Our
advertising of Envoy on this Blog has resulted in an offer to
purchase from long time readers of the Blog. In fact not only have
this Australian couple been following our Blog since its inception,
but followed Envoy's Atlantic Crossing by the previous owners in
2004. The potential buyer's offer is naturally subject to their
inspection and survey which will take place here in Lefkas late
October. So Envoy is “under offer” and we won't be considering
any further offers unless this sale doesn't proceed.
We've
arrived in Lefkada after a good trip from Auckland spending one night
in Dubai and one in Athens on the way. Emirates are a great airline
and the nearly 17 hour flight passed quite quickly aided by a solid 8
hours sleep. We like Emirates 30kg luggage allowance, their lenient
attitude towards cabin bags and the generous space between economy
seat rows. Having a spare seat between us on both flights certainly
helped too. Our hotel in Dubai was good and it's a convenient place
to break the trip.
We
arived to find Envoy as expected on the hardstand under the care of
our contractor – Sailand with everything looking good and more
progress getting her ready for cruising than we expected.
Sailand
completed a refurbishment of the Lugger's exhaust system which
included replacing some exhaust sections, building a new stainless
steel muffler and replacing all heat insulation.
They had also completed Envoy's anti fouling and attended to a small list of
winter jobs:
-Re-sealing
two acylic ventilation hatches into their aluminium frames because
the sealant had failed
-Servicing
the sea water circulating pumps on the generator and wing engine (we get this done annually)
-Checking
the wing engine's shaft seal, prop and prop shaft
-Checking
the main prop shaft's alignment, internal rubber sleeve and clamps,
removing the stuffing box's sealings for inspection and finding them
in good condition, greasing and replacing them
-Changing
the main gearbox oil and cleaning its oil strainer
-Replacing
a leaking galley sink mixer/faucet with a new one
-Replacing
the large Nautica RHIB's start battery
Another
contractor has also polished Envoy's bootstripe and white topsides
gelcoat areas while yet another has repaired a slow air leak in one
of the pontoons of our smaller Valiant RHIB.
Today
was quite a sight when a huge crane came alongside Envoy to lift our
larger RHIB down onto a trailer for annual servicing of its 25HP
Yamaha outboard. Also today I took four inflatable life jackets in
for two-yearly servicing together with one fire extinguisher which
has its gauge needle in the red when it should be in the green.
There's
a few more jobs being done on Tuesday such as filter replacements
and then on Wednesday we expect to launch Envoy and do a short sea
trial with Sailand's engineer aboard. Then we hope to leave the
marina by the weekend. Sorry no pictures in this posting.
