Yachting and Boating World forums: The last hurrah

I'm not sure if Friday dawned bright but I was certainly up early and headed back to Kos airport to catch the Olympic shuttle service to Athens. I still had no idea if the documents had been picked up from the MCA, if they had been sent to the right address or if they would even turn up at the hotel but this was my last chance to rescue the trip and I had everthing crossed. The flight to Athens was uneventful, though even if it was I couldn't tell you. After the stress of thursday I was asleep before we finished taxiing to the runway and didn't wake up again until we bumped onto the tramac in Athens.

Airports are not my favourite places at the best of times, and I had been spending way to much time in them recently. With over two hours to kill, I set about organising a marina berth for when we arrived. This is perhaps a tad late I hear you cry - surely a marina berth should have been booked weeks ago? Well it was, at the Olympic Marina in Lavrion. Thing is, Yacht Shipping rang me the previous evening to say that the sailing had been cancelled. Ask TCM, this can happen with alarming regularity and it didn't come completely out of the blue. My back up plan was a ship from Piraeus just around the corner so I occupied the next half hour speaking pidgeon greek (or very slow english) and managed to book three weeks at the Zea marina, 2 miles from the commercial port. Perfect.

Now all I had to do was sit and wait for the UPS chaps to delivery the package. I am not naturaly a penny pincher, but I was starting to spend money like the government and deeply resented having to pay the 130 euros just to collect a package. It seemed reasonable that If I could arrive at the hotel just after UPS, it might be able to collect the package and abscond without having to check in. It meant a little cunning and an hour sat on the bench out side the airport watching the car park of the hotel opposit.

Finally the UPS truck arrived and I gave it two minutes befor nocilantly strolling through the doors and presenting myself beside the UPS guy at reception. More pigeon greek and I have explained the parcel is for me, I have a day room booked but my colleague is waiting to board a plane and needs the documents, so if I can just dash back to the airport I would return and book in. Ok. So i'm off, out of the hotel with the reg certs and no bill. That at least was a few euros back in the contingency fund. So with 30 minutes till the return flight, I had time to surf the web and head straight for this place - predictable huh?

Back on Kos it was straight to the port police who eyed the small laminated card with some suspicion - I swear they think I had it made overnight. After 10 minutes the officer came back and simply nodded, and began to fill out my new transit log

YES!

So now we were ready. Dick had fixed the starter, see below:

and we were legal. Saturday it turned out seemed to be harbouring a little of fridays gustyness, and there was some debate as when to go - or if to go today. The fact was if we were to get to pireaus and get the 20.00 flight back to London we had to go today. The synoptic charts suggested that the weather would a) die doen a little after luch and b) would be a whole lot quieter further north any way. It was decided that we would shove off at 2.00pm, time for another great sandwich at the marina bar - plus a little more beer. It also allowed us to stock up on provisions, bread, milk, cheese, two packs of beer and 5 litres of vino - nice!

The hour arrived and both engines sparked reliable into life. We manouvered out of the berth and headed out of the marina, giveing a quick good bye on the VHF confirming we were off. As we tidied fenders and lines away the GPS units were checked, the charts sorted and whitelighter was nosed into Kos bay, the wind on the Starboard beam and the sea very lumpy.

Dave (Solitaire) with his welth of experience elected to take the first helming stint and as he settled into the seat roger and I positioned ourselves on the crew seats to port. As both throttles opened Whitelighter accelerated and lept out of the water (she is a little under propped) and dave skillfully drove round the worst of the waves and we headed north towards our first waypoint, some 31nm away.

The boat was running perfectly, and in a sea that would have seen my old boat (and me) running for cover she was lapping it up. As we rounded the first waypoint the sea became much calmer and I was desperate for a go on the helm (almost as desperate as dave was for a break). A quick spot and I was in control of my new boat - and it felt good!

As we continued towards our second waypoint, about 53nm away we were relaxing into the movement of the boat and as the sea had become less choppy the helm was a bit easier. We were still running with a following sea, so there was always the danger of falling into holes in the waves, but we were still managing to maintain a fairly health 22 knots.

David was quite relaxed

And even had time to sort had time to sort out a wayward ensign.

After an hour I was starting to tire on the helm and roger voluntered to take of. The sea was picking up again and more and more holes were opening up and coming at us from all sides. We were tracking well and making good time with everything running well.

Fifteen minutes into Roger's stint he noticed the anchor locker had opened itself and we decided to avaoind damage in the heavy sea to stop and go forward to secure it. The boat was slowly brought down off the plane to a stop and Roger ventured forwards. Hatch closed and the crew refreshed with all three of us visiting the little boys room (otherwise known as the transom) it was time to throttle up and crack on.

