…when we almost wrecked the boat!

It was HORRIFYING! We were trying to dock at a tiny marina called Cleopatra Marina (!!!…I cannot see the reasoning for adopting the name…! admittedly Cleopatra was technically Greek, given she was descendant of the Ptolemeos dynasty but…in the Ionion sea, at Preveza, cannot quite understand why “Cleopatra”…unless it’s a play on the sound of the word in Greek where Cleo=κλαιω means crying. That interpretation I think is totally appropriate!!!) Moving on from this very informative and equally enlightening parenthesis, I should say that actually crying was the only thing that DID NOT take place two days ago when we were docking …everything else ranging from wonder, panic, horror and a multitude of boat damaging and sinking visions, did take place.

We got to Aktio, where the marina is located the night before we were supposed to get in the marina so that we could go in the next morning, leave the boat and get a car and drive to Volos. So in the morning we did our due diligence to leave the place where we had anchored and go in the marina, forgetting a tiny detail…the side swim ladder was still hanging on the side of the boat. A tiny but extremely important detail! We got at Cleopatra marina around 11 am and asked to enter but we were told that we should dock on our side for today since their crew that could help us dock was not available and we should move the boat the next day. Since we were leaving Preveza the same day, we said we couldn’t move the boat tomorrow. They asked us what is the length of the boat (16 m/53ft) and then they told us to get in the marina backwards (stern first). Now, I am the Greek speaking crew and naturally I am communicating through the radio with the marina in Greek, passing the information in English to the Captain (master and commander of our boating life=Jeff) who is so convinced that I must have understood something wrong when I was telling him to back into the marina that he actually took over the radio and asked them to confirm that they were asking us to enter the marina backwards! they confirmed it (I will not dwell on the pleasant discussion that took place afterwards between the Captain and Crew about this little issue regarding communication and trust and other exotic emotional stuff that plague all couples from time to time, since subsequent events brought upon us the joy of survival that kind of overshadowed everything else!)

I expect that if any of my readers hate encountering a parenthesis in any text, they would be positively disgusted with the style of this entry… but I find them irresistibly necessary! Anyway, back to our wonderful day: Jeff was now driving the boat backwards and we were entering the marina and of course realizing the ingenuity of the advise to enter backwards since there was absolutely no space for any kind of maneuvering. The boat was going beautifully backwards into an extremely narrow place but we were not worried since in other marinas we docked in narrow places before just fine. What we didn’t know was that the currents in the Cleopatra marina were not only strong, they were INSANELLY determined to push everything and everyone in the direction that they were going which spelled destruction, since that direction was turning our boat sideways and pushing it towards the bows of the other boats. Now if you know anything about sailing you should know that all sail boats keep their anchor right in the tip of their nose at the bow. Ιf this was the 18th century one could picture this as the ram boats would have in their nose in order to sink other boats, but instead of an actual ram there is now an anchor and instead of a naval battle taking place, this is the docking attempts at a marina. So the current is pushing us sideways into the other boats, Jeff is using the bow thruster and the boat engine to navigate away from a 360o danger, I am trying to push away the other boats, people from the other boats are pushing us away from their nose, the current is determined to put a hole somewhere, anywhere, in our boat and ….(remember the tiny detail of us forgetting to take up the swim ladder earlier in the morning that I mentioned in the beginning of this -surprisingly long- description of our day?) well the swim ladder got caught to one of the front mooring lines of the other boats dragging us towards those ramming anchors. I couldn’t move the swim ladder since it got bent and tangled to the line; Jeff was at the stirring wheel having no clear picture of what was happening and why we could not go off; and I was wondering whether the insurance will cover us and the other boats for what will happen in the next 3 seconds…An angel of an owner of the boat that was tied with the tangled mooring line, bent down and pulling the line and jerked the ladder which came free! immediately, I hear one of the people on a boat further top the front yelling to Jeff (clear) and the boat started moving forward, which meant that in the next 2 seconds the ladder would be tangled in the line of the boat right next to the one we just got free from…I took out the pin that was securing the ladder on the side and in the split second before getting caught again I pulled the ladder up on the boat which now was almost completely destroyed. Halleluiah!!!!!!!!Jeff was driving us out of the Marina of Doom (much more appropriate than Cleopatra) and into safety! OMG!!!!! OMG!!! ….my limited vocabulary condensed into exclaiming repeatedly “OMG” I attribute to Post Traumatic Syndrome of the day that we almost wrecked our boat!!!! Jeff is of course the best captain alive, kept his calm and may not be THE God, but most certainly … a (Groundhog Day) kind of little god that saved our boat not to mention the superhuman efforts of the Crew that decided to promote themselves that day to Admiral status!

1. 

   App on my phone. Uses GPS and you make a circle where the boat can swing. If it goes outside…

2. 

   Jeff how does an anchor alarm work???

3. 

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4. 

   Wonderful.

5. 

   His Kingdom is not a desirable destination! 😄 If I should be careful, with no real ties to his Kingdom,…