Fools Afloat. Day 15.

Day 15. Saturday 16 June 2018

0700hrs awake. It is stifling hot in the cabin. Mike pulls on shorts and goes aloft. Sits in the cockpit and enjoys the stillness of the morning. This huge new marina is far from full and shows no sign of life. OK it might still be a bit early. He is soon joined by Jackie and then Tim who has had the kettle boiling and in no time appears with the tea.

0830hrs We walk along the seafront to the local cemetery which is huge, in anticipation of laying flowers on the graves of six SAS soldiers who lost their lives in the Greek Campaign and are buried in the Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery.

David stops to buy flowers from outside the Cemetery entrance. It is a huge cemetery and no indication of the CWGC. We split up. This might be interesting! Mike spots a couple of grave diggers and asks them. They speak no English and call over someone else whose English is a bit shaky. I think they are telling us to exit this Greek cemetery go up through the street market outside and it can be found on the far side of the road.

We wander through three or four more cemeteries before Mike spots some white  columns amongst the trees on the far side of the road. Tim doubles across to check, gives Jackie and I the thumbs up. David, who has gone in search in the other direction is nowhere to be seen. Mike takes off after him and soon all four are back in the CWGC looking for ‘the lads’. They are duly found. Flowers are laid and due respect shown We sign the visitors book and make our return to Chrysanthi.

Rhodes New Marina, Chrysanthi's pontoon.

Return to the boat and whilst David gets the laundry ready for collection we three sit at a small café/bar opposite our pontoon in the marina and have a coffee and cake.  It is time to think about moving. We borrow the boat key from Tim, walk down and collect our holdalls. We give panda one last stroke and ask that she looks after the boys in our absence and walk across to the marina reception to book a cab.

A taxi is just dropping a customer, so we jump in with him after we have agreed the cost. E25. He is a chatty sort of guy and I suspect uses the opportunity to practice his English. It is exactly thirty minutes to the airport. There are huge queues at every check-in desk with the exception of Eurowings. Our German carrier. We walk straight up drop the cases which are bagged and tagged and make our way upstairs to security check-in. Quickly through, didn’t seem that thorough to me and then try to find seats and a gate monitor. Both very scarce.
We seemed to be late boarding. We were certainly late taking off, by almost an hour. We missed two take off slots. This was due partly to excess hand luggage being carried on and there being no room in the overhead lockers and thus having to be passed out and down to hold luggage and two of the overheads catches had failed. we had to await a guy with 'Technician' emblazoned in large letters across the back of his shirt to put a few pieces of masking tape over the faulty catches before we could take off. Crazy.


Eventually at London Heathrow after more delays at Dusseldorf Jackie rings Uber the taxi company for a lift back to Trevor and Janis's, they were in Norway for a few days. This went very well. The driver was Hassan and drove like the proverbial. Cost us £39 for the 30 minute ride to Rickmansworth. I'm glad there was no hold ups on the M25.


This holiday was something we thought might be slightly outside our comfort zone. We thought the weather might have been an issue as regards waves and winds but Tim assured us we had booked the best possible period to sail with them. It was fantastic. Absolutely marvellous.


As the locals have been known to say "I have a penis."


Thank you David and Tim.