Beyond the Ionian on Morning Calm
Part 2
We left this tale as guests and crew were heading off to bed after a fantastic day of swimming, barbecuing, sailing and exploring ashore on the stunningly beautiful island of Sifnos.
If you have not already, please read part 1 first.
I was awakened by a gentle rocking motion, locally becoming more pronounced, the source of which seemed to be a single white eye.
I sleep soundly onboard, normally with a sixth sense for when all is not as it should be. It took be a moment to compute that the rocking was being produced by an arm and the white eye, an iphone ‘’It’s windy out’’ explained Maya, “go and have a look”. I met Jean in the pilot house ‘windy’ she said pointing outside, then duty dispensed she tootled off back to her cabin.
The ladies were correct, it was windy in itself neither uncommon nor particularly note worthy. However due to my choice of mooring the previous night, we were now beam to the wind with the anchor chain heading off in a 10 o’clock direction to port and the port shore line emitting middle C, no big deal for a Soprano singer, but quite tight for a yellow polypropylene rope. Definitely not ideal and I needed to release some pressure, so I turned on the Nespresso machine, whilst formulating a plan.
Normally in this situation you would drop the shore lines and motor forward a little on the basis that the amount of chain laid out, even should you pull a bit in, is more than enough to hold. However we had 3 complicating factors.
1, our shore lines are of the floating furry type, much loved by the previously mentioned mermaid and pretty impossible to replace hereabouts. Next our tender is always stowed hoisted to deck level on the port side which although quick to deploy is a bit noisy for those guests still asleep below. Thirdly we had a new neighbor in the form of a 40ft German Catamaran which had dragged to a position where he was floating across our chain. This was no issue as after we disconnected from the shore and sat back to the new wind direction our chain would slide along the bottom leaving us clear of the cat’s current line of dragging. My hesitation came from the profusion of a brightly lit white head torch wearing crew who were running around the deck, not content with blinding each other, were shining a 50 gazillion candle power spotlight around the anchorage blinding everyone else, why do people do that? My fathers’ dry ”none so blind as those that cannot see” came to mind, a minimum of marine interaction with them was premium.
Decision made, as we were in no immediate peril, I would quietly launch the tender and go and retrieve the down-wind shore line, having the main engine running as a gentle introduction to those below that something was afoot and more boat noise likely to follow. A sleepy Maya was primed to haul in the released line, it has to be said, with a little less enthusiasm than she had deployed it 5 hours earlier.
This part went smoothly, although getting free of the halyards whilst being pressed against the side of the boat was a phaff. Now in the dinghy, I could see our bow was slightly down wind of optimal, probably caused by the chain straightening to the new direction of pull, but enough to force my hand… we needed to move.
Back onboard I put our running lights on, fired up the instruments, taking time to reduce the brightness levels on the displays, there are about 14 of them and when not dimmed are like staring into the sun.
Then onto the swim platform, ladder up and the bitter end of the shore line untied and ready to run free. On deck Morning Calm’s huge stern cleats allow slipping a tensioned mooring line to be very safe and controlled. Normally I would have the engine ticking over in reverse to stop us shooting forward like a cork out of a bottle, however in this instance, that’s exactly what I wanted.
Clear of the line, we sprang forward pulling 10metres or so of chain as we went, then let the boat settle back on the anchor again, as predicted clear of the catamaran. Once confident that we were holding, Maya stayed on deck and I went back to shore to unravel the furry shoreline from the very spiky, sticky rocks. Maya could have taken the tender to collect the line, but it was dark, windy and wavy and the fore mentioned rocks were just waiting to puncture our dinghy, so I felt it would have been an unfair responsibility for her, as without a good reliable tender our charter plans change dramatically.
We spent another 10mins on deck, more coffee, high fives and a quick postmortem and then the wind died.
For the 2nd time in what felt like an incredibly short time, I was awaked by an unfamiliar arm, this one was attached to Paula, a habitual early riser and the onboard chronicler of sunrise quality, without preamble she summed up the situation.
