I was sitting on the boat around 3:30 in the afternoon, letting my phone battery recharge for a bit. We were docked at a small marina on the island of Syros, one of the Cycladic Islands off of the coast of Greece.
I heard clanking coming from the pier behind me and I turned around to see two young men pulling a chain from the water. The chain was clearly heavy because it took both of them to get it moving. Then they’d stop, one would hold it in place while the other ran forward to get a fresh grip, then they’d start pulling again. They did this for a while, and then stopped, leaving several feet of heavy chain on the dock.
A little while later I hear them clinking again, and I turn around and now an anchor has joined them on the dock. They somehow managed to pull a 45 lb anchor out of the water, and they were trying to get the rest of the chain out, but still struggling. Ilias, my captain, put on his flip-flops and went out to the dock to help.
I was conflicted. I could sit there with my book and let them do what they had to do. I could sit there and watch, just to see what happened. Or I could join. I decided to join. Why not, right?
I put on my shoes, got off the boat, and started pulling on the chain with them. With the four of us working, link by link, the chain kept piling up on the dock. After a few minutes of heavy hauling, we finally got it all up. High fives all around, and the guys looked at the mound of anchor chain that they had retrieved.
It turns out that one of them had been snorkeling and saw the anchor and the chain at the bottom of the marina, so they decided to pull it out and figure out what to do with it. Now they found themselves in the odd position of having an anchor and a chain and no idea what to do. They were crew on another boat that was in the marina, so they couldn’t exactly take it on board.
After measuring out the chain, which came to 80 meters, they asked Ilias if he knew anyone who might want it. They said that if it were new, it would retail for €900, so they wanted €500 for it. Ilias said that that was way too much, but he might know somebody who would take it. He called a friend who countered with €100, firm. The guys agreed. Ilias said that his friend would be by shortly.
Not even 3 minutes later, a guy pulls up on a moped and pulls a pre-counted stack of €100 from his pocket and hands it to the guys. The five of us stood around talking about the quality of the anchor (I had nothing to contribute to this part of the conversation) and the quality of the chain (I commented that it looked shiny). After a few minutes of chit chat, the guy talks to Ilias in Greek, so I was left with the other two guys to see what happened next.
The guy turned his moped around, carefully loaded the anchor onto the moped and then started driving away, dragging 80 m of anchor chain behind him! He got to the end of the dock and turned right and continued driving, the chain continuing to drag behind him until it got dangerously close to a utility box that boats use to get power on their boats. The guy stopped, and Ilias and I grabbed the remaining chain and ran it up to the corner. The other two guys, having collected their money, were nowhere to be found. I would estimate that Ilias and I were each dragging at least 100 lb of chain.
Once he was confident that the chain wasn’t going to do any damage to the equipment at the dock, the guy drove off again, with nothing but the anchor on the moped and 80 m of chain dragging out behind him like a tail. When he got to the end of the road, which was about a hundred yards down, he pulled over. The chain was still in the middle of the road, snarling traffic. Ilias and I leapt to the rescue again, dragging the chain to the side of the road and then dragging it up to where the moped was. We spent the next 10 minutes helping him put the anchor and all the chain into a large shed. I still don’t know if the guy was the dockmaster or what, but he had access to the only shed that I saw at the marina.
Such a random encounter, that Ilias took in stride. I guess this is the kind of thing that happens on a fairly regular basis around here.
