ENVOY CRUISES TO ALACATI

As I write this we’re cruising 50NM from the Samos Strait to Alicati, near Cesme. 50 miles in one day is a bit longer than our usual routine, and takes us about nine hours, but with Envoy on autopilot there’s nothing we need to do except keep a lookout, and do hourly engine-room checks. This will put us in the right area to meet our first guests, Morris and Gail on 2 June.
The Samos Strait is under a mile wide, and separates the Greek island of Samos from the Turkish mainland making it the closest point Turkey and Greece come together except for their land border near the Black Sea.
We started our journey this morning in still and misty conditions. The normally sparkling turquoise sea was as grey as the mist, making the horizon difficult to detect. So far since leaving Marmaris we’ve not used our paravane stabilisers at all, and again today the sea is glassy calm with the wind under two knots. A cruise ship – the Star Princess has just passed close by (photo to be posted shortly), and it’s wake provided a change from the flat sea. There are very few boats around, and the only other boats we’ve seen in three hours are two Greek fishing boats. All day yesterday, when we cruised 33NM we saw only Coastguard and Navy patrol boats. One of the Coastguard boats called us on VHF to check our name and destination.
The weather has still not settled into summer, and yesterday we even had a brief shower, but the temperature is now in the mid 20s and sea water 21d.
TECHNICAL
Our parts for the water maker have finally arrived in Marmaris, and the engineer is re-assembling our unit in the workshop today, and driving to Alicati tomorrow to meet us and install it. This will be very welcome, as it’s a bit tough on the body obtaining water using jerry cans, although to make it easier we’ve only been filling the 30L containers to 25L. If the water maker works OK we’ll definitely be celebrating!
Our Naiad stabiliser control system has now been tested by Naiad in Holland, and an engineer from Holland is going to meet us in Greece mid-July to get our Naiads operational again.
While anchored off Altinkum’s Didim Marina we got three problems rectified.
All last year we had occasional problems starting our Northern Lights generator. I assumed this was battery-related (as it was with our main Lugger engine), but this proved not to be the case, and this year the starting issue became more common. I checked all the obvious (to me) things like connections to the battery isolating switch and starter motor, but with no improvement, so got a diesel engineer to have a look. Within five minutes he went into the electrics inside a protective box, and found a relay had loose wiring, probably shaken loose with constant vibration. So this was an easy fix.
Our guest head – a Vacuuflush has been playing up again. The bowl did not always hold water, causing the vacuum pump to hunt, and the pump that sends waste into the holding tank had a failed piston and seal. This was all fixed OK too, mostly using spare parts we had on board.
The other job was simply a replacement of the faucet in the main head sink, as the hot water flow had reduced to a dribble.
A couple of weeks ago I noticed our hot water tank had signs of a very minor water leak. The water is heated either by the Lugger engine’s heat exchanger, or electrically using the generator or wing engine. I noticed the leak only occurred when running the Lugger. We belong to the Nordhavn Owners Group, where members exchange information about technical and other matters relating to Nordhavns. I put out an enquiry regarding our leak, and got a reply advising that the coolant level in the Lugger engine may be too low. I topped it up, and after about a week so far so good – the slight leak has gone. I don’t quite understand how this fixed the problem, but it did.
Log: 23 days aboard since leaving Marmaris, 203NM cruised for 50 engine hours.