Don’t miss the boat
Friday morning: I was just out on the balcony (a bit blustery and cool, but not unbearable) and watched the Blue Star coming in, only two hours late. It looks like it was very busy with a students’ football or basketball team heading over to Rhodes in their jackets and with their bags. The late arrival is a knock-on from Thursday’s late departure from Piraeus, which was in itself a late arrival knocked on from Wednesday and Symi – perhaps other islands too.
Neil went down to the boat on Wednesday to help with the taking off of several boxes from Rhodes. The refugee organisation on Rhodes has closed down. I am not too sure why, something to do with bureaucracy or something, sad, but understandable in a country where bureaucracy still rules. They have arranged to send their supplies to other islands that need them, so some came to Symi. I was at home working on The Film, as I have mentioned this week, but had a text saying ‘The boat is here.’ I looked out and sure enough, there it was, blowing its horn and coming in sideways. I went back to the film. About an hour later I had another text, ‘Still not here.’ So I looked out of the window again and saw it just coming around the south headland. What? Déjà vu.
There then followed much horn blowing and manoeuvring as the boat tried to dock and, finally, managed to. Apparently (and I have heard a couple of stories so don’t know which, if any, is true), it had trouble getting in due to either a broken rope, a miss-dropped anchor or two, and the swell, which was definitely a cause. The people on board were waiting in the car deck behind the drop-down to get off, but after a while realised that nothing much was happening. It’s not possible to see where you are from there as the ‘gangplank’ is up so Neil was getting texts from passengers asking where they were. Are we by the clock tower? No, you are somewhere over near Nimos. This was during the in-out manoeuvring where it looked as if the boat would not be able to dock. It finally came in and dropped its back-ramp-thing and people and vehicles were able to get on and off, roughly two hours behind schedule.
Just goes to show you the joys of island living. The boxes were unloaded and stored and all came to a happy end. But it must have been very frustrating for everyone aboard. Imagine; you’re just back from a shopping trip in Rhodes, you’ve spent the day there and spent your money, and suddenly you can’t get home. Next stop is Kos where there is no sheltered harbour to land in, so you might still be worried that you won’t get off. Even if you did it would be late into the evening by then and you’d have to find a place to stay, pay for it and all the other necessary expenses and then wait for the next boat back which would be the same boat coming back on a Friday. Only, at Kos, it’s at something like 02.50 on a Friday morning, not wonderful. Mind you., there is a lot to see on Kos as there’s an ancient ruin around every corner (and I am talking about architecture, not inhabitants), but if you’d not planned and prepared for it, you might not find the place so appealing.
Anyway, a quick aside from the usual day to day to highlight one of the Inland Living problems we sometimes face over here. Have a good weekend and, while you are having it, here’s a fun quiz for regular visitors: Whose menu is this?
