Spending Time at Cleopatra Marina

In short, we made it to Preveza on a flight that was more than two hours late, grabbed a cab who drove fast enough to get back to the airport for a second fare (it's only a 5 minute cab ride), and got into our little air conditioned room. 

We decided a drink was in order to aid with sleep so went for a quick one at the restaurant where we were greeted warmly. Of course, up at 5:30 - not so bad because it's cool, and we had to search high and low for Tara and eventually found her in the farthest corner of the lot. 

I'll skip the detail of the first couple of days except not the little tenant we had. Thank GOODNESS it wasn't the rat we had on board last year, this little fella was snuggled into the ropes on deck. We're not sure the species of bat that it was. They are really tiny and we weren't sure whether it was mature or young ... let alone male or female.

Our little stowaway

He (or she) didn't want to leave in daylight so I laid the ropes over a pot so he/she could hang and gently put the lid on leaving a half inch open. It snuggled up under the lid as seen in the picture ... we then left it 'til the next morning and was gone when we checked. I hope he/she is out there devouring mosquitos. 

3 Days later and here we are…still in Cleopatra Marina, still pretty tired at certain times of the day and happy to be here. We spent a day and a half “unpacking” Tara and getting her seaworthy – a nice pace with breaks when it was really hot in the middle of the day where we went to eat or just sat in the room with AC on max. We had a 3 pm drop in and the guys here are amazingly professional and on time however, the boat launched prior to us started to sink. The owner hadn’t been on her in five years and I’m guessing didn’t do his due diligence as he had 4 or 5 leaks from thru-hulls failing. This suited us fine as we went to a late lunch and waited to watch Tara drive by in the travel lift. 

She went in without a hitch (Matt checking all possible leak spots before they set us free) and we powered over to the town to anchor and see if we could haul me up the mast to free up some halyards that got stuck near the top of the forestay (we store the good ropes inside the mast for winter to preserve them). It was just too windy, too late in the day and we were too tired, on top of that we noticed an electrical problem which made Matt quite anxious. We were getting no charging which means batteries could deplete and that’s a big problem on a boat. So we brought the anchor up trying to use the fewest amps possible – with success thankfully – and back to Cleopatra Marina we went. The afternoon thermal was up and Matt did a fantastic job backing into our slip…”you have to commit” he says, when there is wind and current of which there was a lot of both. Even the ormeggiatori commented on how well we did. 

Marina at the top 

Since then we continued to get Tara “roadworthy” – we got up around 6 am the next morning when it was lovely and calm and I went up the mast to free the halyards (by tightening a screw on the forestay that allowed the halyards to slip down to deck level) and installing the wind instrument at the top. Then we proceeded to put both sails on… A full day's work for some and it was only 8:30 so we went for breakfast.  

Matt pumping up the SUPs

The rest of the day was getting the main salon and the bedrooms put back together and de-cluttered. We had bought new fender covers so on they went while while I filled the water tanks (takes about an hour) and Matt worked with the electrician. Then...not great news…it appeared the alternator is “shot”. They took it out and sent it to town to be rebuilt…we think…the electrician did not speak English well. Then we went to lunch and back to the boat and promptly fell asleep. More boat work in the evening … mostly down to tidying up and putting away (except the alternator which we have to wait for) and yet another wonderful meal and a local walk before bed.

Nice new matching fender covers (e.g., not sun faded)