a majestic castle overlooking the tiers of houses below. Bizarrely, Nafpaktos does not appear to be on the main tourist trail, which I’m amazed by. We’d had a quick look around yesterday when we arrived, nice scale to the place, and it being a Sunday there were locals out in force thronging the stone harbourside cafes. This morning we are heading up to the castle on foot. After tying up the tender we wiggle our way upwards, catching occasional peeks at the boat from ever higher vantage points. As the houses thin out, we try and keep to the shade of the pine trees that dot our path. We made it to the entrance of the castle - both now glowing like beetroots from the exertion and the hot sun. There is a small ticket booth, where a friendly and helpful man relieves us of €3 each. He comes out of his hut to show us a map and points us up the right path. As we set off, a young man asks me to take a photo of his family, I accept - but only on the condition they all smile - which has the desired effect. Once done, his mum then says ‘merci beaucoup’ with a questioning tone. I reply “Thankyou or Efaristo would do” We’re then asked where we’re from (always a tricky one these days) - “England, Australia and Crete” after a little more explanation he then shares that he’s Greek, but living near Coventry, and while he’s on furlough from work he thought ‘why not’ 

They went on their way, and we continued up to the summit of the castle to survey the town below. Stopped for a picnic in a nice shady spot, then re-wiggled our way back down towards the quay taking a different route to the one we had ascended. Our phones tell us that we’ve walked the equivalent of 33 flights of stairs by the time we get back to sea level - well worth it. 

Returning to the boat, our neighbour, a large flashy motor boat has its guests whizzing around on jet skis. 

This, and the fact that we’d now ‘done’ the small town, we decided to head off. 

Our first item to be negotiated on this journey is to pass under the longest suspension bridge in the world (not sure if that’s 100% true, but the local guidebooks seem to think so...) 

I jump on the radio to request / advise the bridge control tower that we’d like to go under - all quite straightforward, they wanting to know the name of our boat and the height of the mast. Only slight confusion over the boat name:

Me: “Serenity Now”

Him: “ Serenity Nail?”

Me: “November Oscar Whiskey”

Him: “Ahhh... Now!”

We had both our sails up as we headed underneath the bridge, with significant clearance above. Dodged two car ferries that crossed our path then headed for our first destination of the day.... a Lidl supermarket on the beach road about 2 hours sail away. We dropped anchor when we got there, in heavy darkening sky’s, I dropped the tender, fitted the oars and began rowing the short distance (less than 100m) to shore. The angry sky is now forking lightening, and a light drizzle has started. I make it to shore to be greeted by a scruffy little brown scamp who points to the tender and says ‘Money!’ - I know a protection racket when I see one...OK:

“€1 now, and another one when I get back” he seems to understand this, and gleefully accepts part one of the deal. (I padlock the oars to the boat regardless) Lidl is just over the road, as I get a trolley, I’m accosted by the second entrepreneur of the day (I’m guessing refugees, but have nothing to confirm this other than them being a little browner than the usual Greeks). 

This one is working the trolley angle - taking peoples trolleys back and by doing so he gets the coin deposit required to unlock it. I play along and make enough good noises that he understands that I’m a decent mark.

I tour Lidl and pick up the listed provisions - filling a trolley, then head back out, he’s all smiles, but looks bemused as I roll the trolley out of the car park. I point to the boat and make a wavy motion  with my hand - a light goes on in his head as he understands, then proceeds to help me across the road like an underage lollipop man. He’s joined by members 3 and 4 of the local chamber of commerce and the 3 of them ( the one originally ‘guarding’ the boat having now disappeared) unload my trolley and then with the grace of a well rehearsed hotel porter, grin and show me their upturned palms - they too are rewarded for their services and as I row away I see them trotting over the road with the trolley to secure the rest of their bounty. 

The overloaded tender is a little harder to row back to the boat, as the sea and wind have now picked up a bit. A relieved Chez greets me, we unload the shopping then decide to wait for a while to see if the rain and lightening pass. It does, and I now write this as we carry on westward towards Zakinthos our honeymoon destination, a few stops and days away yet. 

Edit - at journeys end today we were to pick up one of 4 buoys next to a golf course. Arriving in rapidly dimming conditions we made a couple of passes at the large rusty,  uninviting metal bouys with Chez at the helm and me with Dean Gaffney (our nickname for the gaff hook) at the bow. We got close - but no cigar. Plan B was to lower the tender and for me to row over and attach a line, and then row back.. the theory was sound, but in practice it wasn’t the most graceful of moorings... rope too short, swelly sea and both of us tired didn’t make our task any easier. After a few hairy moments, we were secured by two lines from the bow to a rusty ring on top of the buoy. After a BFD (breakfast for dinner - basically a fry up), we popped our heads topside to see the buoy (now dubbed ‘old mate’) nearly alongside and potentially going to bang into our hull. It seemed the wind had changed and we’d swung towards it. After more frantic activity (using the tender as a fender, gaffing the buoy away and paddling the stern around) we decided the riding sail may be a good idea.. time will tell if it does help, but sitting writing this at just gone midnight everything seems to be OK so far - fingers crossed.

Edit 2: Crossing fingers didn’t exactly work... woke to a shuddering thump to the hull, and after a sprightly jump from bed, found Chez already up on deck, the two mooring lines both wrapped around the underside of the buoy and lightening flashes giving the whole scene an even more nightmarish look - it’s 3:30. After 15 mins of angst and pondering solutions the buoy reacted favourably to some gentle gaff prodding and spun itself back round. That released the mooring lines, and were now sitting here at 4:15 sipping tea (thanks love) waiting for dawn and the storm to pass when we can get away from this particular spot. Unlikely to re-visit. 

Edit 3: Its 6am. The storm passed, its light now. I stayed up keeping an eye on the untrustworthy ‘old mate’ to make sure he didn’t get up to any more tricks - he didn’t. 

Edit 4: 6:30am - wind turns and drops and old mate starts causing trouble again.. I shout Chez awake, and although bleary eyed, she’s up and at ‘em straight away. We fend off for a while then I’m back in the tender, undo the bowlines on the buoy (surprisingly easily) - and as the sun starts it’s long day baking us in the East we head away from the mooring buoys never to return again!