The Imperial Barge

Our next night was spent in Fiskardo town. We moored up on the town quay alongside a blue ensigned yacht. Despite the credentials they were not inclined to help new arrivals but managed just to wave a regal fender in our general direction. There was a 51ft Jeanneau on his starboard.
Shortly after, a Gentlemen's motor cruiser in blue livery, flying another blue ensign arrived. They made a dramatically long run at dropping anchor and berthing along side us at quite a pace. Rather embarrassingly they ran out of chain some 10 metres short of the harbour wall. They managed to get lines ashore but despite huge regaling and encouragement to the waiters and Marineros ashore, no amount of pulling and huffing and puffing was going to get them within disembarkation range.
So the four chaps on board went out and did it all again. During this second run over the target the other blue ensigned vessel on our starboard suddenly and inexplicably decided to exit. So out he went at high speed pulling up his anchor, which was of course bedded in right under the trajectory of the approaching Gentlemen's vessel. So both of them were approaching the other at a fair lick of knots without any ability to manoeuvre as they were constrained by having their anchors in the deep mud. Their were words spoken, appropriately blue as befitted the ensigns, but disaster was avoided. As the pink faced and shirted skipper finally made it into safe berth his rhetoric continued "and would you believe it, he was flying a blue ensign!"
The Gents had heard at their previous location that strong Southerly winds were forecast and that that two Sailing Holidays flotillas were coming to Fiskardo for safe berthing. Shortly after the lead crews arrived. They managed to push their flag bedecked boats between us and the Gentlemen, one bows to the quay and the second directly in behind it. They clearly had an agenda to shift everyone about to squeeze in as many of their flotilla as possible.
They rather bossily started issuing instruction for everyone to move about to accommodate them and  leaned forward to start taking off our warps to move us. M was having none of it and asked them to stop. Looking meek and helpless, said that she needed to consult with her skipper to OK a reorganisation.. The skipper was having a snooze downstairs when faced with this dilemma. Allow our currently safe berth, well isolated from neighbouring vessels, to be ravaged by squeezed in flotilla boats that would rub and squeak all night long, or allow these poor souls to find an anchorage off an isolated exposed headland to await the storm. I took the definitive decision to defer taking a view and went for a walk to contemplate.
On our return the situation had resolved. We were untouched by the process and indeed our berth, with a couple of metres all round it, seemed a bit incongruous amidst the densely packed throng. Were people really pointing at us and whispering?
Our Gentlemen neighbours turned out to be a friendly bunch who got friendlier as the day and evening progressed through their various stages of alcohol fuelled socialising. As they tottered off for a last sleeping tonic they approached us and lauded M's handling of the Flotilla Admiral and toasted her as a flayer of beasts and guardian of standards. " I dont know what you said to them but it certainly worked (back slap, hand shake) Jolly well done".
Flotilla lead crews are usually made up of the skipper ( a bit suave, blond, public school), and engineer (monosyllabic, chunky, strong, knowledgeable and effective) and the hostess (competent, confident and engaging).
The Gentlemen spent the most part of the afternoon and next morning chatting up the hostess on the boat next to them. She handled it very well and managed to make conversation with all four simultaneously. I am sure they were all considering giving up the stock exchange for a simple life on the ocean waves as a flotilla skipper or latter day Jack Sparrow by the end.
The next morning, the Jeanneau on our starboard side decided to leave but as he pulled up his anchor, our chain and tose of the two boats to our port, the Flotilla leads and the Gentlemens' anchor chains all started rattling. The Jeanneau had been in harbour first so clearly all of us had crossed him. He might have got away with continuing to lift his scope but he would probably have tripped all our anchors and left carnage behind him, so very magnanimously he reversed, with some skill, back into his berth.
Unfortunately one of the flotilla skippers got the wrong end of the stick, and thinking this chap had just arrived and crossed everyone had a bit of a go at him and tried to instruct him to leave. This all became a bit unpleasant with an international assortment of invectives, and the Coast Guard was summoned to sort it out. He instructed all to leave in reverse order of arrival.
The Flotilla lead boats finally got all their charges' anchors untangled and were in the process of leaving themselves. Unfortunately the four Gentlemen were still heavily engaged in deep discussion with the hostess whilst she was being dragged away on her exiting vessel.. I have to say she showed immense forbearance and skill in this endeavour. The final message, yelled by one of the Gentlemen to her as her ship slipped its warps and headed out was "Go forth and spread the Empire. Haw Haw!". They were clearly besotted.

