Sun 23 Jun – Bini gets damaged in Finikas

Without much sleep we left our gusty bay in the morning, destination Finikas, a few miles down the west coast. The gusts were still rolling in so we were expecting outside of the bay to be the same, but were surprised to find….zero wind. That really was the oddest of anchorages.

The meltemi was due to start blowing on Tuesday so we thought we’d get a spot on the harbour wall. Finikas is supposed to be nicely protected and the pontoon is south facing, meaning the boats would get blown off the pontoon. We moored up next to a big cat and settled in. About half an hour after we arrived a pretty hefty swell came in so we adjusted our lines and pulled up some chain to get us right off the wall. Nick, the harbour manager came around, looked at Bini and gave us the thumbs up. We were sitting nicely. We went for lunch via the Port Police to show our paperwork. On the way back we noticed we had a new neighbour, an equally huge catamaran which made Bini look absolutely tiny in the middle. 

We were still sitting nicely so in the afternoon we went for a snorkel as it was roasting hot! The water was so clear that you can swim right off the wall. I was looking at our nicely dug in anchor when I felt a big wave. I looked up at Bini, she was moving but not too much. I looked down at the anchor again which was completely dug in. But the huge waves just kept coming and I knew instantly this wasn’t good. I raced back to Bini, out of the water and along the pontoon to find her being violently swung backwards and forwards (literally imagine a kid on a swing), ricocheting off the two neighbouring cats, and smashing hard into the stone wall. Luckily for the other boats, they all had people still on board who could try to deal with what was happening.

I had to get on the boat, which by now was surrounded by a dozen onlookers. I sat on the pontoon ready to leap, ignoring the shouts from people that it was too dangerous, and despite Nick and his friend having a firm grip on my arm. I watched helplessly as she hit the wall for the 4th or 5th time, convinced that with every impact she would sustain more and more serious damage. On one swing she swung up so high that I was able to literally step on from the pontoon, which had been standing at least a meter higher than her sugar scoop. Once onboard I started the engine, put in in forward gear and took up as much anchor-chain as the windlass could cope with. After what was a good ten minutes the biggest of the waves finally subsided but the boats were still swinging. Just when I thought we were in the clear the stern lines of the neighbouring catamaran hooked under our outboard engine and lifted it clean into the water. Still frantic I was shouting at someone to fish it out and one amazing guy managed to rescue it, leaning right in supported by his friends holding his legs. Needless to say we thanked them profusely later and delivered a bottle of rum as a small gift. Whether the outboard works remains to be seen.

During all this Tom was still in the water and only realised something was badly wrong when he saw me frantically waving from the bow. He arrived back to find me sitting on the sugar scoop, in tears, surrounded by some rather dumbfounded onlookers. Nick was in shock saying he’d never experienced anything like it. 

The most obvious damage (aside from the shredded fenders) was to the steps whose metal had been bent and twisted by the impact. Looking further we saw the damage to the aft most part of the sugar scoop. The rubber had disintegrated and the fibreglass that forms the “lip” of the sugar scoop had been crumpled in places. A Swedish guy from one of the neighbouring cats came to sit with us to inspect the damage, along with Nick. They were both very knowledgable and gave the same advice about how to do a quick repair. They reassured us it looked worse than it was, but were sympathetic to our state of shock.

Nick kindly offered us a spot within his harbour, saying it’d be quieter in there so we could do the repair. Tom walked around to see the spot and I went down into the cabin to get changed – I was still wearing my bikini! What greeted me down below was chaos. The clothing boxes in the fore cabin had fallen from their shelves, everything had come off the saloon table, the saltwater from the loo had spilt over into the heads (thankfully it was clean) and most disturbing was the dislodged fire extinguisher lying in the aft cabin. It’s secured by a very strong clip which I have trouble dislodging by hand, evidence to how severe the impact was. We gave the boat a thorough check over and she seemed OK. No water in the bilges and engine room was dry. The contents of the lockers had been shaken up and our spare anchor narrowly missed severing the fuel line of the diesel tank, rescued only by a rolled up welcome mat. Note to self: secure things better in the lockers.

We slipped our lines, lifted anchor and headed around into the harbour where we tied up. We gave “the wound” a wash with fresh water and left it to dry.

In the evening, which was calm without a breath of wind we walked around the bay and found a lovely spot to have a much needed cocktail, and to start finding a boatyard to do a proper repair. Before we turned in for the night we took a bottle of thank-you rum to the guys who had valiantly rescued our outboard.

Tom and I have talked at length about what we could have done differently. Should the anchor chain have been even tighter? Should we have been even further off the wall? Did being squeezed in-between two huge cats make the situation worse? We also talked it through with Nick who assured us there was nothing we could have done. The “mini-tsunami” as he (and subsequently the locals) started calling it he hypothesised was caused by the enormous engines of a cocaine smuggling boat. Who knows but what we do know is that we never want to experience that again.