The guests had enjoyed the tranquillity of Dhokos bay so much that we didn’t actually leave until late afternoon the next day. The day’s sea breeze had turned to its evening wind which happened to be right on the nose so unfortunately we had to motor the 2 hours to Poros town. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how beautiful Poros is so that was why we were heading there. After passing a small pod of huge dolphins who spent a few minutes swimming our bow wave we anchored up in the bay overlooking the town and had a table booked at the local fish restaurant that has its own jetty to drop the guests off right at their table, which incidentally overlooks the anchorage and the town, the best of both worlds.
Lightning all around us before the squall hit
Some black clouds had formed on the horizon over the high mountains of the mainland but I wasn’t too worried as they usually pass before getting to Poros. This cloud was a bit different though, over the next hour or so we were entertained with an amazing natural fire work display, with lightening in the clouds and hitting the ground. I realised that we were in fact in the path of this storm and having the largest mast by some way in the bay decided to play safe and switch off everything electronic on the boat including anything that might use power on the mast. Just as I had finished this one guest mentioned that the rain was coming and looking out the cockpit I saw a black squall line coming towards us fairly quickly! Poor Concerto was pushed to about 20 degree heel when this hit. I have no idea what the wind speed was as I had switched off all the instruments but I couldn’t stand up in it or the horizontal rain that felt like hail stones. The boat started to drag its anchor even though we had 60 metres of chain down in 14 metres of water. After I had put down another 25 metres we held safely. Looking up I noticed that the whole anchorage had dragged to some extent and a 50 metre Super yacht that had been trying to dock was really fighting to stop itself being broadsided on to the dock. It managed to get away from the dock but didn’t manage to turn around so sat with its stern to the wind for 40 minutes quite happily until the wind died, showing that simple tricks we use on the small boats is just as effective on the very large yachts. Thankfully it was all over pretty quickly with no casualties other then the dinner booking and two very wet crew members! Poros had been plunged in to darkness by an island wide power cut so Clare rustled up a mushroom and tomato confit risotto which warmed everyone up.
Gordon