Envoy is currently wintering in Lefkas Marina, Greece, and we are home in New Zealand, returning March.
Lefkas Marina is very sheltered and runs off a canal not the open sea, so isn’t subject to surge that many other marinas are prone to. Envoy is moored in an excellent position stern-to a smooth concrete jetty and not a floating pontoon. This is great because in severe storms floating pontoons can come adrift and cause damage to boats moored to them.
Lefkas town, just minutes walk away, is delightful and the area has a reasonable infrastructure of shops and technical resources, including the company Sailand that we use to assist us.
The marina’s hardstand area is full so this year is the first time we’re leaving Envoy in the water during winter, making our usual routine is a bit different and much simpler. Staying in the water is also 30% cheaper and the marina’s cost is what we consider a reasonable 12.40 Euros (NZ$20.40) per day including power and water. We will have to pay additional for hauling out in March for washing, antifouling and underwater maintenance. Fortunately our full storage cover can also still be used as its lashings are above waterline level.
There are big advantages when you can cruise and then return to the same marina, for example some equipment we don’t need all the time can be left ashore (like our bulky winter storage cover).
Envoy in Lefkas Marina - it's best to be moored to concrete, not floating pontoons
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TECHNICAL We’ve recently started using an in-line water filter when refilling water from the dock to reduce the chance of microbial growth in our water tanks. We’ve noticed that we never get any growth in plastic containers stored on deck filled with water from the water maker because it’s so pure, but sometimes we see a bit of green slime start to appear in containers filled with dock water. Often we add a little chlorine bleach to dock water to kill any microbial matter as well. Hopefully the filter will eliminate algae in dock water supplies.
Laurie with in-line water filter
Apart from our usual routine winterising jobs (which will be detailed in a forthcoming post) the projects we tackled were:
Leaking diesel tank: the iron tank had been filled with old anchor chain to act as ballast to keep Envoy’s trim, so the first task was to take this out.
Laurie behind huge pile of anchor chain ballast removed from leaking fuel tank
While we’re away Sailand are going to weld a patch on the area of the leak and reinforce this with a section of angle iron. Then they’ll progressively fill the tank with diesel to check that it no longer leaks.
Seapower generator: after being reconditioned in Croatia and running well for only 193 hours this has been working only intermittently for the last few weeks. I imagined there would be some minor fault like a bad wiring connection, but it turned out the “reconditioning” had been done very poorly using brushes which didn’t fit correctly and Chinese-made bearings which were already starting to rumble. The cause of the intermittent running was a temperature sensing wire that had been incorrectly installed and was sometimes rubbing on the casing during operation causing the unit to incorrectly sense an overheat condition.
To be continued next posting.
Envoy in Lefkas Marina - it's best to be moored to concrete, not floating pontoons
TECHNICAL We’ve recently started using an in-line water filter when refilling water from the dock to reduce the chance of microbial growth in our water tanks. We’ve noticed that we never get any growth in plastic containers stored on deck filled with water from the water maker because it’s so pure, but sometimes we see a bit of green slime start to appear in containers filled with dock water. Often we add a little chlorine bleach to dock water to kill any microbial matter as well. Hopefully the filter will eliminate algae in dock water supplies.
Laurie with in-line water filter
Apart from our usual routine winterising jobs (which will be detailed in a forthcoming post) the projects we tackled were:
Leaking diesel tank: the iron tank had been filled with old anchor chain to act as ballast to keep Envoy’s trim, so the first task was to take this out.
Laurie behind huge pile of anchor chain ballast removed from leaking fuel tank
While we’re away Sailand are going to weld a patch on the area of the leak and reinforce this with a section of angle iron. Then they’ll progressively fill the tank with diesel to check that it no longer leaks.
Seapower generator: after being reconditioned in Croatia and running well for only 193 hours this has been working only intermittently for the last few weeks. I imagined there would be some minor fault like a bad wiring connection, but it turned out the “reconditioning” had been done very poorly using brushes which didn’t fit correctly and Chinese-made bearings which were already starting to rumble. The cause of the intermittent running was a temperature sensing wire that had been incorrectly installed and was sometimes rubbing on the casing during operation causing the unit to incorrectly sense an overheat condition.
To be continued next posting.
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