Abelike bay, Meganisi Island, Greece
9/7/13
We were warned by a kind German sailor after we anchored that "there are rats here!" He had awoken the night before with rats climbing up his stern line and scurrying around his boat. In tight bays, it is polite to anchor and take a line from the stern of the boat to a fixture on shore (tree, rock, shrubbery, pretty much anything stationary). This allows all the boats to drop an anchor towards the center of the bay and radiate out like a fan towards the shore. If all the boats anchored without doing so, the boats would need "swinging room" to allow for wind and current changes. In sum, by "stern tying" there were about 8 boats and room for more in a bay that would otherwise hold 3-4.
Our guide book had mentioned rats on some of the Ionian islands. Some reports actually list rats swimming out to boats and climbing up their anchor chain to gain access to their food stores inside. Not that i was uberly proud of our food stores, but i didn't want rats on board chewing through our wiring and even worse the hoses that are below the boat's water line.
In a moment of "genius" i remembered having a few frisbees on board. I cut a hole through my least favorite frisbee and put our stern line through it as demonstrated in the photograph of of Shawn and our rat deterrent device. We will never know if rats tried to climb out the line from shore, but we do know the value of the frisbee turned rat deterrent. Anchored to our port was a kind English couple that were very envious of our contraption. As we were out of tonic water a fine trade was made and all were happy... and rat free.
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