After a lovely afternoon and evening swimming, reading and relaxing, Justin checked the lines and the anchor and we went to bed… The hatch above our bed was open but the flimsy blind was pulled across the entrance. At about 1.30 am we were both woken when the blind rattled suddenly as if the wind was blowing it… Helen poked her head out of the hatch saw that everything seemed OK (there wasn’t a breath of wind) and joked that it must have been Roland Rat running across the blind! We tried to settle back down to sleep and then Helen heard the pitter patter of tiny feet on the deck… Justin tried to pass it off as a creaky rope until he too heard the sound again. We both jumped out of bed and frantically closed all of the hatches. Justin grabbed the big torch and very gingerly opened the top companionway hatch and shone the torch aft. There it was… the biggest, boldest rat you have ever seen in your life nosing about in Justin’s swimming shorts! He soon scarpered and we heard a loud splosh as he took a dive off the bathing platform! We spent the next half hour searching the boat armed with sweeping brush and fishing spike to make sure he hadn’t left ant friends behind! Justin then had to get his tools out to fashion some form of rat guard for the ropes and anchor chain – a large plastic bottle and the anchor ball disks seemed to do the trick and they will certainly be put to use every time we take a line ashore again! We went back to bed but didn’t sleep very well!!!
The following morning we left for the island of Cephalonia.
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