July 27 – 29, 2015 —
Sunday we had a beautiful day sail in the direction of Corfu. When the winds swung around to the nose we jibed and headed back on a lovely run. We arrived back in Preveza but decided to go in med-moor to the town quay rather than anchoring out. After checking in and doing several days of projects we decided to stay one more day to wrap things up. It would be one day too many.
Hearing some commotion outside Sara popped up to see a very large (100-120 foot) old wooden sailboat trying to back up to berth at the dock med-moor style right next to us. They spent over a half hour going forward and back attempting to line up their hull with the space. After several attempts to get their anchor down they were backing in with someone standing ready to toss the stern lines hopefully to a person on the quay. It takes some skill and practice to get it right, this may have been their practice…
Added to the normal challenges, the boat coming in was old with no bow thruster, did not back up well, and the electric windlass that powers the anchor was not working properly. By all accounts, it was a disaster ready to happen. To add to the situation, the flag on the back of the boat, where you are required to fly your country flag, was a small USA flag; the flag on the stays was Russian. The courtesy flag was Greek. Who were these people and what language did they speak?
The answer: they were Russian and only one person spoke a small amount of English. They were determined to get to the dock in spite of their serious maneuvering issues. We put out all of our fenders and went into defense mode. A crowd gathered on the dock which rapidly became the Tower of Babel, with many different languages and everyone with an opinion as to how the situation should be handled. As the boat lay on our side with all of its weight straining our anchor, one man was motioning for me to take pictures in case of damage. I had other priorities at that point just trying to make sure our fenders kept a barrier between their rundown wooden hull and our fiberglass hull.
Ever one to have a cool head in these situations, I frantically yelled for someone to get the port police. They did. The port police showed up just as Bob had gotten them to add lines and peel their boat away from ours. The Russian crew needed him to figure out how to resolve the situation. The Greek Port Police were impressive, talking separately to both the Russian group and us. We wanted the police there as witnesses to the action should there be damage. I may have pointed out to them the conflict in flags.
Fortunately we had just been to the Port Police several days before to check into Greece and get all of the proper paper work needed. We found them to be both helpful and funny. A perfect combination.
As soon as they were settled, we realized that they had 15-20 guests aboard, assumedly paying, and not sailors. It did explain why no one on board was doing anything to help. The captain completely ignored our suggestions. His sole crew member, who was trying to be helpful, was being ignored by his captain. The best memory of it is the young woman who sat on the forward deck in front of her easel calmly painting throughout the chaos, totally oblivious to the crew scrambling back and forth and everything going on around her. It reminded us of the band continuing play on the Titanic as the ship was going down. As the situation was coming to a resolution, the crowd on the dock was still handing out advice and empathy.
The following morning we released our lines and moved off the dock before they had any hands on deck. Fortunately their anchor was not over ours and we headed off to the beautiful Ionian island of Cephalonia.