Thursday 15 June saw the last Greek leg of our journey as we travelled over 42 nm from the bay in Levitha to the marina at Kos Town where we had pre/booked a berth.
It was another 8 hour journey so we slipped off the buoy at 08.30 to give us plenty of time for the trip.
There was hardly any wind and what there was was right on the nose so we motored along, hoping that the wind would pick up along the way. Having had no mobile connection since before arriving in Levitha, we had quite a bit of admin to catch up on so made the most of the calm conditions to do this.
The first job was to find an agent in Turkey to help us with passport and customs clearance plus other regulatory matters. We found a suitable company who then needed all sorts of documentation emailed over to them so that they could progress matters at their end.
This done, we were motoring along when we suddenly heard a worrying noise coming from under the boat. We had clearly run over something in the water. We put the engine into neutral and looked over the sides and back of the boat to see if we could spot anything but there was no sign. We then tried reversing and the noise stopped but whatever it was was then wrapped around our rudder. We manoevered to and fro until this plastic tubing emerged but it was still stuck under the boat. We got the boat hook and eventually freed ourselves from what turned out to be a massive plastic tube over 40 foot long.
Not wanting the pipe to cause damage to any other craft, we hauled it out of the sea and onto the deck for offloading at Kos. We gingerly tried the engine which, much to our relief, immediately fired up with no damage done. A worrying 10 minutes but disaster was averted....
We continued on our way leaving Kalymnos to port and then saw Turkey in the distance before nearing the entrance to Kos Marina.
We called the marina on VHF Channel 77 and were told to standby and that a rib would come and meet us and lead the way to our berth. It was very busy with many boats entering the marina but before long, we were taken to our berth where we tied up for our last night in Greek waters.
We took the pipe off the boat and the crews on nearby boats couldn't believe that we came across it earlier that day.
We wanted to sign out of Greece that evening to ensure an early start the following day. This involved going to the Port Police to clear customs, having our passports and crew list scanned and stamped at the ferry terminal and then returning to the Port Police with the authorised documentation. This done, we enjoyed dinner at a terverna in Kos old town before returning to the boat for bed.
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