ENVOY CRUISING IN THE IONIAN SEA

Before leaving the marina we enjoy one day away from Envoy, hiring a car to tour around this great island of Lefkada with its small sandy coves, picturesque villages and inland mountains soaring to about 3,000 feet. Traffic is negligible and I don't think there's any traffic lights at all on the island.

Greece seems to be a very honest country with little crime evident beyond copious amounts of graffiti in the cities. Shopkeepers often leave items outside overnight and people leave their keys in cars and scooters. So it was a surprise when a 46ft Bavaria yacht was stolen from Lefkada's quayside during our stay and hasn't been seen since. Locals speculate that it will have been sailed across to Italy.

While in Lefkada we also meet our Kiwi friend Bruce from sailing cat Midi. This year his wife Leslie decided to stay home, so Bruce is cruising with two friends Gavin and David. Anybody thinking about sailing in the Med couldn't do better than to buy the superbly equipped and lovingly maintained Midi.

Envoy was re-launched on Tuesday 4 June and everything was fine when we did a short sea trial before going to our berth. It's certainly much nicer staying aboard in tn the water than on the hard.
Overall our cruise preparations went well. The only surprise issue was the sea water leak to the bilge and even that wasn't a total surprise given past history. Without that we'd have been cruising within 12 days of our arrival, but this turned out to be 16.

Chris and I spent a bit of time adjusting the Lugger's prop shaft stuffing box. When Sailand checked the sealings last year they tightened the bolts on the stuffing box too much so that the forward section of the stuffing box wouldn't loosen up as the adjusting bolts were slackened. We used a puller and some levers to get it moving again and now have a nice regular drip – we find that one drip about every 10-20 seconds is about right.

The RHIB maintenance turned into a bit of a saga. After the Yamaha was serviced I took it for a test run and noticed the tachometer (tacho) was no longer working. Spiros came back and did some work on it, telling me he'd put in a new tacho that still didn't work “so it must be the regulator” (that provides an electronic signal to the tacho). A few days later a new regulator arrives and is installed but still the tacho doesn't work. Spiros tries to convince me “you don't need a tacho anyway … just go and enjoy your cruise”. But I tell Spiros I want it fixed. A few minutes after that discussion he calls me to say its all fixed. He explains that when he initially checked the fault by putting in a different tacho, it was an old used one he had laying around his workshop and that one must have been faulty too. When he put in a new tacho it worked fine.

So all was finally ready – jobs done, stores loaded, documentation completed and we set off from Lefkada Marina on the Weds as planned (plan 2!)

Just before we leave our Italian friend Fabricius comes to say farewell. Fabricius had been aboard his yacht next to us on the hard stand. He gives us some valuable advice about places to see in the Italian region we're heading to – Puglia at the northern end of the “Boot”. In fact he surprises us by saying this si one of the most visited areas of Italy. In particular he recommends Lecce – known as the Florence of the south with its Baroque architecture.

We cruise just a couple of hours north to anchor off Preveza. Di has some favorite shops here and there's also a couple of guitar shops I want to check out, ending up buying a cheap Soundsation (Fender strat style)so I don't get too much out of practice while we're away.

Laurie doing first BBQ of the season

Here's an unusual large cat in the Polynesian style noticed at Preveza

Then we cruise up to Parga – one of the nicest village on the mainland coast overlooked by its 14^th century Venetian castle.

DELAY TO ENVOY'S LAUNCHING

We've met a NZ couple from Blenheim – Keven and Kerry who've recently bought a “green” motor vessel. It has an electric motor, good for about 20 miles cruising plus a VW diesel engine with a range of about 600 miles. They eventually plan to ship it home where the electric motor will suit cruising in the Marlborough Sounds.

We're constantly reminded that many costs are still very reasonable in Greece. Last night we went to dinner at a nice restaurant overlooking the estuary and had a Greek salad, french fries, fried eggplant, mushrooms with cheese, bread, one bottle of water, one litre of house white wine and desserts of fruit and yoghurt for a total cost of 27 Euros – about NZ$47. In many restaurants at home we'd pay nearly that just for the wine. On the other hand petrol is nearly 2 Euros per litre – about NZ$3.48.

Huge crane lifts our RHIB down for engine service

Preparation for Envoy's launching had been going well and after 7 days aboard were ready for launching the day before it occurred. So last Tuesday Envoy was lifted from her chocks on the hardstand and put into the water. 

Envoy in the travelift slings

We always spend a few minutes checking for any sea water leaks before the travel lift operator removes the slings and we soon noticed a leak into the engine room bilge.

Regular readers of this Blog may recall we've had similar leaks twice previously, but they've stopped quite quickly after launching (although we were never able to figure out exactly why). However this time more water was coming in (at a guess about a litre per minute) and it didn't look like stopping any time soon.

We had Sailand engineer Panos aboard for the launching and he suggested we allow more water to come into the bilge, then lift the boat out and hopefully see water coming back out from the inside.

So we did exactly this and after lifting back onto the hard were able to identify a small area of the keel leaking water .

Within an hour Sailand's GRP expert, Raza, was on the job with his assistant and they used a grinder to cut back the GRP in the area of the leak. In doing so they found some de-laminated GRP and then a plug of sealant. Raza's theory is that a previous owner must have had some minor impact damage, used sealant to make a temporary repair and then pulled the boat out of the water and glassed over it. This must have happened more than 12 years ago. When the boat was on the hard the sealant plug dried out and shrank so that when launched water could pass through until the sealant swelled a little to stop the flow. Anyhow this is conjecture and a fully professional repair is now being completed – first grinding back to solid, good condition GRP and then building it up again using carbon fibre and Kevlar cloth impregnated with West Systems epoxy resin and using presses to apply pressure during curing. They've nearly completed the exterior and today modified the interior of the aft bilge, pouring in Gurit's Ampreg 26 epoxy resin to fill in previous surface imperfections and building up the bilge's  level by about 150mm to provide more strength and a smoother impervious surface finish.
Raza is working on Sunday to finish sanding, undercoating, painting and anti-fouling so we can launch on Monday.

Raza working on the leak repair. A towel covers the Yanmar's prop for safety

He used infra red heaters both to dry the hull and to cure the epoxy

West System's 105 epoxy was used

Also carbon fibre and Kevlar cloth

This image shows the extent of the repair - pink

It's now Sunday and Raza has been working today to complete the job so we can launch tomorrow.

All other work is now completed except that our large RHIB is awaiting a new regulator for its Yamaha outboard's alternator – during servicing the mechanic noticed the battery is over charging. This part is due to arrive on Tuesday so we're hopeful of starting our cruise on Wednesday.