Prepping to Go Home

Cleo got us our haul out Saturday at 08:00 - that was our only choice. What a mad scramble. To get come out on Saturday … the boat will be perfect but we may be a bit of a wreck with three nights in the boat yard. I am hopeful that we can get everything ready to go before Monday. That way we can take Monday and do something more fun than just sit around … maybe drive to Pargas and take a day trip to Antipaxos or something on a tripper boat? Or perhaps just drive down to Lefkas and enjoy the beach somewhere.

We started out from Pargas toward Preveza pretty early because it was about 30 miles away. In putting the boat away the big issue is getting the jib down, that’s the one job that is a bit of a bitch … so on the way to Preveza Marina noticed there was no wind and boom … down it came. We did a nearly perfect job of folding it but there just wasn’t enough deck, but it was manageable so when we were stern to the mole in Preveza we took it ashore before the crowds were on the boardwalk and properly flaked it. We also did all the chrome inside the boat and I lanocote’d everything I could think of. I decided not to work on the engine until we were stopped and thought I might do it while we’re out of the water. No point in tempting fate – having the engine in pieces when you might need it.

The girls worked hard, cleaned the SUPs and put them away, and also washed the sheets (ropes) in our bucket which used up water (which we wanted to do). Staying at the mole in Preveza is very cost effective relative to being in the Marina at Cleopatra -- about 50 Euros a day less, and you have so much more to do than just work on the boat. The only challenge is being on board Saturday night when the local disco goes hard until 05:00.

Once the sails were down and the windex was off, it was just a matter of getting the boat cleaned up. Lots of vacuuming, wiping and scrubbing, getting rid of food, taking the sheets (ropes) off. We powered over to Cleopatra .. a whole 5 minutes from Preveza, and backed into the haul-out station where the travel-lift picks up the boat and moves her into the boatyard. The current runs 2-3 knots sideways at Cleopatra so you must seriously commit to getting the boat behind the concrete wall, where the current stops.  It's really interesting when your stern in in sheltered water but your bow is being pushed by current. Causes a slight pucker-factor. 

The next two days were fairly easy as we had done so much in advance:  washing cushions and canvass, putting the Halyards away into their Ikea box, getting the interior put away, changing oil, transmission oil, and antifreeze, then doing the same (except antifreeze) for the generator and outboard, washing stuff with fresh water, waxing, turning off the fridges, emptying the water tanks, surreptitiously filling and emptying the holding tanks several times to clean them out and putting Lanocote on any metal part we could think of that could possibly seize. 

Meanwhile someone is doing laundry -- like 5 loads of it ... sheets, towels, stay-behind clothes, walkabout clothes; everything was in great need of a proper wash with laundry soap. Finally, off come the steering wheels, the canvass and all sun-shade elements so we're all buttoned up for another year. How well you do is evidenced by how hard it is to startup the following year ... this we will find out in about 10 months time.

Cliff Jumping on Antipaxos and back to Pargas

Another Lazy day in Lakka. We got up and did some reading, some listening and then went in for brunch – to the same place we had a great brunch the other day. Originally, I wanted to order what Hugh did – a Popeye crepe, but the cream cheese didn’t really appeal. Unfortunately, I ordered Eggs Benedict … and for some inexplicable reason, Marina did the same. What we got was a grilled cheese on white bread with a fried egg on top smothered in some type of miracle-whip-inspired yellow sauce and a couple of rashers of bacon on top. Yuck is the only thing that comes to mind. I scraped off the sauce, choked back the grilled cheese, and then ate the egg, again smothered with sauce.  It sat in my stomach as a lump, bigger than a bowling ball. 

New favouite breakfast place in Lakka...
but DO NOT order the Eggs Benedict

I decided to take a bit of a walk up the road just to get some miles on my legs. The girls did a little window shopping but didn't buy anything. We got some food, ice and bread and headed back to Tara for the crack of 1pm.

Girl-power raised the anchor and managed the boat, they’re both getting more comfortable on the helm of the boat as I do less of the driving. It’s as much about confidence and experience. The more you do it the better you get at it – assuming that you don’t get over-stressed by doing something that is too difficult for your skill level.

Today we’re heading down to Antipaxos to do some cliff jumping and enjoy the beauty without the gong-show of the Antipaxos bay. The girls did some cliff jumping while I managed the dinghy. 