As David mooved the sticks forward I noticed the starboard rev counter was not reading. I ponted and motioned for Dave to back the throttles back - it was clear that the engine had stalled while at idle. We tried to turn it over a few time but it simply wasn't going to start and I got that sick sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. We all agreed it appeared the motor wasn't getting fuel so we decided to have a look at the primary filter. Once out the diagnosis wasn't good. Calcium builtups and a very black filter indicated water in the tank and possibly bad fuel. We replaced the filter and tried the engine againbut she still wouldn't start. We had a spare secondary filter as well, but with the port engine still running none of us wanted to try to chnge it as it was very close tp the moving parts - the last thing we needed was an injury to the crew as well.

We were now about 50nm from Kos and about 55nm from Mikonos - in other words, half way. It was decided that the best course of action was to turn around and retrace our steps to the nearest marina, which according to our pilot guide was Kalimnos, 20nm short of Kos and 30nm from out current position. It was approaching 5 in the afternoon
and at 8 knots we wouldn't cover the 30nm befor dark. That meant going into an unfamiliar port, in the dark on one engine with no power steering. While I helmed, David set about trying to raise the Hellenic Coastguard on CH16 and CH12. We got no joy and decided to put out an all stations as we could see some large commercial ships within a few miles and hope one would hear us. It seems that noone was listening on CH16, possibly as any distress was bound to come through on DSC. We weren't in a Mayday or PanPan situation, but with contaminated fuel the suspect cause we were unsure how long the port engine would keep going. We hoped that it was the low pressure fuel at idle that had led to the blokage so we felt if we kept the revs up on the running unit we would be ok.

Would still be nice to get hold of someone though.

In the end I resorted to caling the Kos port police on my mobile. Once the situation was understood the promised to alert the Hellenic Coastguard and we were to listen on CH12 for instuctions. All we could do now was head for Kalimnos and hope we kept going.

A while later a container ship passed us close enought to read her name - 'Queen Haja' - and we hailed her on the VHF. Thankfully she was listening and we were, after some efforts, able to use her as a relay station to the coastguard cutter which was apparently somewhere on its way to us. As the dusk set in, we still were unable to make out anything until we saw a flashing light and significant wake to starboard. The cutter approached us at speed and hailed us.

We explained we wanted to head to Kos with an escort but we were instructed to follow them to Kalimnos. They were polite but it was an instruction none the less. There are no photos I'm afraid. Rog did take one but the flash went off, and they coastguard was immediatly on the VHF with ' no pictures, no pictures' - so roger duetifully deleted it, anyone remeber the plane spotters from a few years ago, we weren't keen to join them.

The journey to Kalimnos was uneventful and we arrived in the port at about 9 in the evening. We were instructed to go alongside the commercial key, and we were all a little concerned to see a welcoming party of police, all armed with flashing lights and automatic weapons. What had we done, and more importantly what was about to happen to Whitelighter.

It turned out they were just their to help and once we wee moored along side the crew from the Coastguard boat came over to see us. Their primary concern was we were all ok, that we didn't need any medical assistance and they offered us the services of their engineer to see if he could help fix the engine problem. As we turned the engine over to demonstate the problem, the sound changed and after s few revolutions the stricken engine fired and ran - bloody typical!

I was on the foredeck and two of the cutter crew asked if they could have a look on board as they had never been on a boat like Whitelighter befor. I was more than happy to show them around, and they were all genuinely nice guys who were friendy, despite being called out on their Saturday night off.

Once they had escorted us into the fishing harbour to out berth for the night they took our passports and ships papers (glad we were legal) to fill in their incident report.

We were all very tired but glad to be back in port., and I think this gave us an energy boost. Kalimnos is such a pretty place we went for a walk around and found a little greek fish restaurant reccommended by one of the coastguard crew and ordered one of everything - this boating lark is hungry work.

Back at the boat Dave didn't even make it to his berth

So tired, he didn't even notice someone nicking our gang plank.

So that is pretty much where we ended up. On sunday the boat ran well back to Kos in less than an hour and she's still their. The fuel system needs flushing and the genny needs fixing and I wil probably miss the next ship from Athens but we are ok, Whitelighter is safe and if nothing else it was an education. There were things we perhaps could have done better, but in the end, no amount of planning could have averted what hppened. We all had the benefit of training, and our actions ensured we and the boat remained safe at all times.

I hope you enjoyed reading this account, and I also hope the next delivery trip is a little less eventful.

Jez

--------------------
1 2 3