Swiss cheese holes

Must have been a big wave!..called 'deja vu'  ..but hadn't.

Plataria harbour

Little wind in the last 24 hours (atmospheric that is), so we had a gentle motor from Plataria up to Corfu town. We have guests arriving next week. They are flying into Corfu so we need to find a place to be when they arrive and look for some spots to take them.
The guests are my sister, Morna and husband Ross and friends from Edinburgh Stuart and Diane.
Ross has been a previous crew victim of mine going back many years and has wide experience of remaining cheerful and even keeled during tricky nautical adventures  on an aged Westerly Centaur in the Bristol Channel. However the others are all pretty much noobies, sailing wise.
So the objective is to have a good time, which we are all fairly good at, and also to have a good sailing experience.

Mandraki Marina

Stuart and Ross are old motorbiking chums and I have been on a couple of trips with them to Patagonia and Namibia. These are featured in other blogs kept by Ross.
Stuart is also a successful racer and deeply addicted petrol head. So he will need a bit of wind in his hair to be satisfied by the sailing experience. On the other hand I am less sure if the ladies will be keen on nail biting, sphincter tightening sailing so getting a balance here will be tricky. It will all be dictated by the weather in any case. The longer range forecast is for a bit of cloud and rain on the day they arrive but otherwise unremarkable.

Town Quay Corfu

On arriving at Corfu town we reconnoitred various potential anchorages and harbours. There are a couple of yacht clubs that take visitors, Mandraki Port and the Noak yacht club. Both are in spectacular settings on either side of the old fort, and neither looked in any way full.
The pilot books and websites are fairly dismissive of the town quay but we went to have a look. It would seem that they are all significantly out of date. What was at one time part of the ferry terminal infastructure lying to the East of the main town harbour has been re-furbished into a nice harbour with newly constructed ballast protection, and was about 50% occupied. So we noted this and went in search of potential overnight anchorages we could take our visitors.
There was still minimal wind so we motored up the North Corfu Channel to inspect a series of bays on the Corfu NE coast. These all looked very open to the S and E but well protected from the NW, which is the prevailing wind direction.
We decided to anchor in Agios Stephanos, the most northerly of these bays. As we entered it was a bit busy. We dropped the anchor off the roller as we slowly motored around looking for a safe spot. The holding is said to be thick weed on mud, and can be good once through the weed according to Rod Heikel. Not sure how you know whether you are through or not.

Beautiful Cutter rigged schooner (from afar)

As we pondered our options we were suddenly aware of a commotion coming from a boat anchored aft of us. At first I thought they were being attacked by wasps, which can happen. There was a lot of random waving of arms and shooing away movements and loud guttural utterances. It then became clear it was us who were being shooed away!
The crew were an elderly looking couple, deeply browned by the elements, who were obviously afflicted by a deep proprietorial rectitude on the anchoring front. She stood in the cockpit yelling and waving her arms. He, in shorts sunhat and wearing a huge walrus moustache charged towards the prow of his boat like the dominant walrus beachmaster. He gestured out directly in front of him with both arms. Thirty metres he yelled. It became clear this was his estimate of the extent of his scope, but this also seemed to be an aphorism for his manhood.

About 1000 House Martens (honest)

I think we alluded to this behaviour in a previous post with regards to an elderly English chap who spent days regaling all around who came within any proximity to his exclusion area. This pair were actually Swiss so this is not a reflection on race or culture, but the common factors are age and time at sea, both of which can have an effect on social behaviours.
After a few muttered expletives and withering looks (we were probably too far away for the full effect but I think we managed general disdain), we continued our slow circumnavigation of the bay, picked a spot and dropped the anchor.

However we were upset and felt the atmosphere in the bay had been spoiled. All the other boats crews attention had been attracted to the "incident" and I was feeling uncomfortable. The holes in the Swiss cheese were lining up and I did not want to wait for the disaster. After a short time we upped anchor and left.
By this time the late afternoon NW breeze had come in and we had a pleasant run back down to Corfu town and moored at the town quay. We then had an excellent meal ashore and a wander around the very stylish and romantic back streets.

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