Smile, things may just go wrong...

Not this power pole but a more scorched one.

Nice boat, shame about the dint.

 Things started looking iffy on Monday afternoon when we were due to go out on Timoni, Tony's yacht, for a practice with the spinnaker prior to next weeks rally and regatta.  We cast off from the pontoon in the marina heading out to open sea with the five crew on board and everything looking dandy, well at least for the first ten seconds after which Mike shouted stop Tony, put her in reverse.  We all looked around to see bits of pontoon flying in all directions followed by a ten foot fountain of water.  Milliseconds later the power pole, which is bolted the pontoon decking went splash into the hog wash!  You've guessed it, we had forgot to unplug the shore power supply from the boat and the umbilical tore the pole from it's mounting.  Mike and I hopped ashore as soon as we got near enough and shut off the water and tried to rescue the pole from it's watery grave.  We both got electric shocks and after getting the pole back to terra firmer it started crackling and popping profusely before bellowing smoke and flame from the inside, and still the breaker didn't trip!!!  Don't trust the Greek electrical system for earth leakage 'coz this one didn't seem to work at all.  Anyway it's fixed now, no one hurt and nothing other than the power pole and pontoon damaged.

Kostas rescuing what they couldn't fish out. 

This morning Sanny and I were watching the people on the pontoon opposite us starting to winterise their pride and joy.  Slowly they have been packing up gear and removing rigging from the two masts in order to lower them.  We turn our heads for a few seconds and there is this almighty crash and we look across to where the noise emanated to see the mizzen mast laying across the coach roof.  They have since seated it correctly as in the photo but it must have damaged something, fortunately not them.

The two Bulgarian guys trying to get their washing sorted

My table centre with the second try of epoxy.

With all this excitement going on I decided to walk around to the loo and take a picture of the boat whilst doing so and discovered the two Bulgarian lads who look after the Beyond Yachting charter yachts and a pile of very wet towels and linen.  Kostas the marina diver was going down and rescuing more linen as I arrived.  I spoke to the lads and it seemed one of them was pulling their handcart (seen in the picture) behind his scooter, he went around the corner but the cart didn't.  He had salvaged most of the kit himself but some had gone to the bottom thus having to get the diver involved.  End of season blues methinks.

My own little misdemeanour came when I started to alter our saloon table which you may recall we converted to drop leaves at both sides early in the year.  Our temporary method of holding the leaves in place was unsatisfactory so whist back in the UK I made some aluminium slides which will retract under the leaves as supports.  The fitting of these meant epoxying six bolts into the underside of the permanent table centre.  After three days the first epoxy I used was still sticky and I pulled out the bolts by hand.  So with very sticky fingers I have had to rehash the lot and use some new epoxy, I'm still not convinced this will be good enough although at least it's going hard (as the actress said to the bishop!)  Never a dull moment on G pontoon!

The blog will be late again next week as I will be out on the open seas at the rally and regatta, if I'm still alive on Friday next I will cobble it together.