Gaios, Day 1
Jul. 29th, 2007 10:41 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylLeft Mourtos early to head for Paxos, to visit a friend of my nephew's in Gaios. He'd made friends with a kid whose parents had just moved to Greek from South Africa after the family patriarch, an emigrant from Paxos, had decided to return home after making good in SA. Needless to say, for a six year old kid who'd just started at a Greek school, meeting an English child of the same age was something of a godsend and the two of them got on like a house on fire.
Having left Mourtos early, we managed to arrive in Gaios in time to get a spot on the quay. It was such a good spot that, for the first time this visit, I decided to stay at the helm and take the boat in, rather than handing over to pater.
Mooring in a big heavy boat like ours is a bit on the tricky side and requires a steady nerve, partly because the boat needs to be moving quite fast astern in order to have any steerage and partly because, when going astern, the propeller has a strong tendency to walk the stern round. But once you've got the hang of things — the trick is to accelerate hard so that you've got steerage and then drop into neutral to prevent prop walk problems — it's not too bad.
Most of the rest of the day was taken up with reading, while the children went off to a beach somewhere, Constantinos went to Anti-Paxos, pater pottered around fixing things and mater went to the beach. For supper, we went to Pan and Theo's taverna, just across the road from the boat.
Updated: My attempts to go to bed early were foiled by a guy who was absolutely convinced that he could get his fat assed motor boat into a gap just down from us that was at least half a metre too narrow for it. After much shouting and much concern that he'd dropped his anchor over us, he made his first attempt to moor but was forced to give up when he managed to bump into the boats on either side. He managed to persuade one of the other boats to tighten their lines to free up some more space — not that much persuasion was required, given that their only other choice was yet another bumping — and eventually managed to tie up in the gap.
What an unpleasant and stressful end to the day.
Having left Mourtos early, we managed to arrive in Gaios in time to get a spot on the quay. It was such a good spot that, for the first time this visit, I decided to stay at the helm and take the boat in, rather than handing over to pater.
Mooring in a big heavy boat like ours is a bit on the tricky side and requires a steady nerve, partly because the boat needs to be moving quite fast astern in order to have any steerage and partly because, when going astern, the propeller has a strong tendency to walk the stern round. But once you've got the hang of things — the trick is to accelerate hard so that you've got steerage and then drop into neutral to prevent prop walk problems — it's not too bad.
Most of the rest of the day was taken up with reading, while the children went off to a beach somewhere, Constantinos went to Anti-Paxos, pater pottered around fixing things and mater went to the beach. For supper, we went to Pan and Theo's taverna, just across the road from the boat.
Updated: My attempts to go to bed early were foiled by a guy who was absolutely convinced that he could get his fat assed motor boat into a gap just down from us that was at least half a metre too narrow for it. After much shouting and much concern that he'd dropped his anchor over us, he made his first attempt to moor but was forced to give up when he managed to bump into the boats on either side. He managed to persuade one of the other boats to tighten their lines to free up some more space — not that much persuasion was required, given that their only other choice was yet another bumping — and eventually managed to tie up in the gap.
What an unpleasant and stressful end to the day.
