Tara gains an unfortunate 500 grams

Tara stern to the mole at Gaios. 

We figured hiding from the wind was a fools errand. After 2 days in the gong show called Sivota and what felt like a wasted day in Igoumenitsa we sailed (powered in no wind) to Gaios, tied into the island and were snug as we were expecting up to 34 knot gusts – that never materialized. What did happen however during the night is that we got a visitor – a rat. What an effing disaster in a half-kilo package. Notwithstanding that they’re like a Pez dispenser except instead of candy they dispense rat-poop, they are devilishly clever. This particular rat managed to get on board in spite of rat protection on our long-lines to shore. He either did a 50 foot tightrope and jumped across a couple of bottles that we put in the way … Or he climbed up hand-over-hand up the anchor chain, or he swam to the back of the boat and climbed up the boarding steps. However he got onboard he had a party. We saw some droppings on deck, then we saw one on the counter. We started clearing out our flags and inside were four pieces of bread and a nectarine-pit that he had grabbed out of the compost bin and began to make a nest with. Apparently he liked his spot because he was planning on spending some quality time eating and pooping and eating and pooping. We quickly tore down the nest, I washed all the flags and we cleared off the area behind the sink, we moved from the island side of Gaios to the town side ... again going stern to...went to the hardware store and bought 40Euros worth of traps and set them out. 

Tara stern to the mole at Gaios -
dressed with all the flags on board. 

Some of the traps were the conventional snappers, some were the sticky-glue traps. He ended up wading through the the sticky traps and snapped off one of the snappers and licked the peanut butter clean off another snapper...without a hitch. 

Later, when we came back from dinner we checked the traps again and Marina saw him in the corner of the boat near the TV screen. Ross and I grabbed implements to crush/stab him and went in for the kill. Unfortunately, he was hidden behind a small piece of wood that deflected our shots and he seemed to fly (literally) across the bookcase and disappeared up into the ceiling. Not being deterred, I took the ceiling piece down and there was a little highway that he could run around the entire boat with.  Ok, we’ll leave the traps out and see what happens tomorrow – and we all chose to sleep on-deck.

The next morning there were a couple of new droppings and with the help and encouragement of Marcel, Lena and Joost (our Dutch friends on Tomskii Kastan), we completely emptied the boat onto shore. Every cupboard, every floorboard, every piece of clothing, all spares and equipment ... onto the dirt and cement off the stern of the boat. Fortunately where we were tied up was very easy to transport the gear to shore but unfortunately it gets quite busy in the afternoon with tourists coming from Corfu or the mainland.  

Matt with Marcel at the "Yard Sale" 

I am not sure whether they thought we were homeless people camping out, or street merchants, or just plain crazy. A couple of people thought we were having a yard sale and picked stuff up and started looking at it … Prompting us to say – “this isn’t a yard sale, we have a rat on board the boat that we’re trying to catch." 

I managed to sort through a ton of stuff and we actually lost a large inventory of books, a number of tools that were no longer useful, some of our spares that were beyond their usefulness, and lots of grungy clothes and boat interior pieces. I managed to find an umbrella and used it as a sun shade so I wasn't getting broiled in the sun.

Once the boys came back from scuba diving Marina took over my spot on shore as the proprietor of the Tara clearance warehouse. I went back to Tara and cleaned up the interior of the boat, wiping down every surface and checking for rat activity – which there wasn't any.

By 19:00 after buying and setting another 5 traps –the entire trap inventory in Gaios – we had not seen or heard activity.  Marina saw a couple of poops on the back deck by the stern lines in the morning … so there was a possibility that we had a rat that liked his hometown and wanted to stay.  We humped all the stuff onto the boat again and now Tara looked like the Beverly Hillbillies truck … loaded to the brim with stuff all on deck.

Beverly Hillbillies Boat

That evening, Marina took the offer from Tomskii and slept on board with Yalena, Joost and Marcel. Ross and I slept outside on the bow. Apparently in the middle of the night Ross jumped off the boat to take a whizz and managed to fall in on the way back onboard – so there could have been 50 rats having a big party and I wouldn’t have had a clue as I blithely slept through all the excitement. 

Matt and Ross sleeping on deck

As we woke up the third morning in Gaios there was no evidence of activity.  Marina was up on Tomskii and we played a little joke on Ross as I pretended to spoon him while Marina took a photo. It was worth a pretty good laugh when she showed him the photo later in the morning at the restaurant we were having breakfast at. 

The posed picture with Ross unawares...
until later when we had a good laugh. 

After walking around town until about 14:00 we decided that if there was no activity we will put the boat back together and vamoose out of Gaios … With most of our stuff on deck protected by garbage bags and suitcases. Quite frankly we'd had enough of the place!

We did have a nice BBQ on shore - eating on Tomskii 
as no room on Tara.