This little text showed up on our phones one evening while we were dry docked in the marina and still living on the boat. This isn’t our first rodeo with an indecipherable Greek text. Thankfully, our phone sends it titled, “Emergency Alert,” and usually comes accompanied with an ⚠️ which is easy to translate in any language. But exactly what kind of emergency we were experiencing was anyone’s guess.
But any confusion we had on the matter was quickly cleared up when we received a call on our phone from the Marina’s security guard.
The night guard informed us that a freakish storm was headed to the island and it was now unsafe for us to be on our boat for the next six hours.
It was midnight and we were more afraid of depending on our crappy Greek language skills to find a suitable place to stay at such a late hour, than we were of the storm. So we grabbed a few things and headed to the marina’s front office where we convinced the guard to help us call around and find us an available place to stay. It took some doing at that hour, the island was full of weekend tourists and few people were even answering their phones. But at long last an empty room was found and off we went into the dark stormy night.
In the morning, as we drove back to the boat, all was well, the boats in the marina were fine, the island looked slightly windswept yet surprisingly freshened by aggressive rain.
The best part of the storm were the showers. The ones we took back at the hotel before we left that morning. A nice long hot shower is any sailor’s favorite kind of phenomenon. It was definitely a weather warning we didn’t mind.
