Back to Greece

Lin, Simon and Kai took the train to London on Saturday 1^st August, where they saw Simon’s mum and sister Nilly and stayed with John. We took the train from St Pancras to Gatwick on Sunday morning, where we got the afternoon Easyjet flight to Athens. We then got the airport bus to a very nice little hotel that we had booked in Paleo Faliron.

On Monday morning we got a taxi to Fokionos Negri, where we had breakfast before visiting our old friend Nikos, who is slowly recovering from a very nasty spinal infection. We then got a taxi back to the hotel and bus to the airport to get the evening flight to Leros. The flight was repeatedly delayed, leaving us to sit around at the gate,

supposedly because of the ‘late arrival of the incoming aircraft’, before they finally admitted that there was a technical problem and the flight was cancelled. We were given vouchers for the Sofitel, where they allocated us Superior adjoining rooms with a connecting door, and a free buffet dinner.

The flight was rescheduled for 9.20 on Tuesday morning and left on time. We walked from the airport to the yard and got the boat ready for launching. We did not have to wait long – we were launched at 12.30 and motored straight down to Lakki, Kai travelling on the boom, even though there was quite a bit of rolling in the swell. 

In Lakki  we tied up in the marina where, after months of empty promises, the showers and toilets are now open! We spent a couple of days in Lakki meeting up with friends, stocking up and resting after our journey. Refugees are pouring into Lakki, probably because the seas are calm. The yard of the port police, where the refugees camp out, is crammed to bursting point, so the port police have closed off the road and are using that as a makeshift campsite. Local people are still queueing up outside the port police to give the refugees food and water. When we see the media response to the relative handful of refugees in Calais trying to get into the UK we are ashamed to be British.

We met a Syrian woman from Damascus with her 8 year old son who was looking for shops to buy water. She had been in Lakki for four days and was leaving for Athens on the ferry in the evening. She was hoping to get to Austria by train and bus and when there hoped that her husband and two older children, still in Damascus, would be able to join her. She was calm and dignified despite her ordeal. We gave her a bottle of water and some juice and chocolate for her son and wished her well.

We left Lakki on Thursday August 6^th and motor sailed to Agathonissi, arriving at midday. There was plenty of room on the town quay and off the rocks in town, but a British chartered motor yacht had anchored to block the whole lot off. We decided to moor to the rocks at the far end, where we hoped we would be clear of him, but as Simon reached the shore with our mooring line the chain on the end fell off as the shackle had worked loose. As he rowed back to the boat to fix it, the Brit started to yell at us that we were over his chain, so Kai pulled the line back on board and we got the anchor up.

We decided to free anchor off the beach. Simon had left the dinghy on the stern, instead of bringing it alongside. When he reversed to dig the anchor in, the dinghy painter caught on the propeller, which dragged the dinghy under and sliced off the front end and cut the painter before we could stop the engine. The wrecked dinghy drifted off, but someone from a neighbouring boat dived in to rescue it and Simon dived in to bring it back. We then went alongside the coastguard quay until the British motor yacht left when he had finished his lunch. Once he left we went onto the town quay, but we cannot get right up to the quay as it is too shallow, so we used the remains of the dinghy as a stepping stone to get ashore. The problem was that every time that Simon went across it filled up with water, with his great weight, and we had to empty it again.

We were welcomed by our old friends in Agathonissi and got the latest news. The primary school has a teacher, but only one for all four years in one class. The doctor (who was probably a midwife rather than a doctor, but who could give first aid) had just left, so they had no medical service at all. Hundreds of refugees have been arriving every day. A few weeks ago they had made a fire on Poros beach, at the other end of the island, which had set off a forest fire that took the fire engine and two water planes from Samos four hours to exitinguish. Maria, who runs the little shop, was thinking of moving to Kalymnos, but her husband still has six years of an unbreakable contract to run as a council worker, although his pay has been halved over the last few years to 800 euros a month.

We enjoyed meeting up with Luccio and his family, whom we meet on Agathonissi every summer, and Kai enjoyed fishing and playing No with Alexandr, but we were preoccupied with getting a new dinghy. Eventually, after much internet searching and emailing, we found the dinghy we wanted available in Lefkas, but with the weekend coming it was not until Monday that we were able to confirm our order.

Since we were more or less stuck on the boat we decided to leave Agathonissi on Sunday in the hope of getting on the quay in Arki. We got to Arki about 12 to find plenty of room on the quay, to our great relief. We still had the wrecked dinghy, which we could not put in the water, so we slung it high on our davits and had to crouch under it to get ashore. 

We are hoping that we can leave it in the yard when we go to Partheni to pick up our new dinghy. Otherwise we will have to abandon in it on a remote beach, with the other dozens of old dinghies abandoned by the refugees.