Not all plain sailing... (Corfu - Paxos)

17 July 2021

After one final trip ashore to fill up all our water reserves, we left the bay at Corfu town yesterday morning. I’d go back again - it’s a busy but calm bay, with a great little town, undeserving of the less than great reputation it seems to have picked up over the years.

The destination for the day was Lakka - a small quayside town on the Northern tip of Paxos. This is a half day sail directly South from Corfu.

When sailing our ideal would be a constant breeze somewhere between gentle and brisk that pushes or drags us along sedately at around 6 knots. Well, perhaps a very small portion of our day yesterday fell into that category, but the rest fell into three very differing conditions:

Firstly there’s the barest whisper of wind, that however much you’d like to sail in, will only result in frustration and limp flappy sails and not a lot of forward motion.

Second, was with the wind just about creeping above the whisper level, but directly behind us - to some this would mean a great day for flying the spinnaker. Sadly for us though, until we’re a little more proficient at raising it, the likelihood of lost fingers or a ripped sail still puts us off. So instead of a beautiful ballooning spinnaker, I rigged up an effective, but somewhat less graceful wing on wing setup. The wind being weak enough that I needed to act as a pole and hold the clew (back corner) of the genoa sail out on the port side of the boat to stop it collapsing.

These first two, whilst not ideal, didn’t need us to put on life jackets...

As we neared the foot of Corfu, a few white horses began to show. As we continued South and left the lee of the island the wind and sea state picked up.

The third category, lasted the whole of the last half of the journey, and while it did allow us to sail without the engine, the strong wind (somewhere in the high 20s knot wise) and the large and constant rolly sea did have us reaching for life jackets.

So, suitably jacketed, and rolling around like riders on a broken rollercoaster we continued on our way. Chez’s long dormant seasickness reared it’s head again in the corkscrew turning conditions, and to say that she didn’t have the best of times would be putting it mildly.

After too long - perhaps 3 hours or so - we finally arrived at Lakka in the late afternoon.

Yachts were packed in like sardines. With Chez still not back to top form, and the wind still blowing fairly strongly we dropped anchor in closer proximity to our neighbours than we’d usually have liked to. Waking this morning to the rattle of anchor chains being raised, we thought it would be wise to relocate once the bay had cleared out a bit. Having suffered an interrupted rolly night, we opted to find somewhere on the shore to tie back to to reduce the effects of the swell. Selecting what we thought was a good spot - we dropped anchor and I swam back with a single line to hold us in place. As I took up this first line, and set our two main lines ashore, it became clear that our podgy tanned Italian starboard neighbour was concerned about how we’d set, or as he put it:

‘Itsa ok now, butta this afternoon there’sa wind’ (followed by an expansive meaningful shrug)

Not wanting to upset our new neighbours we took another anchor forward off our bow and dropped it at what we thought was a sufficient angle to negate any increase in wind. This didn’t placate the Italian, who stood on his bow in the classic disgruntled hands on hips stance, and gave the world a dirty look.

We settled down for half an hour or so, then realised our neighbours on the other side (port) had swung round to within 5 meters - they were free anchored opposed to our tie back. Chez called over to innocently ask if they were planning to be there for the day - and that’s when all he’ll broke loose!

A simple query, was rapidly escalated through a series of middle aged men in poorly wrapped sarongs to the end of level baddie ‘captain’ who proceeded to rant and rave and swear in increasingly angry tones. I joined Chez, now close to tears at the bow to try and calm the situation, but it was not to be. After 10 mins of heavily accented (Czech judging from the flag) sustained abuse and threats to ‘cut your farking lines’ he did exactly that!

As is the way these days, I videoed him, and asked him to identify himself, but received more of the same abuse and a one finger salute. A now distraught Chez (having also taken a tumble on deck during the show) and I agreed that simply leaving would be the best option. So after a few more swims to retrieve what remained of our sliced off anchor and get our stern ropes clear we were away - both shaken by the incident we headed down towards a previous haunt of Gaios in a shocked silence. Anchored here (with no neighbours anywhere near!) and slowly settled down.

Over the last 3 years, we’ve had lots of interactions with boats close to us, almost always polite, and always easily resolved in a calm and courteous manner. I think what shocked us the most today, was not the quick brandishing of a knife, but just how rapidly someone could go from nothing to rage filled lunatic over what from our perspective was a nothing issue in a bay with flat calm water and no wind.

Oh well. I’ve added this individual to the ‘revenge is best served cold’ list - the good thing about that list is that my memory is sufficiently bad that I will erase the incident before I need to start putting horses heads into anyone’s beds!