Outboard Overboard: Making New Friends

While below deck on anchor in Corfu Jeff and I thought we heard someone call out 'hello.' Heading up to see if we heard correctly, we found a man sitting in his dingy which he'd rowed over to us. He explained with the best English he could muster that he'd managed to drop the outboard from his tender while at anchor. He was in need of a dingy ride into the marina to find a diver to retrieve it for him or perhaps buy another outboard. While we are both divers (Jeff is a certified rescue diver) we have not yet equipped the boat for diving.

Normally, a rescue diver helps humans get above water (not machinery), but hey, Jeff loves a challenge! As Jeff sets about gathering ropes and anything else he may need to find this outboard I see the man looking hesitant. You can tell he is thinking to himself in French, "Je veux juste faire un tour en ville mais ce fou pense qu'il va réellement trouver mon hors-bord" I was thinking the same thing, only in English, "He just wants a ride into town but this lunatic thinks he going to actually find this man's outboard."— which was at the bottom of The Med in 15+ metres of water.

I laughed to myself as Jeff set out and went back down to the galley to prepare dinner. Occasionally I would go up and look over to the boat and see Jeff in his own dingy going around in circles with a grappling style anchor on a very long rope. The man had no idea where he was when the outboard came off, just that it could be anywhere within the circle of whatever anchor chain he had out. Eventually I see Jeff is aboard their boat and expect the hunt is over and he'll be home soon for dinner and take the man into the marina in the morning.

Over an hour had passed when Jeff arrived beaming with a gifted bottle of wine and told me he'd indeed snagged the motor and pulled it to the surface for the man and his wife. Which, to be honest, shouldn't have surprised me. The man has a knack for fixing, finding and foraging for damn near anything in any situation. Jeff is definitely the guy you want around in any precarious situation, much like The Professor from Gilligan's Island.

The next morning, being the obsessive fix-it guy he is, Jeff set off to see if the couple needed help getting their outboard running. Fast forward however long that took and he returns and says the couple are so thankful they insist on taking us to dinner. Not only do I get a bottle of wine out of unwittingly pimping Jeff out I get to go to dinner, too!

While I didn't even know their names, this lovely couple were coming to us at 7pm to take us to dinner. By 7:45pm when they still hadn't shown we decided to get in our own dingy and go looking for them. We could see their dingy wasn't at their yacht so we knew they hadn't made it back from their trip into town which made us pretty sure they must have broken down. Sure enough, we get almost into port when we meet them on their way back to their boat. They spoke little English and we spoke even less French but you could tell they were sorry and sick to death of their ordeal. We all went back to our respective yachts and I began thinking about making dinner.

Fifteen minutes later we heard them calling out. They'd gotten changed and still wanted to go to dinner. I tried explaining that we didn't have to go but they insisted so we all piled into our bigger dingy and went back to the marina. Despite being under-dressed for such an upscale establishment we dined at Olympia Mare where we enjoyed the best meal, attempted conversations and service we've had out thus far.

NOTE: Special thanks to Google Translate for helping to make it easier to get to know our new friends Alan and Marie-Jean from Nice, France. Pictures courtesy of Marie-Jean via Whatsapp. Such a lovely couple!