On Friday we’re woken by a phonecall at 1130 from IBA to ask how we are and to say the pontoon remains closed. A number of cleats were ripped out, one boat lost half its mast, and the staff need to catch up on sleep as well as make repairs.
The forecast shows the low, now 991, moving NNE towards Kalamata and then the Aegean. Windy (a forecasting app) shows F11 around the eye. We read on the Cruising Association Med section forum about the preparations crews there are making. We start to feel lucky that we’re here, not there.
Full Flight ring to say they’ve moved down into Vlikho – it’s calm and there’s space to anchor near them. There’s more anchor bedlam starting around us in Tranquil Bay, so we decide to join them at drop anchor in Vlikho at 1355.
We recognise that we’re in shock and give ourselves permission to just relax. Our minds are still going over what happened. At 4 o’clock a dinghy putters up to our stern – Chris and Carolyn on catamaran Splice have spotted our CA burgee and have come to invite us to post-mortem drinks. They invite Tony & Pat too, as they saw us talking to Full Flight before we anchored.
We launch the dinghy, mount the outboard and pootle over to Splice for a lovely, lively evening exchanging stories. Chris & Carolyn tell us that in Vlikho about 30% of boats were dragging their anchors at any one time.
The next day we spot Genevieve arrive in Vlikho – they’d been on the N side of the pontoon and had had to decamp to the hotel. They’re also CA members so we were able to find their email address and invite them over for a drink with Chris & Carolyn. Full Flight had already left.
We dinghied to a taverna each evening and continued to unwind. From the dinghy we were able to look closely at the damage to our port side – just 2 long scuffs in the gelcoat. We feel increasingly lucky and very glad that LouLouDitsi is so sturdily built.
The damage to the mast is harder to assess without being on a quay or pontoon. We can see a couple of marks above the top spreaders. We certainly won’t sail until Waypoint have inspected it. Kelvin at IBA has offered to look initially, before we head up to Lefkas to meet Waypoint. We don’t want to take any risks.