Still Day 2 - A troublesome departure from Vathy and Palionisos Bay

Our routing for the first two days is really all about getting in the right place for the wind to make the journey to Astipalyaia easier, but more about that in tomorrow's blog. After a thoroughly pleasant day in Vathy we ambled back to the boat to start thinking about getting ready to leave. Start thinking about getting ready to leave, no rush, we can take our time. Then an idiot arrives and changes everything. We didn't really see what happened, but the new arrival had obviously dropped his anchor, but then was advised by the harbour master that where he was thinking of parking he couldn't. So he then pulled up his anchor, along with our anchor. Now we're in the room and fully aware of what's going on. Eventually the new entrant manages to untangle our anchor, drops it and clears off (un-beknown to us across our neighbours anchor).

So now we're no longer anchored safely so we decide to leave rather than re-anchoring. Sure enough as we pull our anchor up we firstly discover an old carpet on the anchor chain then that our anchor is indeed tangled on our neighbour's anchor chain. Readers of previous blogs will know this is a fairly regular occurrence, and I would have taken pictures to show exactly what tangled anchors and chains look like, but we were rather busy at the time. Here's a picture to show the issue and solution.

The idea is that you get a line under the anchor chain that's tangled on your anchor, lower your anchor until it's free of the chain then release the chain that you were tangled on. There are two problems, firstly getting the line under the chain (you can't reach from the bow) and secondly helpful bellowed suggestions from people on-shore or neighbouring boats, most of which are not helpful.

The two methods the get a line under the chain are either to create a loop in the line then with a boat hook try to 'fish' for the loop under the chain (not always easy) or to launch your dinghy and carry out the operation at sea level. It's much easier from a dinghy but you have to decide which is more of a phaff whilst listening to bellowed advice. In our situation at Vathy we had the added complication we could either drift onto the bows of other anchored boats or into rocks on the other side of the narrow bay. So whilst I was freeing the anchor it needed careful boat handling at the helm by Bill to make sure we didn't come a cropper. In the end all was well and we escaped un-scathed.

Our over-nighter at Palionisos was tethered to buoy, easy peasy and great for an early (7am) departure for Astipalyaia. Even better we were picked up by a tender to take us to then taverna for dinner. A couple of pictures of Palionisos.

Stay safe,

Yamas!