Mon 12 Aug – More damage at anchor

We had originally planned to sail to our next destination, Astipalea, today. However after staring into the angry waves and getting our faces blown off by the wind yesterday we thought we maybe give the weather another day to calm down, especially since the forecast looked much more friendly on Tuesday.

As we were still enjoying breakfast we heard a French boat anchoring next to us. If you remember our previous anchoring adventures with a French boat close to us you’ll understand that we were getting a bit nervous as we saw the guy struggle to find a place and dig in his anchor. I went outside and gave him a bit of evil eye in the hope that this would deter him from anchoring too close to us. It must have worked, as not more than 2 minutes later we heard a knock on the hull. It was the Frenchman giving us his telephone number in case anything should go wrong with his boat. I had a good look and his boat seemed to be a good distance from ours, so no problem there. His English wasn’t great and my French is non-existent, but using the old hand-and-feed he confirmed that his anchor was well set and dug in. By the time we decided to go ashore for lunch the wind had picked up and it looked like his boot was a bit closer than it was before. Oh well, it must have just stretched out the anchor chain, or so we thought. How wrong we were.

The whole time during lunch we kept an eye on the two boats and even though they were not touching it looked like they were getting uncomfortably close. But then the wind would come around again, and the boats would drift apart, and everything was fine. Our plan was to go for a walk after lunch and just as we were about to leave the little bay another gust brought the boats veeeeery close to each other. The Frenchman must have seen it too as we saw him get in his dinghy and race towards his boat. He started his engine, faffed about a bit and motored away into an anchorage across the other side of the bay. We had a good look at Bini through the mini binoculars that we had brought, and everything looked okay. Yet somehow we had this nagging feeling that something wasn’t right, and we decided to go back to Bini and have a quick look around. And sure enough – as we approached her, we could see that one of the stanchions on the starboard side was awkwardly bent in a 45 degree angle. Oh no! We had a quick look around the boat but other than the stanchion and the guardrails everything seemed to be OK. I could feel the anger starting to boil in me, at the Frenchmen as much as at myself for not moving the boat when we had the chance. Oh well, I had the Frenchman’s phone number so I would give him a call. In my confusion I managed to call the shop that we bought the generator from instead, and much confusion ensued. After figuring out who I called and explaining my mistake, I had a nice conversation with the guy in the shop, who had found our blog and complimented me on the nice website and the beautiful girlfriend. So, dear Mr. Shop-Man, if you are reading this: thanks again for the generator and sorry for the confusion!

We finally managed to get a hold of the Frenchman, and he and his wive came over in their dinghy. By that time I could feel the anger boil in my stomach again, and I was ready to give them a proper ear full for anchoring so close when they had literally the whole bay. But then looking at the apologetic look on their faces, wallet and marine catalogue clutched under their arms, I couldn’t really be mad at them. We had a good look around and agreed on what I think was a fair price for the repairs, and off they went again. Communication was somewhat difficult due to the language barrier, but Mr. Frenchman was blaming the bad holding and the strong winds for the disaster. I beg to differ, as we’ve been here for three days with a lot more wind, and I think it was more his tiny anchor and the lack of technique that was to blame. But oh well, these things happen and I think we can get the repairs done while going on a trip to Germany in two weeks. We spent the evening playing around with our new generator, charging laptops, drone batteries and everything else that needs 230V pure sine wave goodness.