Sundowners and BBQs (Elounda)

 

26th Oct 2020 (Elounda)

We had a very mediocre Sunday lunch yesterday at Rudy’s bar in Elounda. It’s a Ska themed bar that carries it off quite well, with the occasional two tone flourish here and there and unobtrusive cool ska tunes playing softly in the background. We’re there with Debbie and Lachie and Carl and Jen. Highlights of the meal being the spilling of Chez’s beer as Jenny and Lach joust over Lach’s flat out refusal to chink glasses properly: “We didn’t do it in the golf club!”. I’ve already said the food was mediocre, and it was, but having not sampled any Pommie fair for some time, even the underdone spuds and overdone peas were a welcome change. After a long late lunch we had an impromptu sundowners session on our boat, where fun was had by all - possibly too much by Lachie, who, it was agreed, would be getting several telling offs from Debbie once they were back on their own boat. 

We arranged to head round to the lagoon that hides behind Elounda with Carl and Jen the following morning for an end of season beach BBQ. After a quick trip to shore in the morning to replenish the depleted beer stocks we headed off. Closely followed by ‘Dream’ : (Carl and Jen’s boat) we made it round to the lagoon in under an hour, saying farewell to the holding tank contents en route. 

Once set in the pretty lagoon, I headed over to the beach to collect some firewood. I was sadly able to collect a lot, as the beach is positioned so that it acts as a rubbish collector for all that the wind and waves bring - mainly sun bleached plastic in all it’s forms. With a tender full of wood, I headed back to the boat via ‘Dream’. Carl and I then scoped out a suitable location for the nights festivities - there being a jetty with ready made fire pit and seating all setup for us. Just prior to sunset ( 5ish, the clocks went back yesterday) we all headed over and sparked up the fire (with a little assistance from some petrol from the outboard). I soon realised that the amount of wood we had wasn’t likely to last the night so whipped back over to the beach to pick up some more while the others setup our camp for the evening. With a gentle glow from the fire we laughed and joked the night away, listening mainly to Carl’s innumerable tales from his long and varied life and career. There was a brief interruption for Jen to take a ‘comfort break’, something she didn’t fancy doing behind a bush - so both her and Carl rapidly hopped into the tender to dash back to Dream. In their haste to head off, Carl snagged a line around his prop bringing them to a complete stop. Thankfully the issue was resolved quick enough to avoid Jen needing to ‘aqua dump’ - a recently discussed activity that still eludes some of us. Moving on: The food, various foil wrapped veggies and some sausages, was soon done, and tasted pretty good, even the char-coaled baked potatoes which were a little ‘over’ to put it mildly. Prodding the fire and listening to, chilled cover versions Chez had put together, and later Carl’s fairly proficient guitar strumming the evening was all too soon over. Yawning, and surprisingly still only half cut, we headed back to our separate boats, and with an early start scheduled for the morning we were soon tucked up - Chez now heavily breathing next to me (some might say snoring) as I write this in bed.