A few days after Chris departs our Kiwi friends Kevin and Diane join us at Kalamata Marina for their fourth visit to Envoy. Kevin and Diane have been boating for many years, own a sailing yacht in Auckland and Kevin has been active in all sorts of other boating activitiess ranging from a long association with Auckland Coastguard (of which he is a former President and current Patron), to boating education and writing books on knots.
Kevin repairing a splice in our Dyneema RHIB hoist
Kevin and I visit the Port Police to have Kevin and Diane added to our Crew List – this is necessary whenever new crew join a boat cruising in Greece.
First thing one morning I ask Kevin’s Diane if she’d had a good sleep and she answers with a laugh “yes I had several good sleeps”.
This is a very good point to ponder as sleeping on a boat is quite different to home. There’s nothing as great as sleeping on a boat is there? Well maybe!
Firstly very few anchorages here are perfectly calm, in fact even most of the marinas and harbours have some surge. So you’ve got constant movement to some degree and this causes various noises – a creaking of the hull, a groaning of the anchor rode, a rattle in a cupboard, a drink can rolling in the fridge, the sound of the sea outside the open porthole, the occasional wavelet on the hull and in most places fishing boats and ferries moving around during the night making exhaust noise and causing small wakes. Then you have wavelets lapping against the RHIB moored alongside or astern. In a boat fresh water is circulated to the sink taps by a 12V electric pump which makes a humming noise every time any tap, shower or head is used as well as periodically for a few seconds even if not in use. We have four sinks aboard Envoy and three of them make gurgling noises as the boat moves to wave motion. In nearly every anchorage (but not in marinas) we use a GPS anchor position alarm to warn us if Envoy moves from her originally anchored position. It’s quite normal for a boat to move around a bit with wind changes but we do want to know about it so the anchor alarm beeping is yet another noise to add to the list. Often we can hear tavernas playing music until the early hours and this is worse in harbours often continuing until 0300 plus the traffic noise, particularly motor scooters with their loud exhaust. So Diane is spot on with her assessment that what you get is a series of short sleeps.
NIGHT CRUISING
With Kevin and Diane we retrace our steps to show them Koroni and Methoni and then with about nine hours cruising eastwards ahead of us to reach Porto Kaiyo we decide on a night cruise. Although Diane and I have done night cruising several times it’s much easier with someone of Kevin’s experience aboard to share the watches and Kevin was also keen to do this.
So what’s so special about night cruising? The first is safety and nobody can go for’ard of the Portuguese bridge after dark – it’s extremely difficult to locate a man overboard at night. If it were necessary to go for’ard the person would need to wear a life jacket with strobe attached and be under observation the whole time.
Other main issues are navigation and avoiding other vessels. During daytime it’s easy to see approaching vessels and their courses and to take avoiding action in plenty of time. By night we pick up other vessels first on radar and plot their course on screen to determine if they will come too close – if so a course change may be required to maintain a safe distance (see an upcoming Posting with more detail on this).
Another issue is that while it’s easy to leave your current familiar location in darkness it’s not so easy to arrive at a strange location by night, so we choose to leave Methoni after dinner at 2100 hours to arrive at Porto Kaiyo in daylight at 0600. It’s important to conserve your night vision by having very dim lighting (Envoy has red interior lights for night cruising) as if you inadvertently shine a bright light in your eyes it takes up to 30 minutes for good night vision to return.
Most days I enjoy a beer and wine or two after Envoy is safely anchored but when we cruise during the night we become a dry ship. We enjoy a smooth, uneventful but enjoyable trip under a full moon with the two Dianes sleeping all the way and Kevin and I standing 1-2 hour watches with some rest in between. We only see one sailing yacht, several fishing boats including some with no navigation lights, and several large ships at safe distances away.
THE MANI REGION
The central of the three peninsulas of the Peloponnisos is called the Mani, and the local Maniote people are very hardy, independent and isolated, and claim to be direct descendants of the Spartans. Historically many of them were pirates, operating from the region’s many hidden coves, riddled with caves. It’s from the Maniotes that our words mania and maniac derive.
The Manis have different clans who used to live in fortified castle-like houses with large central towers from where they conducted clan wars from the 17th century. Many of these are still used as hotels or Greek holiday homes.
Porto Kaiyo is a quaint small hamlet with a horseshoe-shaped bay providing reasonable shelter and several tavernas lining the shore.
Kevin and Laurie at monument to Maniote pirate and freedom fighter, Katsonis at Porto Kaiyo
Porto Kaiyo
An intriguing assemblage made from driftwood. This tavern owner was really friendly and helpful
