So I begin our sailing log of this season. You will note that the start is much later than normal. As some of you know, there is good
reason for this. At the end of
February, while we were on holiday in Chile, Richard had a serious stroke. He spent 5 days in hospital and it took
nearly three weeks for the insurance company to repatriate us. When we finally got home, just before
Easter Richard had another mini stroke.
So our original plans to come out to the boat in early May had to be
postponed to get Richard a proper diagnosis explaining why he was having these
attacks, to put him on appropriate medication and to have therapy for his
recovery. The strokes have not
affected his physical abilities much if at all, but it has left him with speech
problems, which are slowly getting better.
Anyway, by late May it became clear that Richard would be well enough
to travel to the boat here in Greece and to sail her. So on 22 June (after we voted remain, much good it did us)
we set out for Greece. We flew to
Athens and spent a night at the airport hotel. Then yesterday midday we flew to Leros where the boat had
spent the winter. The Marina have
been very helpful. They were happy
to leave the boat on the hard until we were ready to come over and have given
us a year’s berthing contract in the water for a very reasonable price.
We got to the boat at about 1;30 pm yesterday and were poleaxed by the
heat. They are in the middle of a
heat wave here and even the locals are complaining about the weather. It has really knocked me for six. I can hardly move and I have no
appetite. Maybe that will help me
get over the huge amount of weight I gained since we got home. Comfort eating and lack of much to do
except cook and bake, being the culprits. I am not sure what the temperature is, but it must be nearing
40C in the mid-afternoon. So when
we got here although there was a lot to do to get the boat ready to go, we did
not get very far. However we did
get far enough to discover a great many problems with the boat.
The first think we found was that the fridge was not working. In this weather that is a real
disaster. We could not buy
anything to eat on board in this heat.
So we have had to eat at the Marina Café. This also means that we can’t go anywhere until the fridge
is fixed.
The next problem was with the lifting keel. The Marina put the metal pin in to keep it up, something we
have never done. We could not
release it. We tried to pull it up
further to do so using the hydraulics, but no luck. It is in absolutely tight. Again, there is no way we can take the boat out without a
keel!
So we went to the marina office to report the problems to them. I don’t think the fridge has anything
to do with them because they haven’t had anything to do with it. But the keel pin is down to them.
As we carried on lots of other faults arose. First we found that our only hosepipe had completely
perished over the winter and is unusable.
We had no water on board so we really needed a hose to fill up. We borrowed one. We will have to go to the chandlery in
town to get a new one. Having
filled the boat with water we discovered that the galley tap has a bad leak on
it. We have to turn the pump off
until we need to use it!
Then Richard tried to put the mainsail on and found that he could not
get the plastic carts on the front of the mast into the new entry we had put in
the mast. In the end we both spend
half an hour fighting with the sail to get it into the lazy jack bag to at
least get it out of the way.
Finally in the middle of the night Richard found that the toilet which
was supposed to be overhauled by the marina wasn’t working. It would pump water in, but not out.
Luckily by the end of the day I saw the English speaking engineer who
works here, Bob, and told him of all our problems. He will come around in the morning to sort things out. He is certain the keel is no problem
and says he put the pin in to take the strain out of the hydraulics all winter
which was causing a significant leakage of hydraulic oil into the bilges.
So up early this morning.
As promised Bob came and brought a whole lot of workers. He gave us the devastating news about
Brexit, which made the start of the day rotten. But after much work, most of the problems are solved. At Bob predicted, pumping up the keep
by hand released the pin with no problem.
The keel now goes up and down fine. The problem with the toilet turned out to have nothing to do
with the work they did. They
served the toilet on the hard so could not test it. It turns out that one of the hoses, which has never been
replaced despite a number of toilet overhauls, was perished because it runs
near the engine and melted! That
has been replaced and some valves used just for cleaning tablets we never use were
removed to make water flow more freely and it now seems fine.
The fridge is another thing.
The electrician looked at it and there was nothing wrong with the
electrical connections, so he originally thought that it was the condenser that
had packed up. I was a bit upset
about that as the condenser was only changed 4 years ago. But after a bit more investigation it
turned out that the problem was with the controller to the condenser. That still means ordering a part, but
as luck would have it, Bob had a spare at his boat and has lent it to us to use
until the new part arrives. That
means we can’t go far, but we weren’t planning on doing much to start
with. We want to see how Richard
gets on. But at least it means
that by tomorrow afternoon or Sunday morning we can go out and anchor in a nice
bay somewhere on the Island where it will hopefully feel cooler and we can swim
whenever we want.
As for the mainsail, Bob will come early tomorrow morning to help
Richard fit the carts.
So with many of the problems nearly cleared up we went in to town to
renew our boat papers, have some lunch and finally buy some stores for the
boat. We were fairly
successful. The boat paper renewal
was easy. Just a quick trip to the
Port Police who took photocopies of all the up to date documents and stamped
our card. There are new rules
about reporting in and having the card stamped every time we come back to the
Island, but after we explained we would be going around a number of Islands and
then return they said we need do nothing more. Also there was nothing to pay!
We ordered some lunch but with the heat neither of us could finish what
we ordered. Then we searched the
town for a shop that was open (it being the middle of the afternoon, when most
shops are shut). Bob said there
was one big supermarket open, but we couldn’t find it. We found a funny shop that is really a
greengrocer and managed to buy a few things. There really isn’t enough for breakfast, so R will have to
cycle into town tomorrow for a few more things. We still need to buy new Greek sim cards for my phone and
the internet hub and a new hosepipe.
Jonnie and Marion Lurie are on their boat anchored not far away. We are going to take a taxi to one of
the better restaurants and meet them there for dinner. I am still not sure I can eat
much. Maybe it will cool down a
bit when the sun goes down. It
sort of did last night.
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