The water was pretty deep where we anchored but Tara held like a trooper as nearly always in our memory. Marina asked me if I wanted to jump the cliffs but I decided not to – not sure why. We're all a bit on edge, another 10 days here and in reality I think we all want to be on our way.

We set sail to Pargas from Antipaxos beside this incredible 30 meter long 20M Euro Perini Navi sailing yacht. It must be mostly a powerboat however because our lowly Beneteau 50 waxed them hugely. We were beam reaching along at 5-6 knots when they were toodling along at maybe 2 kts. Perhaps the crew didn’t want to upset the owners but it did seem a little odd that a 30 meter waterline couldn’t get going. Put the bow down and get some speed man. We got into Pargas and decided to check whether we could go home early. We set a budget of $600 but quickly blew that into $1500. Oh well, if you want it, you gotta pay. The only logistics hurdle left was Cleopatra – hopefully they can haul us out.

In the water taxi

We went into Pargas on a water taxi and then walked around the town. We had until 12:30am (the last ride back) and we thought no-way … but it was indeed 12:30am that we caught the last boat … though the guys in the Beneteau 57 decided to bribe him for an even later ride. We made it up to the Sailor’s Bar, where I did a lot of people watching sipping on a beer. Jess ordered a 10Euro Mojito and said it was tasty. Not sure why beer is ½ price of Canada and booze is 2x price.

With the weight of another week off our shoulders, we all felt better. We knew we had a few days of hard work ahead of us but we were in pretty good shape mentally and all looking forward to going home.

Back to Lakka and the fun of "Wankering"

We could not fit a chocolate-bar-wrapper into our garbage and recycling bags so it was time to find a place to offload our garbage. We know Lakka has a garbage dump just outside of town. 

Jess had preflighted the engine and Marina and Jess had breakfast made and had gotten us ready to go other than lifting the engine off the dinghy. Given that there was not a breath of wind, we could have left the engine on the dinghy with impunity, as long as a 100 foot Pershing didn't cruise by 30 meters away … which happens with alarming frequency here in Greece.

Once we rounded the bottom of Corfu the wind turned on and we had a terrific jib reach into Lakka with between 6 and 8 knots of boatspeed. The girls sat on the bow cushions and I read, then steered the boat for a while. As always with a couple of boats on the bay there is a race. There was a 40 footer or so with both main and jib up coming into Lakka and we stomped by him using our waterline length to pound through the waves. It is amazing what a knot of boatspeed can do over a 10 mile reach – where you go from a mile behind to a mile ahead pretty quickly. That’s not happened too often to us in reverse. The B50 rates pretty poorly in PHRF, I think because it doesn't go up and downwind all that well, but in a reach … look out.  

We pulled into Lakka and chose a great space to anchor and had just finished stretching our chain when a Nielson Charter boat asked us what we were doing … “Just Anchored” and the lady on board said “you’re right in the middle of the channel” to which I responded with a chuckle, “Have you ever been to Lakka before?” because it was pretty much empty and there is no such thing as a channel...in Lakka you pack in like sardines. Marina and I attempted to explain this to the back of her head until she said, "We no longer wish to continue dialogue with you” in her lofty British accent. It was pretty funny. I wonder what she thinks about rush hour … people all over the road … what are they doing?

We sat on board, swimming and sunning for an hour or two watching the wankering up close. It is amazing the difference between the way people can handle their boats and the level of anxiety they feel in tight situations. Looking at our log we’re on something like night number 600 on Tara so we have a fair amount of experience dropping anchor and we still screw it up now and then. I remember being in Croatia and the guy telling us not to drop our anchor close behind him … now we’d just go ahead and do it … “we’ll move if we have to” … or “where do you think the boat is going to go?” I feel sorry for people that feel such anxiety as I know it can make your holidays less enjoyable.

Anyway, Marina and I headed into town and dropped off our garbage and recycling, seeing a couple of kittens in horrible shape – eyes were closed shut with some type of infection and looking terribly scrawny. There wasn’t really much we could do about it. It’s hard to think that perhaps it would be better if they had not been born. It doesn't look like the same “sterilize, clip the ear, vaccinate and care for” the cats society is working here in Lakka anymore. It is interesting that since the economy has improved we have seen far more feral cats and we have also seen lots of dogs – something I don’t recall from 4 or 5 years ago.

We carried on with a walk to get some exercise and steps. You do begin to feel a bit pot-bound on a boat after a while and I think we’re all in need of some exercise and perhaps something new to do. The days are all mushing together and I cannot think of the last time I was counting down the days and they seemed to be going too slowly … weird. Perhaps this is the Karmic universe telling us that it may be time to move on … hard to say.

