Arrival in Greece

05:30 wake up, 06:15 grab breakfast, 06:45 walk to airport, 07:00 check in, 07:10 walk through security, and then wait for 2 hours because you’re early. I guess it beats being panicked about whether you’re going to make the flight or not. Again our flight was on-time, we transferred to another plane in Vienna and then on to Preveza. 

Tara on the travel-lift -- ready to be splashed

A quick cab ride (the guy was driving 140Km/h on 50km/h roads to get back to the airport for another fare) to the marina and we were there. A couple of days of travelling and we were ready to start working on Tara.

Happiest day of the year for Tara -- back in the water again

We did a pretty good job of putting her to bed, not much was wrong, just the pumps that I had brought from Vancouver and the new AIS transponder that will upgrade our navigation safety systems. We put most of our kit on the boat which was being polished, and then decided to crash for a couple of hours in air-conditioned comfort.

Ross and I hanging out on the bow on our new cushions steering the
boat with our remote control for the Autopilot

We got up the next morning really early and started unpacking the boat. We got the jib on and got the pumps installed. We replaced the main furling line (again) and also put the main up the mast. My idea of putting all the halyards at the top of the mast and protecting the rope in an Ikea tote worked like a hot-damn. Going to patent this idea and sell it to all the sailors that put their boats away.

Anyway, after a bunch of hot work we put the boat in the water and she started up right away, all systems worked and we pulled into our slip with no-muss, no-fuss. We tied up and started to work on making sure all the sailing systems and stuff that we couldn’t test while we were out of the water worked. 

Fortunately for us there weren’t any nasty surprises – other than my head (bathroom to normal humans) stank to high heaven. In the end I believe it was a combination of an odor filter that needed replacement plus the shower drain having fermented. A load of bleach did a world of good for my nose.

Ross hanging out on the pulpit looking for dolphins

I had ordered some cushions for the bow and cockpit and they were going to take until Saturday. We had a lot of waiting around to do so one of the things we figured out was how much rope we have onboard Tara – and our best estimate is about 1.3 Kilometers – not quite a mile of rope but maybe 8-10ths.

Saturday morning couldn’t come fast enough for Ross and me – sitting in Cleopatra marina for a few days is enough to make you starkers. We got our cushions – not 100% satisfied but took them anyway, and pulled out of the marina. We anchored off of Preveza and I ran in and bought a 100 Euros of food to get us started and we bugged out to Lakka on Paxos.

It is amazing how much more restful it is to be anchored than in a marina … the wind is always at your nose so the ventilation of the boat works much better plus we just have more freedom to do what we want to.

We tried sailing but the wind has been constantly on the nose. In this case it was completely on the nose the whole way – e.g., Lakka was where the wind was coming from, that Ross and I gave up, sat on the new boat cushions and steered the boat with my trusty autopilot remote control. We had a good giggle about sitting on the bow for Opening day with nobody on the helm and saluting the Commodore while steering with the remote control.

We got to Lakka and then discovered to our delight that we didn’t need to be in Gouvia on Corfu until 2 days later instead of the next day – so we had a bonus day in about the nicest place anywhere, finished up outfitting the boat and getting her ready for sailing.

Tara at Anchor in Lakka on the island of Paxos