CRUISING AT LAST

Envoy is now anchored at Argostoli, Cephalonia Island.

Sorry it's been nearly three weeks since the last post - I'll make it about weekly from now on.

We finally leave Lefkas Marina on Saturday 30 April with no particular technical issues except that our Robertson autopilot and rudder position indicator is intermittently not working. This is strange as it worked fine when we launched Envoy and later when we did our sea trial with Sailand engineers aboard, but it seems to have settled down since and is working fine now.
It's early in the cruising season with hardly any cruisers around and a lot of tavernas and shops not open yet – but all that will change in the next couple of weeks.

Here is a great poem about going back to sea – a bit of poetic license on our part as Envoy isn't exactly a “bark” but the feeling is the same.

My bounding bark, I fly to thee, I’m wearied of the shore;
I long to hail the swelling sea, And wander free once more:
A sailor’s life of reckless glee, That only is the life for me!
I was not born for fashion’s slave, Or the dull city’s strife;
Be mine the spirit-stirring wave, The roving sailor’s life:
A life of freedom on the sea, That is the only life for me!
I was not born for lighted halls, Or the gay revel’s round;
My music is where Ocean calls, And echoing rocks resound:
The wandering sailor’s life of glee, That is the only life for me!
Anon

After a shake-down cruise around some favorite destinations close to Lefkas we set off for Corfu about 65 miles north.
I wasn't keen to test the water maker in the slightly contaminated waters of Lefkas Marina so test it in the crystal clear waters of Lakka Bay at Paxxos island. The procedure is to run the system with no pressure for 10 minutes to clear out the pickling chemicals used at the end of last season to protect the high pressure membrane, and then to run it normally. However the pump supplying sea water to the system wasn't working so we put this on the short list of items to resolve at Gouvia Marina.
We also find a very small sea water leak to the forward bilge, which I think is coming from the aircon's cooling water supply, so we've closed the seacock to see if this stops it.

Easter is celebrated later in Greece than other countries and in the small village of Lakka we're able to see the local people marching to the stirring music of their band parading religious relics through the streets. Greece is still a country with strong traditional family and religious values and this is very apparent to us as we observe this long-practised ritual.

Easter parade at Paxxos Island

View of Envoy in the tranquil waters of Lakka, Paxxos Island

So far we've been towing our larger Nautica RHIB with the 25hp Yamaha and now want to lift it aboard. We recently replaced our stainless steel 3-wire lifting strop with one made using three high tensile polymer lines, and as the RHIB weighs about 250kg we want to test the whole system before lifting it too high out of the water – if one of the two boom winch cables or the lifting strop were to break it could be extremely dangerous. So the test is to lift the RHIB clear of the water and then for Diane and I to stand in it together with about 50 litres of water in two jerrycans providing in total about an additional 190kg. The system successfully handles this additional weight so we proceed to lift the RHIB with confidence and without problems.

In early May we enter Corfu's Gouvia Marina – one of our favorites.
Here we're meeting our friend Chris – our first visitor of the season. Chris is also known as “MacGyver” due to his special technical skills, and he quickly gets stuck into a multitude of jobs which I'll detail in the next posting.

The local people are rather upset that the seamen who man the inter-island ferries are on a three-day strike for higher wages. Not only do the residents of Greece's many islands rely on the ferries for transportation but there is a calamitous effect on the tourist trade which provides a large slice of Greece's income. Even the supermarkets started to run out of some food items.

Engineer Angelos checks the water maker and confirms what we knew - the sea water pump dating from 2002 isn't working. He removes it to his workshop and later reports the pump is too far gone to repair, especially for such an old unit and we opt for a new one at eye-watering expense to be sent down from Athens. After that's installed the water maker works fine.

Angelos with new sea water pump for water maker (no wonder he's smiling)

We also get contractors to clean the guest toilet holding tank's level indicator, which has stopped working. The job entails removing the head as the holding tank is located underneath it. The level indicator has not been checked for at least 10 years and its float switch is found to be still in working order but needing a good clean.
While aboard they also dismantle, service and reassemble the master head, but it still doesn't work correctly when discharging directly overboard. There appears to be a blockage in the discharge hose close to the seacock so we will use it only discharging to its holding tank, which is then emptied using a different through-hull fitting.

Contractors working on our main head

This is work-in-progress and the next step is to insert our portable LED-lit waterproof inspection camera (a gift from our great friend Frank) into the seacock from the outside.