A fishy smell

Port Augusta on Arki, Dodecanese

The tranquil village plateia

 On the 26 mile passage to Arki from Samos everything gets shaken up quite a bit. We have to wedge the coffee mugs to keep them from rattling and the bottles of olive oil and dressings keep colliding in the galley drawer. Some of Leighton’s papers have fallen out of the attic shelf in the forepeak and his socket set is sliding about on to the floor outside the loo. Nothing like a good dose of meltemi to realise we must do something about our clutter.

While trying to wedge everything back in its place, Cathy catches a distinct whiff of something rotten. It’s coming from somewhere in the front half of the boat and it’s absolutely disgusting. Please tell me the loo isn’t blocked! No, thank god. It’s pumping fine. The holding tank?  Don’t think so. Maybe it’s from the bin in Leighton’s workshop. Or the rubbish bag we haven’t disposed of yet.

Is it the smell that's driven everyone away?

Once we’re tied up on the quay in Port Augusta, the hunt continues.  We tidy everything away, look in all the lockers, take the rubbish ashore. The smell’s still onboard. We follow our noses and home in on the forepeak. Cathy moves the bucket holding our bottles of drinking water away from the corner where it lives and recoils. A fetid stench is coming from a carrier bag behind the bucket.  Aah! Got it!

When we’re in a marina, we dangle a wire overboard with a couple of old zinc anodes on the end. We call it ‘the fish’ and it’s supposed to reduce the wear on the anode fixed to our hull. When Cathy hauled it up in Kusadasi, it was covered in muck and weed so she stuffed it into a carrier bag in the forepeak and forgot about it. She brings it at arm’s length up on deck and we stuff it into a strong plastic laundry bag, seal it with duck tape and put it in the stern of the boat so any whiffs will be carried downwind.

Relaxing ashore until the smell goes away