Sayiadha – Sunday 23 September 2018

During the night it was so still that I thought we might have grounded.   But no, it was just completely calm.

We didn’t rush off but left at 10am.  Again there is no wind so we are motoring, but not for long because our destination is only 9 miles away.  It is a little town with a small harbour.  The pilot book says that the depths are less than 2 metres.  It is supposed to be quiet with few boats. With our lifting keel it seemed perfect especially as it was suggested that mooring alongside would be best.

When we got to Sayiadha it was not what was expected.  The outer mole, where it was suggested one could moor alongside was most uninviting especially as we couldn’t see any mooring rings or bollards.  So we went in the very narrow harbour entrance (8 meters it is said) and Richard took up the keel as the depth was reading at 1.8 metres.  When we got in there is a lot of room.  Again the pilot advises not to moor stern to with anchor on the basis that holding is not good.  We have had that problem too much and don’t want to chance it.  So as there seems to be plenty of room we try to moor alongside.  The problem is that we are being blown off (albeit by a modest wind).  A Brit in a boat a bit along comes to our rescue.  It was all a bit fraught and not helped when Richard got absorbed in tying on a further warp and left the motor engaged in slow ahead and let the boat motor straight into the pier.  It made a rotten noise, but we only hit the metal strip on the bows and maybe cracked a bit of the gelcoat behind it.    We finally settle at the end of the pier alongside.  The problem is that all the other (3) boats are stern to on anchor.  We feel like we are abusing the space, but there is plenty of room and we are told that there were only 5 boats in last night.

Well, it didn’t work out like that.  As the afternoon wore on more and more large boats came in.  We couldn’t work out how they cleared the entrance until we are told it is more like 1.9-2 metres deep.  In the end there are 12 boats moored for the night including us.  We are completely blocked in with one boat right up to our bows and another small motorboat is alongside at right angles to us.  We shall just have to wait for everyone to leave in the morning to get out. It should be interesting particularly as the wind is supposed to go around to blow us on!

There appears to be no charge for mooring and there is water so we could top up and have proper showers this evening before going to dinner and eating the local specialty, fresh prawns. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Venice - Thursday 24 May 2018

Well, we are still here in Venice and it doesn’t look like we will be able to leave before Sunday (though Saturday is still a possibility).  The weather has been hot and sunny and is getting to me. I fell asleep twice today! The saga of the works goes on.  We waited most of the morning for anyone to turn up and then walked the ½ mile to the office to find out what was happening when we were told the engineer and rigger were on the way to the boat.  So Richard rushed back to the boat and I loaded up the Times on my ipad. The only internet here is in the hotel so we have to come down to do anything. The upshot is that the water pump has to be replaced for a less powerful one.  The engineer is coming to do that tomorrow morning. Will we be charged for this twice?!  We can see another argument looming. The rigging in another problem.  After he put the main up Richard found that he could not rig the reefing lines.  We have had problems with them and had asked for that to be loo
Read more

Shengjin (Albania) – Thursday 28 June 2018

Image
Well our plans to check out of Montenegro didn’t quite go to plan.     We woke up to the alarm at 6am and went to deal with customs and the immigration police at about 6:45.     The customs office appeared to be closed, but when they heard us at the door they opened it and took our piece of paper from the Harbour Master.   However when we got to the police they told us they do not open until 7am and we had to bring the boat around to them.     By the time we did all this it was about 8am before we left Bar harbour.     The weather forecast was better but there were still problems.  The wind has dropped but there is nearly a metre swell in the sea.  I took a pill before we set out in the light of this.  With the sea state and the late start we abandoned the plan to go straight to Durres and headed to Shengjin instead.  In fact the journey was not that bad.  The sea settled down after a couple of hours.  The main problem is that it became very cloudy and cold. I had to put on long t
Read more

Luke Polace, Mljet – Tuesday 19 June 2018

Image
Well we have had another day that hasn’t gone to plan.     I never got though to Korcula marina. So we had to make some decisions.   The weather forecast for going back to Korcula was bad.     There were predicted to be 20 knot winds on the nose.     Also going to Korcula would mean going north when we want to go south.     So for all those reasons we gave up on that idea and decided it would be best to make our way to Dubrovnik where Jonnie had the details of an engineer who fixed his bow thruster earlier in the season.     So first Jonnie spoke to the engineer who said he could help us if we contacted him when we got to Dubrovnik. Then we made reservations to go into Dubrovnik marina on Wednesday and Thursday.  So today we would go back to our original plan of going to the island of Mljet where there is supposed to be a lovely bay.  There we could go on a restaurant pontoon if not too crowded or windy so we could manoever without hitting anything, or go on a mooring buoy or anch
Read more