We have been in
Greece for over a month now and we’re not out of the boatyard yet! The trip
over from UK was good we didn’t rush and stopped over in three separate
countries… Germany, Austria and Italy. By the time we reached Padua, just
outside Venice it was snowing!. The ferry over from Venice was virtually empty
which made a nice change and was a stark contrast to the Hull - Rotterdam
Ferry. We made the mistake of booking a
Friday crossing and the Ferry was full of idiots pissed as rats and keeping
every one… well us at least awake all night. I think this must be a regular
Friday night occurrence as the staff were very apologetic and patrolling the
corridors. It’s only fair as they sold them the alcohol in the first place!
They were all on buses bound for a weekend in Amsterdam so goodness knows what
the Sunday return must be like!!
The weather when
we arrived was certainly warmer than UK but wet
and everyone here was bemoaning what a wet winter it had been but within
a week it had cheered up and I am now writing this in 27 degrees of warm
sunshine and no rain for nearly 2 weeks.
We have been busy
working on the boat and tend to forget all the jobs we have done. Our take on
it is it might be quite some time before we are out of the water again so now
is the time to get the engine purring and double check that everything is hunky
dory.
We have replaced
our windscreens. They were beginning to craze with the sun so we have replaced
them with UV Makralon which John tells me is bullet proof!! Not quite sure what he is expecting in our travels!
We had to order
and replace our bow thruster props. To our horror the nuts we used to service
the bow thruster last year could not have been 316 stainless so they had been
eaten away. This was not made any better by the anode that John made from what
he thought was a zinc anode could not have been as it was pristine. Anodes are
placed on the bottom of the boat to prevent electrolysis eating away all the
important bits like your prop and your keel and anything else metal….. the idea
being the zinc anodes are eaten away rather than your prop! So the anodes have
to be checked regularly. Well as the result of us not using 316 stainless we
paid the price and our good friend Dave helped us to locate and purchase new
props. These took five days to get from England … one day to get to Athens and
another four days to find their way to Vonitsa.
We have replaced the Lofrans anchor winch with a nice new shiny one and John has also upgraded
the wiring so that the winch can now use all our batteries and I have to say in
the test run it was so much quicker and more powerful.
We have painted
the decks with Protecta Kote which John says is good enough to allow
helicopters to land on it!! We won’t be allowing that! It is a polyurethane paint
that is infused with lots of little rubber balls to make it non slip.
And finally our
good friend Simon who hopes to come with us on our journey across the pond came
to make a hole in the hull for the water intake for our water maker when it
finally arrives! He looked at the engine and commented ‘that looks a bit dodgy
mate!’ pointing at the propshaft seal and as much as John did not want to agree
with him (he knew it was going to be a swine of a job)….he was right. So John
spent seven hours getting drive shaft coupler free before we could remove the
old seal as we had trouble removing the coupling on the shaft. A very large
beer was the order of the day when he finished that job! We now sit and wait
for parts … again!!
We have seen boats launch from the boat yard wondering when we are going to make it but there have
been moments of amusement too. A boat next to us was ready to launch went into
the water and then out again …. When we enquired what the problem was we were
told they could not find the keys!! So John and I shot off into Lefkas to see
if we could find a new key fitting for him we found one that might have worked
but bumped into Simon on the way back… who told us Bosch only use three
different keys and he gave us a slack handful of old keys he had to try. We got
back tried the keys he had given us … no success but the John said’ let’s try
our boat keys’ it was a bit of a long shot but Wolfgang the owner of the boat
put the key in the ignition turned it and yes you’ve guessed it …. It worked!! Lucky Man!
Another
observation since we have been back…. When you go anywhere now there are signs
up saying IF YOU DO NOT GET A RECIEPT
YOU ARE NOT OBLIGED TO PAY so most shopkeepers we have encountered have told us
on leaving their shop ‘Please don’t forget your Angela’ or ‘here is your Merkel’ It made us smile the
first time we were told this.
I do hope to put a few pics in this post but they will have to come along later when we have better internet connection
