Hydra revisited

Hydra is a picturesque little town in the neighborhood of Athens. When cruising from Piraeus, chances are that you will stop in this little town. The first time I visited Hydra was 20 years ago.

On the cruising holiday with my parents and brother, so far we managed to anchor off every day. The boat we were sailing was a brand new 42 footer. One night, our mom asked whether we could moor in a marina, and so we did. We happened to be close to Hydra. Hydra used to be a fishing marina, but now in the high season, it is too small to accommodate all visiting yachts. So what happens, is that after all harbor side space has been taken by stern to moored yachts, the next row of yachts will anchor stern to the first row, and so on. Everyone used their own anchor in this procedure. When we where there, we had to climb over 3 other yachts to get to shore. On of the yacht owners was very precise with his boat, and he made us walk his deck on our socks. It was hard to forget mister sock man.

I remember that we found a very nice little restaurant on the hill that was overlooking the harbor. Already at that time, I fed part of the meal to the local cats.

It was a beautiful and quiet evening, and after a while we went to sleep. However, a peaceful sleep was not what the Tempest had in mind for us. A sudden storm (6 Beaufort) erupted at around midnight. The wind was straight into the harbor, and the waves where reflected off the pontoon where all the fusing boats were moored. Naturally, anchor chains dragged and stretched, with the result that the first row of boats was now being pushed into the marina wall. This situation was quickly rectified by the owners of these boats by throwing anyone that was moored to their boat free and pulling up anchor.

This is really the place and time for a BBC documentary crew to shoot a video. Imagine three rows of boats all frantically pulling up anchor in the storm. Naturally, with so many rows of boats moored next to eachother, anchors are being caught by other anchors. We happened to lift the anchor chain of the boat behind us. This had the effect that we lost the ability to use the motor, because we did not want to risk damaging our only propeller. As a result we were steadily pushed onto the boat behind us. The bolt cutter was already fetched, and I was very close to cutting off our anchor. Instead I tied a rope to the front of our anchor, and by letting the anchor chain go, the anchor dumped the additional anchor chain.

Free at last, we joined the pack of boats, that was slowly running circles in the small marina. No-one wanted to leave the marina at night and in the storm, and it was too windy to attempt re-mooring. During this frantic period, we watched two inter ship collisions. It was simply too hard for some skippers to keep look-out for so many boats. After an hour or two, the wind subsided, and the boats slowly moored again on the windward shore. Time to sleep in the rest of what remained of the night.

The next morning we did a damage evaluation. Our brand new boat was slightly chipped by the anchor chain of the boat behind us. The damage was caused because chain of the boat behind us was pulling up at our stern. Our dad, purchased some polyester in the next port, and instantly remedied this damage to our boat. We all felt bad for mister sock man, but we didn't find out whether his boat was damaged. Later we found out that this sort of pandemonium happens quite frequently, and this makes the richest person on in Hydra the diver, that sorts out all the lost anchors in the morning.

With all of this fresh in my mind, we decided not to anchor in Hydra, but to aim for the bays next to Hydra. We first anchored in the bay to the east of Hydra, but is was already quite full, and we could not find a good holding. Time to move to the bay to the west of the bay. In this bay all boats were moored stern to. We found a good spot, but the local restaurant owner did not quite appreciate this spot as well as our spot. So, while we were cooking dinner, we made way to the coast on the north, just 4 NM away. We found a very well sheltered bay, and best of all, it was all ours. As everyone was very focused on Hydra, they all overlooked the coast so close to the North.

In hindsight, should we have left the bay of Hydra so long ago, and re anchor in the bay just North? We have about 8 gps devices on the boat, but just twenty years ago we did not have any. The boat also did not have a radar. The beach where we anchored was quite undeveloped and dark. The bay were we anchored was quite well protected, because it was sheltered by larger and smaller rocks, all unlit. If we were facing the situation today, we would have instantly left the harbor for a safer anchorage. Come to think about it, we would have probably found an anchorage to begin with. However, without gps and radar, sailing at night is a very different experience, especially, when entering a bay littered with rocks. Leaving the bay would have been easy, anchoring in the same bay would have been very difficult indeed. However, there where other bays, not littered by rocks that would have provided a much safer navigation target at night.