Sailing on, single-handed: how not to park a boat

My watercolour Red Boat painted from the cockpit

I have stayed at the mooring I hired in the middle of the Poros channel in order to work on some paintings and produce a new video about watercolour.

I was fascinated by a red wooden boat moored quite close to me. Especially before dawn and after sunset the small boat had a warm glow in contrast to the cooler colours of the sea. Before I managed to finish the painting though someone came and moved the boat away so I had to take my dinghy over to it to check the final details.

The channel at Poros is deep enough for cruise ships to pass on the northeast side but shallows quickly up to various depths or next to nothing on the south side. The moorings here are laid in the no-mans-land along the middle. Nearly every day a yacht runs aground trying to take a short cut across. The local taxi boat owners earn a good amount of tax free money pulling boats off the mud.

After the little red boat was moved from the nearby shallow mooring a taxiboat came along heading for it with an empty yacht on tow. Needless to say the keelboat stuck in the mud but the taxiboat increased its revs, churning the mud up and forcing the yacht to heel over. When it couldn't get any further the two men tied the yacht to the mooring and disappeared. The yacht was standing still knee deep in the mud,without moving, whereas yachts on the nearby moorings, including mine, were swinging in the changing wind. This meant that if the wind increased in strength there most certainly would have been a collision.

I thought the whole manoeuvre seemed strange so I googled the danish yacht name and home port to get hold of the owners. In the end I got contact with them and they rang to the taxiboat owner. It turned out that they had hired a mooring in deep water, left the boat to be looked after by him and went home to Denmark for a few weeks. The day after they left and without their knowledge the boat was then moved to shallow water in order to hire the deep water mooring out once more.

After the phone call the yacht was forcefully dragged through the mud again and returned to the original safe mooring.

Now I suppose I am commonly known here as the stupid bitch who ruins a good greek business.