Avast behind

After the storm

Corfu has a lot of Britain in it's history. Britain pretty much ran the Ionian for the first half of the 19th century. I don't want to go into the rights (few) and the wrongs (lots) of imperialism but the legacy has certainly come home to roost in terms of the weather. This week we have had a lot of it. We have had 2 days of cold NE high winds. It was somewhat uncomfortable and during the night I was up a few time tightening warps and winching ourselves off the boat on our port side. This was followed by 2 days of cloud. A bit like Autumn. Well I suppose it is Octoberish now.

Windy day

To the South of us there has been  a Medicane, a Mediterranean hurricane with damage and deaths. Fortunately we have missed this.
We have been lucky in finding shelter in the new town quay in Corfu town, which we have found has only been properly functional for about a year.
Yesterday a young Dutch couple moored up on our port side, a reasonable distance from us. This was important as further high winds were forecast and I was pleased we would not be hard against them.
A few hours later we had a visit from a couple of ladies. Their boat; and husbands, were moored further round the harbour side on to the concrete wall. They were concerned the predicted winds and swell would give them a hard time. They wanted us to move further apart to allow a space for them to come in between us.
A tricky dilemma. If we let them in between us we would all be tightly against each other and the movement we had experienced the night before might be damaging. On the other hand this crew had a bad experience the night before having anchored up in a bay under high winds and had been up all night terrified they would drag.

Red sky at night

My own experience is that you either have to be hard up against each other or well apart. It is when you can move independently of each other and collide at speed that damage can happen.
The Dutch chap went round to their boat and came back saying he was not happy and, as they were in a large Bavaria with a wide stern, he had told them they would not be able to get in between us.
However despite this advice, the crew were determined to move and in they came, with a lot of bossiness and extensive fending off' they managed to shove their way in. They just made it with us all easing our warps to allow them to fit. It turned out one of the ladies was manager for a local charter fleet, which explained the bossiness.

Facade of civilisation

In the end the predicted high winds were less than then night before and there was not a problem, and indeed having us moored up in tight contact worked OK.
There are few strict rules on our boat. However one is that nothing that has not been eaten first goes down the loo. The problem is that, despite absolute adherence to this rule, a blockage occurred.. This is not generally a pleasant problem to resolve.
This is the Jabsco heads system and as the outgoing pump was used the resistance from the blockage, and pressure in the system, increased.
It was either disassembly, or increase the pressure.
There were a couple of possible outcomes to this, catastrophic backfire or orthograde resolution. Time to go for it, my sister and friends would be here in a few hours, this was their loo and it had to be sorted.
Putting a bit of serious beef into the pumping there was suddenly a loud bang a whoosh, and a thunk as the underwater torpedo was propelled to port and hit the hull of the neighbouring Bavaria. Fortunately the warhead was not armed.
There is a bit of poetry here.