A Purchase With My First Pension

by Viktor Moskovchenko

Ding!

Unexpectedly, my first pension flew out of a roadside olive tree and nested in my smartphone. The pension is seven figures, but small.

Maybe a typo? Restarted. The result has not changed!

My life sentence!

Online exchanging into euros left only three digits. And the first digit in both currencies has been the same. This is, of course, number one! Such entertaining mathematics! It seems Pythagoras is resting in our hotel.

Inspired by the gentle sound we continued our walking down to the beach.

There are three ways to become a sailor. Cruises are not considered in this case. To join the navy. To sign a contract to sail the seas, hauling cargo and earning money. Or to rent a ship to spend the money that fell from the sky. Today, our ship would be a motorboat! I was listed as a captain. My wife, the most beautiful of the vacationers, was assigned as a sailor to the ship’s commander. We temporarily became part of the pleasure fleet.

Part 1

In short, we sailed. For the second time in my life, I was driving a vessel, experiencing terrible fear from the free play in the steering and the lack of a brake. The first time was in Southern Mexico. But that boat was very little and did not even have an anchor. And a reverser. This boat had such devices, which was important.

The same neophytes as us were scurrying across our course. Theatrical scenery of the inaccessible rocks changed consistently. Blue waves beat against the sides of the small vessel. The stern rose from the speed. Rod Stewart turned on in my heart and started singing:

“I’m sailing, I’m sailing…”

The smiles of the crewmates were open to the Paleokastritsa bays, which was a couple of miles away by leisurely boat ride and where we had already visited in a rental car. A car is good in every way, and it has a parking brake instead of an anchor. I must say I have underestimated the beauty and humanity of this brake all my life before. I treated it as a rudiment without due reverence.

We stopped in a cozy bay near a grotto. We admired it. We swam. We lifted the anchor and went forward, towards the warm wind.

The next stop was made under a monastery on a cliff, at the edge of which, for some reason, an old cannon was installed. We dropped the anchor. We admired the bay. We swam. Then I proudly stood behind the wheel, started the engine, turned on the gas level and, to my surprise, under the roar of the engine, our boat jerked, spun and stayed in the same place.

Part 2

I forgot!!! The anchor remained on the seabed!

I tried to pull it out with my hands, with the boat moving forward and backward. I put on my mask and fins to dive down to the anchor and free it. In vain!

I called the rental office. The connection was bad and I repeated the words from Rod’s song:

«Can you hear me, can you hear me?»

They said that they would sail out to help us. The other boats were far away from us. We were alone in the bay. No any sail of hope. An ancient cannon looked with its empty eye socket down at us from above. Half an hour passed before I realized that the help boat hadn’t found us.

The anchor tightly stuck to the ledge of a flat rock on the sand at a decent depth. Rod Stewart replaced by Ernest Hemingway. The confrontation lasted two hours in the style of “The Old Man and the Sea”, version 2.0. And when it became clear that the anchor was unchangeable, the crew decided to leave it for fish joy. However, to facilitate further searches, we untied the anchor cable from the boat, tied a lifebuoy to the cable and photographed the burial site against the backdrop of the rocks.

Part 3

I hunched over the steering wheel, started the engine, turned the gas lever with my callused hand, and with the engine tedious roar we left the place of captivity. The sun began to set. I remembered “Wellerman” sad song:

“There once was a ship that put to sea
The name of the ship was the…”

No name ship set off on its return way.

An hour later the judgement time has come. I convincingly explained that the anchor could be retrieved, that I had marked the place, that it had been photographed. They respectfully answered that anchors are often lost, that no one looks for them after they are lost, except for divers-gatherers, for whom it is a good business. We bought this anchor, attaching my card to the terminal, and from it, cheerfully chattering, came out a long white tongue in the form of a receipt with my first retirement money.

We hid this significant purchase at a depth of 20 feet in the Ionian Sea. In memory of Corfu Island…