another vessel appeared seaward with bright
lights, and it was heading straight for us. As it
passed, we saw that there was a port policeman
on board. As soon as he was sighted, all of
the lights on the migrant boat went out and
the engine was turned off. The port policeman
started shouting, ‘Eyes down, no talking, sit
down’ in English several times, very aggressively,
and then tried to find the captain or someone
who could speak English. Unsurprisingly,
there was no response from anyone on board
as anyone deemed in charge of a migrant
boat would have been in serious trouble.
By now, the fishing boat was alongside the
migrant boat, but upwind and gradually drifting
towards us. I was in my best pyjamas but
decided to shout out loudly as both boats
were being blown inexorably towards our bow.
The port policeman bellowed at me to stop
talking. I replied that they were both going to
hit our yacht. He shouted at us to ‘go away’,
‘leave this place’ and ‘throw away your anchor’.
It was very dark and windy so we didn’t want
to go anywhere, let alone ditch our anchor.
The fishing boat gave a nudge forwards so
Bob was just able to push the boats off our
anchor chain and fend them off the side of
Capella. There was lots of shouting and
eventually, the fishing boat put a towline on the
migrant vessel. It took a long time, but it was
towed to the nearby port of Pigadi four miles
away. I think the port policeman had been
trained to avoid panic on board the vessel
and avert a potential capsize. We really were
not scared by the migrant vessel (once we
had seen other boats arriving) as the people
on board looked traumatised and really wanted
to be taken ashore. We watched them go off into
the distance for a while and then had a cup of
tea before going back to bed. I didn’t sleep well.
After our mad night, we sailed upwind still in
Force 5 to Diafani, a small harbour to the north of
the island, where we moored alongside a tripper
boat. The captain told us the migrant boat had
arrived safely in port with 120 (not 50 as we had
estimated) people on board and had come from
Turkey. They had made an international distress
call to alert the authorities, claiming to be sinking.Our anchorage was more than 80 miles
from Turkey and there were several other
closer Greek islands such as Rhodes. How
they ended up in Karpathos is a mystery.
Although we’ve seen such incidents on
TV, it is absolutely heart-wrenching to see
with your own eyes the dangers people will
go through in order to achieve a better life.
We were able to just sail away and move on.
Despite our nocturnal experience, we loved
Karpathos and strongly recommend a visit- preferably when the winds are benign.
CRUISING LOGThe Byzantine-style
church at Olympos
attracts tourists
every yearLuckily we were
prepared for a
windy passage
to Karpathos