Chelsea on Sea (Fiskado, Kefalonia)

We arrived at the oh so aptly nicknamed ‘Chelsea on sea’ a couple of days ago. Fiscado is a chic pastel painted quay town that usually caters to the UKs ‘well heeled and well keeled’ as Alan Wicker would have said. 

 Our arrival was not as polished as we’d have liked. The town quay, we know from previous experience, is too shallow for our draft, so we’d opted to tie back to shore on the opposite side of the little bay. There’s sufficient space there, as we’d arrived before the main onslaught of charter boats turn up for the day. On the downside, there’s a fairly brisk breeze on our beam, that’ll hamper our tie back plans. We drop anchor and reverse back... a long fraught 90 mins later we’re all set! 

That 90 minutes saw us doing various manoeuvres to entertain our soon to be new neighbours. Without boring you, or embarrassing myself, with too many details, red faced from winching we were glad to eventually have a cold beer in hand and settle down to the a much more relaxing pastime: watching other people try to do exactly what we’d just done. Of course, once you’re set, you are immediately an expert and can point out every little mistake they make. As the wind blew and the sun set, a parade of charter crews, yelling in a variety of languages, thrusting bows this way and that, performed a complex and at times seemingly random dance. Against all logic they were all safely tucked away before dark. The football Euro 2020 (a year late) is on at the moment. An afternoon punctuated by a single English cheer ( England 1 - Croatia 0 ), turned into a night filled with what sounded like Germans singing their hearts out in a beer keller. On reflection, I suspect it was Austrians and Dutch ( Austria 3 - Macedonia 1, and Netherlands 3 - Ukraine 2 ). The bars stopped playing music at the currently mandated midnight, with the revelers keeping the singsong going until about 3am when I dropped off. 

We’re invited for coffee on our neighbours boat the next morning, a nice chatty English/Danish couple out on their hols on a rather nice syndicate boat. Following that, we took a stroll round town. In the absence of incoming flights, the only tourists appeared to be the crews of the yachts here. The town is as quaint and pretty as we’d remembered, and all looked rather lovely with the sun and early summer blooms out in full effect. 

Spent a lazy afternoon once again watching the comings and going’s of the boats, and helping our new neighbours in on either side - Germans on one side, Austrians the other - both out on their holidays, and both really nice groups of people and very grateful of what little help and advice we could provide as they came in. Quite a rolly night, but more ‘rock a bye baby’ than anything more fierce than that. One of the departing Germans couldn’t start his tender after he’d untied the stern lines ashore, so I ended up towing/rowing him back to his mothership. He advised: ‘you are my hero’ and the guy on the helm called me his ‘bestest friend’ - all of which left me with a ‘done my good deed for the day’ glow. We left there this morning without the dramas we’d experienced on our arrival, and as I write this we are sailing at a gentle 4knots over to Vliho and the promise of good fish and chips at the yacht club. Edit - We were surprised and delighted to be greeted by a tender containing our friends Glenn and Lynne and their dog Lola just a we set anchor in Vliho. Great to see them albeit briefly - they’re a really lovely couple.