A Night Time Intruder

So, it's 4.20am on Sunday 6th July and we're just recovering from having an intruder on board.

For once we have anchored and then tied back to the shore with a couple of shore lines. This for most people is easy peasy but Petronella is pretty hard to manoeuvre in tight places so we tend not to do it preferring to free swing on our anchor which we have done thousands of times. Because this is our preferred approach it means we rarely tie back so we don’t get any better at it. Today though we met up here on Meganisi with Rose & Brian our long time friends from Kas. They have sailed around the bottom of Greece and up to here and we always planned to meet them here in the Ionian. We finally met up a few days at Big Vathi on Ithaca and had a great evening of story swapping. We arrived here today as planned and Rose & Brian came out in their dinghy to meet us and help us tie up. It all went excellently and we must have looked very competent to those watching from other boats in the bay.

We spent the evening with Rose & Brian (Alixora) and Duncan & Julia (Rampage) who R & B had met whilst waiting for good weather to o through the Straits of Gibraltar 5 or 6 years ago. Gilly made one of her famous curries and after a beer or two in the local chill out tavern we returned for chicken macani, basmati rice and all the trimmings. This was followed by an ace fruit salad from Rose & Julia. One of the many subjects that cropped up was rats on board. Brian recounted his story of when a rat got on board and he chased it through the lockers wielding a knife. It finally escaped but not before he had stabbed a hole in one of Rose’s favourite cushions.

Sometime later, around 3am after I had finished the mass of washing up and gone to bed I was lying awake in our cabin looking up at the stars when all of a sudden there’s a rat staring down at me through the open hatch. I jumped up and asked it in no uncertain terms to go away (in fact I think I told it to “bugger off”). It beat a retreat. By now Gill was awake so we donned rat catching gear (T-shirt, shorts and shoes) and armed ourselves with winch handles and knives. Up onto the deck and we gingerly moved everything to try and find him. No luck. Has he gone? Is he below decks? What shall we do? We stood in the dark in the cockpit and quietly discussed our next move. Then we heard a scrabbling from the back of the boat and spotted the bastard sitting on our windvane supports. We moved down either side of the boat keeping the torch burning in his eyes. Once he made a brief bit for freedom but we shooed him back. Finally he launched himself onto one of the lines between boat and shore and scampered rapidly along it back to the shore. A lucky escape as there are numerous stories of rats getting below and happily eating their way through all your electrical cables.

I am now on watch for his return and Gilly has gone back to bed. Tomorrow we will have to build some rat stoppers out of 5l plastic water bottles to stop hime returning for a second visit.

It’s not all bad though. We have just spent a couple of days in Vliho Bay on Lefkada. Often known as Velkro Bay because once you get there it is so hard to leave, Vliho Bay is one of those crossing places where you might just bump into someone you know. So it was though we had not made any plans to meet up with anyone. However, in the next two days we met Dave from Cumbria that Gill used to canoe with, Jim her long time catamaran sailing friend who she sailed from Barrow to Portugal with, Brian & Maggie (who we met when last here 4 years ago), Tony who was in Gagliari, Sardinia when we last passed through there, and numerous friends of friends. On our first night we sat through quite strong winds with boats whizzing past us as their anchors dragged. No serious damage but it did break up our sleep yet again. It meant that the following day in Sam’s Bar all the old hand were recounting their stories of the horrendous storm they had there 3 years ago when the boats were turned over and one person died. The yacht club owner went out to help and rescued a woman from inside her upturned catamaran. Brave man. Finally, as we were leaving a guy in a dinghy came over to us and said “do you remember us?” It was Bob from Burbadik who we had last seen in Marmaris 3 years previously. The long term “liveaboard” cruising community is not very big and this meeting up happens all the time. A long way from home these people become your family and a good night is always guaranteed in these special places.

Oh no, Gill thinks the rat is back……