Almost Ready to Go

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We thought we’d do some provisioning so hopped on the water shuttle to town and did a little shopping, sat in a café for a half hour and then got groceries. Back by 12:15 and kept working on little things around the boat…and we had our first little lunch on board – nice. The bad news was they told us they couldn’t rebuild our alternator and the worse news is they couldn’t find a new one for us – even in Athens. What’s with that?? 

Matt's new favorite passtime: screwing around with alternators

Matt decided to re-install the broken one and use our portable generator to charge up the batteries – a workaround until a permanent solution could be found. The good news is, when he installed the “shot” alternator and bypassed the external regulator (a test he had asked if the tech had done and they said yes – assuming they understood the question), it worked. This alternator is supposed to have a special and unique feature of the external regulator, without that it’s just a normal “dumb” one…well, we’ll skip the special part thanks and get on our way. Now that we had a functioning engine we could get our fridge serviced so that technician was scheduled for the next morning. He showed up around 9:30, got it working, and with mixed feelings (happy all is well but unhappy that we waited around for an alternator that worked) we finally departed. 

To the credit of Cleopatra Marina, after an email from Matt to Konstantina in the Technical Department (who knows us well), she did not charge us for the work they did (and didn’t) do on the alternator -- probably hundreds of Euros.  Chock another one up for Cleo -- such a well run place and customer-service oriented. We cannot recommend them enough, though Marina does cringe when they add the 1Euro charge for the Coke we consumed out of the minibar fridge last year to the 7,300 Euro bill from this year. they are nothing if not consistent and well run.