First Charter

So 3 months after (barely) qualifying as a day skipper and with the theory still very hazy, we got off the plane in Corfu and made our way to Gouvea Marina to join a flotilla. We had hired a Dufour 30 called Artemis for a 2 week voyage round the Ionian. As L stepped off the plane, one of her fillings fell out!
Keith and Emma - two lovely Ausies - were the flotilla leaders. And nothing ever fazed them. While I sorted the kit out on the boat, they took her to an Austrian dentist who sat her in a hi-tech chair in the centre of an enormous marble-floored hall and fixed her up on the spot.

And that afternoon we were off to Sivota on the mainland. Keith told us about a conspicuous conical peninsula where there was good snorkelling and we decided to go for it. When we got there, I couldn't remember how to work out how much chain to put in - so decided to use all 25M in the 18 feet of water we had below us.
And in we went. No line rigged, nobody on board, nothing.
Sure enough, in a few minutes, a gust of wind came through, and we realised the boat was moving. Poseidon was on our side and we swam rapidly to the boat, climbed aboard and tried to start the engine - but it wouldn't start. It just kept turning over. Things were starting to get serious. We were drifting slowly towards the rocks which were only 20 feet away by now.
We rolled out the sails and I went to pull the anchor in while L tried to sail us off the rocks. We were very thankful for all that experience in engine-less cruisers on the Broads. The anchor was unbelievably heavy - and that's when I realised, I had misread meters for feet. We were in 18M of water! The depth meter on the day skipper boat had been in feet and I never thought to check (and on a Greek boat - doh).
Well we got away with it, I got hook back on board and L got us away from the shore. Then we figured out what happened to the Engine: when you pull the knob to stop the engine, it's a great plan to push it back in again.
Keith was there on the quay to welcome us into our first bows-to Mediterranean moor.
We had a wonderful meal of prawns thrown whole into a half oil drum of boiling olive oil. They came out incredibly tasty and with all the bits you usually throw away - legs, head, shell - crisp and wonderful to eat. We've never seen that dish since, but have always remembered it and have done our own many times.

We had several days of relatively uneventful and blissful sailing - rapidly falling in love with Greece. Gaining confidence, we were sailing goose-winged between Paxos and Antipaxos. No attempt at rigging a preventer as we hadn't even heard of one at the time. Artemis had the main track mounted in the companionway and the Genoa sheet winches on the coach roof. L reached across from the port side to adjust the starboard sheet when a sudden wind change caught the sail and we gibed. The main sheet caught around her neck and rammed her head-first into the cockpit side. Disaster!
The gap between the islands is narrow and we were now close to the lee shore. L was dazed but concious but with blood pouring out of her gashed head. I tried to get the engine started to get the boat under control - and the key broke off in my hand! It could have been very nasty indeed but by pure chance she wasn't seriously hurt and I had time to get the boat sailing safely and could then attend to her.

The reason I tell this story is that this incident made a significant difference to our eventual choice of boat. We swore than that we would never have a boat where the main sheet is in reach of the crew. Rosa has a German Mainsheet system with the track on the coach-roof - specially designed for us by Northshore instead of the standard arrangement with the track in front of the binnacle.

We had many other learning experiences on this holiday - how to retrieve a tangled anchor, how to unblock the heads, how to moor with a long line ashore and the meaning of Schadenfreude. I won't bore you with the details.

The main thing we learned though is that we loved Greece, the Mediterranean and sailing with each other. We were on our way.