Port Stretto, Arki, Thursday 28 July 2016

The anchor held perfectly well all night.  We were up but not too early because we aren’t going far.  We want to try to re-visit an anchorage we went to last year.  It is a tiny inlet on the small island of Arki.  There are four mooring buyos and a taverna.  Last year all the buoys were occupied, so we anchored in the next bay.  We hope to get a buoy today.

As we are only going 9 miles or so, I decide not to take a pill.  I am OK on the journey, but only just.  The conditions are more or less identical to yesterday.  A force 4 wind on the nose with a lumpy sea, although the waves have gone down a bit.  But I manage the two hour journey.  When we get to the bay it seems that it is full.  However, for a change luck is with us and as we approach a boat leaves one of the buoys.  Also we note that there is another buoys further in that we might use.  Richard heads for the further in buoy and would you believe it, we hit the bottom!  The book does say that the moorings are in shallow water, but we didn’t think we would ground.  R takes the keel up a bit to move us, but decides not to go for the inner buoy and we go to the next one.

The fun then starts when I try to pick up the buoy.  There is a pick up line, but the loop at the end is not open.  The rope has pushed itself together and for the first four or five attempts I cannot get a boat hook into the loop.  When I finally do, I find that the line is very short and I cannot pull it up to the boat deck.  I am hanging on to the boat hook for dear life.  I nearly lose it at least twice.  I have to pull on it with what feels like the weight of the whole boat.  I have no idea why it held and the handle didn’t fall off!  In the end after a great deal of heaving I manage to get a rope through the look (such as it was) and finally attach the line to the boat.  By the time I am finished I am exhausted.  Later in the day two of the other buoys come free and I watch others pick up perfectly ordinary lines with nice open loops.  Why did I get the duff one?

Anyway, the spot is lovely.  We have a very leisurely afternoon, doing puzzles, reading the paper and swimming.  In the evening we go to the taverna.  It is pretty basic, but it is nice not to have to cook.  It is still a bit blowy, but not bad and it means it is a little cooler so we can sleep.