Jeanneau 51 from in front.

We headed out behind the Jeanneau into a brisk SE wind gusting 22 knots. We both put up sail and off we went on a beam reach in the same direction towards Meganisi. For this first period we tanked past them and after about an hour we were half a mile ahead and feeling pretty smug. The wind then moderated to 10-12 knots and, blow me, if they did not overtake us and move well ahead.
This is interesting as the current generation of these boats are a different design to ours. They have a very wide stern and hard angled chines in the aft hull shape. The idea is that this increases their "form stability", and makes them less likely to capsize. This allows them to have much less ballast and reduces their overall weight. So it would seem that these lighter hulls have a big advantage in lighter winds. However it was good that when the wind speed got up we clearly were the quicker boat despite being considerably smaller yacht. Interesting to see how the theory relates in practise.
The wind dropped off a bit further and I thought our only chance of making up our lost ground was to employ the secret weapon - the cruising chute.

Impressive but way too late.

By the time we had got it out, tied on the blocks, tack strop, sheet, launched it unsuccessfully, resnuffled it and launched it again, they were over the horizon. However it was a very pleasant sail and M got a good video.
We passed up between Meganisi and Lefkas and stopped for lunch at a little island in mid channel and then proceeded on to Abelike bay on Meganisi. We anchored with shore lines and prepared to settle down with a video.
At this point a 50ft Bavaria with 10 Polish people on board arrived. They proceeded to drop their anchor across ours and lay out a hugely insufficient scope. My concern was that if it blew up overnight and they dragged their anchor they would lift ours and we could end up on the shore. However the weather seemed very settled and by this time they were all in the water and having a great time. They were hugely entertaining and I have rarely seen a group of middle aged people having such a good time with laughing and whooping. They then proceeded to sing -  very well -an enormous range of (presumably) Polish melodies until after midnight. It was difficult to be cross at them despite the racket, and all was well overnight.

Swiss Salukis leap aboard.

There were further unusual characters in the bay with a Swiss boat with four huge Saluki dogs on board. We debated how they would manage to get them in the dinghy and how do they cope with toileting issues on long passages? Best not to know.

We discussed having a down day, but agreed that we enjoy the sailing much more than the being at anchor or ashore. So off we went and headed down the gulf between Meganisi and Kalamos and sailed nearly all the way to Astokos on the mainland. We are getting quite good at timing voyages to coincide with the length of talking books and got a standard crime detective novel ending just as we came into harbour.
Astokos is a small village, completely off the tourist trail. However there were three other yachts on the quay when we arrived. We got ready to approach a space beside one boat and the skipper came on deck to move his dinghy to allow us in. We paused our approach to allow him to do this. I then continued in at which point he yelled that there was a rope across the berth that might obstruct us.  I abandoned the approach and yelled to M to take the anchor back up. Unfortunately we then managed to foul his chain with our anchor - worse we drifted back so that our rudder was also caught on his chain!

Nice.

Not to worry - time to bring the G clamp anchor retrieval device into play. It actually worked a treat - nearly. We hooked the clamp under the other chaps chain first time, dropped the anchor and freed it. However I could not get the tripping line to release the hook! Pulling and re-angling the tripping line did not work -neither did all the advice from shore. Eventually I ended up dropping it in with the chain and motoring off. The second approach was fine.
It turned out our new neighbours, Huw and Goeffrey were experts in education from North Wales, so some dissection of Welsh politics, education and public services ensued.We enjoyed the stimulating discussion.

We are coming towards the end of our trip now with the boat booked to be lifted out of the water in just over a week. Fortunately the weather has been fine and in fact this is just about the nicest sailing we have had. It feels a bit feckless just going round various places we have been before depending on the wind direction, but hey ho, we are a bit purposeless at the moment.

Crusoe world wood pile and jetty

Live aboard community Abelike

 Not as bad as some however. There is one UK ex-pat who has been on the same mooring in Fiskardo since we were here in the Spring.
 During our stop in Abelike bay on Meganisi we anchored alongside a small group of boats that had also been present in the Spring. The various elderly blokes on these boats all resemble various incarnations of Robinson Crusoe at a convention. The Crusoes were all busy gathering up driftwood in their dinghies and piling it up ashore, presumably for winter usage. They had even built themselves a little jetty out of old tyres and driftwood and a little community seems to be taking roots. Not sure what the locals will make of it however I can think of many worse alternatives for a group of older blokes.