Thursday 22 September 2016

Leros, Thursday 22 September 2016


When we get up we are a bit surprised to find that the wind is blowing a 3 here in this very protected harbour.  Does that mean there is some sailing wind out at see?  We leave fairly early to find out.

The answer is ‘no’.  When we get out the wind disappears entirely.  At one stage what little there is (2 knots) is on the nose.  When at one point Richard thinks he might be able to put out the Genoa , the wind dies before he does that and goes on the nose!

So we are motoring again.  We have decided to play it safe and head for Lakki harbour in Leros.  There is a nice little restaurant by a beach called the Lemon where there are mooring buoys.  We spent a pleasant night there earlier this summer with the Luries.  So we decide to go back there.  When we get there at lunchtime we are a bit shocked to find out that the restaurant closed two days ago!  It is all but an abandoned site.  We row over and use their toilet and just go back to the boat.  We could stay here for the night.  We are safe on a buoy and we have food for lunch and dinner.  But Richard wants to go back to the marina, not least to fix the bow thruster.  It has been pretty hopeless for the last week.  When we picked up the buoy here it would barely move the boat and I had a dickens of a time trying to get the pick up on board.  It is almost certainly the same problem with the nut that attaches the rotor blades to the prop.  It has come loose again.

So we call up the marina and warn them that we will need help moving into a space because of the lack of the bow thruster.  When we get there our friend Baba is in his rib and with no fuss pushes us into a tiny space on pontoon E.  So we are safely home. 

We go see the marina office. They arrange for a diver to come see us tomorrow to see if he can fix the bow thruster under the water.  Richard thinks there may be a chance we can go out after that and have a sail, but I think that is very doubtful.  Although we are back about 2 days earlier than planned, if we want to sail we can’t dismantle much of the gear and then we won’t have enough time to do it all before we go home.  He is really fed up that there has been precious little sailing this trip, but then that is the problem with sailing.  It all depends on the weather and that has not been cooperative this summer.

We also have a problem with internet.  We cannot get the marina internet to work at all.  The café internet, which was quite good when we were here before is acting up.  It will not load the Times nor the Archers.  So in the end we walk into town and go to the Vodafone shop and buy some more internet time.  It is expensive, but we can at least contact the world while we are here in the marina.


We have dinner on board.  I guess we will start to pack the boat away tomorrow.

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