And finally, news from the front!

Good news… she floats!

Well, it has been a pretty busy few days for us and Key West.
We’re now afloat… yes, she does float… and we have been out for a few test sails.
There have been a few trials and tribulations.

For example, note the picture of Murray working on the windlass battery, this was just before he fell through the locker lid! Then we had a slight mishap with the roller reefing for the foresail not working… of course just when you really want to reduce sail! This culminated in a few cuts and bruises, (luckily Murray had already taken some arnica for a previous slip so the major fall was already covered!) some fancy fast 360’s and a series of strange manoeuvres until the halyard finally freed off and we could drop the whole thing. My trip to the top of the mast revealed the roller had ceased under load but luckily we managed to rinse it our and fill it full of grease and get it going again.
On the plus side Key West definitely loves to sail and goes like a rocket. 5-6 knots not a problem and over seven easily achieved and that’s in less than 20 knots of wind and reduced sail! All exciting stuff… we can see why a flotilla client said “ohh, I didn’t like the Elan we had it was too tippy!”
Well must away now… Murray is helping make a template for our new holding tank and then we are off towards Preveza for a few days… no rest for the wicked…


Cruising Mode...

Progress on the holding tank is slow involving a trip to Nidri to meet Les the glass fibre man, easily identified by the cloud of dust following him along the quay side. Nidri was interesting in a Little Britain sort of way the a combination of Sarga Sailing crews and Blackpool style trippers made for great people watching. (I think even Murray was too embarrassed to “watch” one particular large Scottish lass… bare boating it all right!)
So we have decided to go into full cruising mode this involves just heading off where the wind takes us, so far this has included Ithaca and Cefalonia; mainly anchoring in bays for a night or two then a night on a town quay to provision etc.
What a great life very relaxing and relatively stress free, especially compared with some of the charter crews that we have meet… someone should let them in on the rules of engagement:
Rule 1- Setting an anchor does not require you to plough the whole bay!!!
Rule 2 – There are more than 2 throttle positions. Remember you are on a sailing yacht and not a rally car!! (Note: this contradicts rule number two of Greek driving where the vehicle should be treated as a rally car at all times and not a sailing yacht)
Rule 3 – If it does not work the 3rd time, you need a new plan!

And so we are here today in Sami, home of the film Capt. Corelli’s Mandolin, but only just as the set was built outside of town and we couldn’t see anything that linked the town and film together other than Greece in general, and we have enjoyed yet another night of priceless entertainment with charter boats everywhere playing dodgums, pick up 52 anchors and strip that boat naked. It’s yet another sunny day and wind will pick up shortly (that’s right sir, best take your little charter boat off the quay now, that anchor will never hold…) so it will be off up the bay at 6 knots (that’s right madam, that’s an appropriate speed when under sail but not engine, particularly near my boat) and anchor in a small bay somewhere quiet (that’s right sir, you perhaps should try somewhere else… the holding is a bit iffy here…) and back to a bit of relaxing bare boating… well something had to rub off from all our encounters with the Belgium and Swedish yachts.

OK so we haven’t been updating much!!

We are now back in Lefkas Marina and hopefully this will get posted this time!!
Since our last none update we have been cruising about backwards and forwards between Lefkas Marina and the various neighbouring islands still waiting for the final fitting of our holding tank (yay, that’s today… whatever day this is!!)
Since Sami we went back to Ithaca (love that island) and moored up in Porto Polis beside one of the most important cave sites in Greece… you guessed it closed for renovations… in this case permanently as far as we could tell as it had collapsed in the 1953 earthquake! Still the bay was lovely and we took a stroll over the hill to Frikes where Murray had one of his most intimate experiences with a donkey, (no, not like that but yes it was a jenny!), as he heroically rescued her from certain death by manfully braving her nashing teeth and lashing hooves whilst unwinding her catch rope from her hind leg and half an olive grove… it was “Donkey Boy’s” finest hour!
Frikes was very pretty and the “flotilla bridge” seven boats deep across the harbour was a nice touch.
Rather stupidly from here we thought we would brave Fiskado on Cephalonia… base camp of Sailing Holidays… interesting place but not without its stressful moments and we have decided we really should remove the IFR logo from the side of the boat. First we were mown over by a runaway First 40, all sails blazing, no engine, driven by some English idiot who thought he knew something; not sure what but I had a few suggestions (!), and when they finally got manhandled along side us with the help of half the bay we discovered they had taken our anchor for a zoom round the bay as well so we moved… and low and behold as soon as we anchored up a stonking great Bavaria blew down on us. Good job our anchor was in well and they had plenty of schnapps to compensate us!! F.A.B. Man!! The most amusing part was the English guy that swam over after it had all settled down and said would we like to move next to him where it was a bit quieter! Yeah, right!
And so it was back to Lefkas Marina the next day for maintenance and recreation… and then off to Nikolaos Bay (hence fore to be known as “Digger Bay” because of all the ground works going on!) and then Porto Leone and its deserted village, very peaceful. Unfortunately the only drawback here was wasps and we have now developed a new game… “Sfika Tennis”… points can only be scored when each player has a fly swat and the wasp is actively trying to crawl up your trouser leg… flies are only half a point and if you are trying to “serve” you must not involve the opposing player face!
After yet another call to come back to Lefkas and the land of the mythological holding tank we killed some time by heading out of sfida paradise and motored across to a tranquil bay at the bottom of Meganisi… in true Belgian style we threw off all our clothes and dived into the clear blue water… Rule number 125 of cruising: when no shower is available make the most of all opportunities to swim… Rule number 576: Once anchored in a bay by ones self please enact the 30 second rule for time on your own… yep you know the drill, the most British of British families immediately honed in on our yacht as a good place to stop and parked in our cockpit! Needless to say Murray and I had a fit of the giggles and in the end they got more than they bargained for when the water finally got too cold for us to stay in!
Once they had hurriedly left, we headed out into the bay for a nice run up to the marina… or so we thought… instead we ended up having a wild ride into Nidri… gusting 25 knots with everything up was maybe a little ambitious although we did achieve 7.95kt!!! Quite white knuckle stuff!!
And now you are up to date… as I write this Murray is “Malakering” in the back cabin installing two fans (yes, Pen you know that word!!) and McGrooby is finishing off the holding tank and all is well with the world!
P.s. It is Poli Zesti here… that’s definitely the opposite of freezing cold!