We carried on up a very long hill in Paxos up to a turnoff to a bay called Longos. We passed a quarry on the right where they harvest the characteristic white rock that most buildings, streets and stone-walls are made out of. The stone work here is beautiful and it works well for here, though both Marina and I like the look of granite more. We got to our 10,000 steps the hard way … in 35 degree heat, though we were uphill for the half and downhill for the back half … actually I only got 9796 steps … damn.  We ended up having dinner in the same spot because they have a brick oven for Pizza and we like that. Our waiter, George, was very chatty – he has spent winters elsewhere but seems to like Paxos – working from May to October and then lamenting about not having work the rest of the year. It’s hard to say whether that would be good or not … maybe I’ll try it and see what happens … I guess the problem for us is that the cost structure never changes – so those 6 months won’t have any sushi, Starbucks or aviation in them … so I guess we’ll keep working.

Bye Bye Scooby and on to Petriti...Something New

We decided to leave Kalami and head south. We’re not sure where we want to go today, probably Petriti or Lakka. We have another 12 days to go until Tara comes out of the water and we thought we’d try some new places. Petriti is on the bottom part of Corfu and is a quaint little fishing village. We skedaddled out of Kalami around 10 am and decided we’d have breakfast along the way. 

The slow-cruise originally caused by us having to watch out for overspinning the refrigerator compressor has become de-rigeur. It’s a bit like driving with my brother who shifts gears at 1200 rpm … the poor engine just idles along. I cannot imagine the amount of carbon we are generating inside the engine just toodling along. We were out in the middle of the Corfu channel when the AIS alarm starts going off. Hmmm, nothing in sight … turned off the alarm. A couple of minutes later we hear a toot-toot in the distance … there is a Cruise Ship about 3 miles away … Marina and Iooked at each other … hmmm, could that be for us? We change course 20 degrees and I went and checked the chartplotter. Sure enough the cruise ship was going to mow us over in about 3 minutes going 25 plus knots. Our 20 degree course change took us past .3 miles Closest Point of Approach or CPA … phew.  That thing is a god-send in traffic, especially at night.

Along the way Jess continued to read A Man Called Ove, a delightful story about an irascible old Swede that managed to die with hundreds of people loving him and his quirky ways. It was a bit tearful the ending and it kept us thinking about how someone can affect you in positive ways even when they’re difficult.

The wind came up with a terrific beam-reach so we pulled out the jib and started sailing. The wind lasted about 15 minutes and pooped out while Jess was working out on the bow. She claimed that it was hard to work out when the jib was draping itself all over her. Two-thirds of the way down Corfu we decided to try Petriti – what the heck and its only about an hour away (5 miles) we turned off the fridge and belted the motor. All this smoke came out at first but then the Yanmar remembered what it’s there for and charged us along at a solid 8 knots with barely any puff of smoke – once we burned off about 10 minutes of carbon buildup. 

The "marina" at Petriti

We dropped the hook at Petriti and cooled off with a swim. We’ve been on the boat quite a bit lately and I had accumulated 200 steps for the day, so we took the dinghy into town and went for a sightseeing walk. I went one way the girls went the other. We walked up and down the beach and around the town. 

Petriti looks like it was pretty hard hit by the recession and there are still quite a few boarded up buildings and shops that haven’t reopened yet. That said it was a really nice little town. I walked up the hill and checked out some very nice places – unfortunately one of the nicest was situated beside this empty lot which serves as an impromptu garbage dump.

A local

There were also dozens of feral cats. I had no idea the ‘jibblies’ on male cats were so prominent. If humans had the same relative size we’d be sitting on a couple of grapefruit or cantaloupe … never able to cross our legs again. The girls enjoyed an ice-cream while I was on my walk and then we decided to go back to TARA for a dinner of BBQ Souvlaki, rice and Greek salad. Geez, even when we’re on the boat we’re eating Greek food! 

We were considering a swim when we saw a fully-formed turd float by and that dampened our enthusiasm a fair amount. As such we decided on a movie night. I hooked up the generator and we pulled out the disk drive and watched Bull Durham for the um-teenth time. It still cracks me up when Nuke Laloosh beans the mascot in the head missing home plate by 50 feet. In the end Nuke learns to be a ball-player and makes it to the “Show”, Crash gets his home-run record and the girl. All is well in the universe.