“It’s windy”, with the added encouragement of “I think we are moving”. With practiced alacrity, I swung out of bed briefly marveling that Maya was still asleep or at least giving the outward impression of being so and clicked the little button on the coffee machine and hared out on deck.
It was indeed as the word of the hour described windy, in fact f-bomb windy and it seemed almost imperceptibly the scenery was also changing. Oh the joys…
Morning Calm’s anchor chain enters the bow about 2/3 of the way up between the waterline and the deck, it’s really nifty, really cute. I’m most fond of the setup, however it has one drawback when recovering the chain, it has to come in from straight ahead. Either as I normally do, you leave the helm centered, engine in neutral and slowly operate the windlass up. The boat gathers momentum following the chain at a speed the windlass can easily cope with, then pausing as the bow passes over the anchor, the forward motion breaks out the anchor so you can haul up the last bit. I do this five hundred times a year (at least) and have done for the last 10 years without incident or damage.
The other method which I find wholly unsatisfactory, usually a last resort and better done in private, is to have someone on the foredeck waving their arms around like a demented ground crew trying to park a plane whilst listening to YMCA. All the while expecting the 40ton boat upon which they are standing, to pivot around like a bloody ballerina.
Regardless the chain must enter the boat from straight ahead or it rubs too much on the bow roller sides. Method 1 was a no go, way too much wind for the windlass to drag us forward and method 2, Christ no, someone might be watching…………… standards Baby.
In the end I used a rather grubby method, where I picked a point on the land in line with the anchor , motored forward, then used the windlass helm control to pull in some chain until the tell tale graunch from up forward made me stop and allow the wind to blow us back inline again. During the realignment pauses, I would scamper forward and kick over the chain in the locker preventing a snarl up there.
I had managed to recover some 40 meters or so this way with only another 30 to go when Paula, taking a break from charting the suns journey into the sky, remarked that our haphazard stern first course was bringing us very close to the very large wedding cake like motor yacht (many decks) moored to the rocks at 90 degrees to our path.
At the same time the sudden slowing of the windlass speed alerted me that our anchor, all 53kilos plus chain lots more kilos, had dragged into deeper water and was now hanging straight down as we approached the line of the motor boat’s chain. If we motored forward having hooked him, we would almost certainly trip his anchor, sending him backward into the rocks, definitely not a way to make friends. At least if I continued backwards, I would be in his lee and we could start the nightmare of untangling, but with no damage done.
I mimed my intentions to the other captain who was standing where the groom would be (to complete the wedding cake analogy), he waved acceptance in an already condemned way, the other captain that is, not the groom, knowing that his morning was just about to be destroyed.
By this stage, either in a solidarity or morbid self interest our entire ships compliment was on deck, silently watching our anchor chain for the moment, when its angle change would mean that somewhere 20 odd meters down we had hooked the other boats chain and the fun and games would begin.
I looked up as the clouds parted and the early sun shone brightly through, a little bud of hope formed and we slid miraculously past the other boat. I’m not sure about the clouds and sun bit, but it definitely felt like that kind of moment.
Once sure we were clear, I motored very slowly in an exaggerated arch around the motor yacht and nudged our anchor onto the sandy bottom below.
Anchor recovered, we re-anchored upwind close to the beach and Maya produced an incredibly extravagant breakfast. What a night!
After breakfast and as it was still howling, the gang decided to go ashore and swim or potter for the morning. I think they were secretly trying to give Maya and I a breather, as it had been a fairly intense night.
Either way it was welcome, as I had some decisions to make. Originally the outline plan for our cruise would have been for us to head over to Dhespotiko island, next to Anti Paros, where the most incredible Temple of Apollo sits un spoilt by the needs of mass tourism on the beach overlooking the anchorage. After exploring Anti Paros and Paros we would spend a day around Iraklia, visiting the underwater plane wreck, again untouched, in the lunch time anchorage of Alimnia.
