Up Till Now I wasn't Sure Who Had the Harder Job

As you may know, we sold our Taylorwood Place house after 15 years and are moving to the one we bought a few years ago on Mathers Avenue. While the house is an up in some ways – nicer yard, closer to the school, it is quite a bit smaller and it needs work. Having been a rental for 10 years or more shows on the state both the house and the yard. There is a lot of work to do when we move in this fall starting with the renovation of a few bathrooms.

First things first, we need to move out of the Taylorwood house. We’ve been planning the move for six months or so, starting with the showings – that led to some purging of some junk. The reality is that you don’t start to get an appreciation of all the junk you accumulate over 15 years until you move. We have every nook and cranny of the 4,460 square foot house filled to capacity. In addition, we have a lot of stuff in the back-yard and also in our double detached garage with workshop.

The people who rent our other house are looking to buy a house and they’ve been having a bit of a time finding a place so we agreed that they would stay at the house (except the Garage where we would put my cars, the motorcycles and tools) and we would load the rest of our stuff into PODS and store it until our return in September. This seemed to work for both of us.

We then came upon Ross and I leaving on June 23^rd so we could get the boat commissioned and sail to Athens to meet up with Marina and Jessie her competing in the girls U15 Provincial Soccer Tournament.

The West Vancouver Spuraways -- BC Provincial B-Cup Soccer Champions for 2012/2013

Ross and I were working on the house right up until we left, we were carrying lots of boat parts and we made our way to Cleopatra. We braved the heat and hot sun. We sweated and cut ourselves pulling cables and wiring, hooking up alternators and battery chargers.

Reaching along to Messalongia

Then when the boat was in the water we kept working on it, fixing things here and there. Basically we were starting to get sick of working on Tara. We kept going through Lefkas to Megasini, then back to Lefkas, visiting Port Police and the Tax office a couple of times, plus going to the bank again and again.

Wing-on-wing downwind for miles

Now we’re sailing to Messalongia, I realize we got the better end of this deal. While it has been a bit of a grunt to get the boat running, we’ve been here in Greece on the water the last couple of days and, in particular today, has been amazing. We woke up in Vathy after our midnight anchor episode and had a bacon and egg breakfast.

We then powered out into the harbour in preparation for our 40 mile trip. Of the 40 miles we have powered only about 5 miles, the rest has been a beam-to-broad reach, with an hour or so of running wing-on-wing in about 12 knots of breeze. The only thing that would have been better would have been to use the spinnaker, but with just two of us on board, we decided that might be a bad idea.

As we sip a beer watching the sun set over the marina in Mesalongia, it occurred to us that life wasn't so bad.

So in summary, Ross and I got the better deal. We’ll have to make it up to Marina, Jessie, Chelsea, and of course, Tina, somehow when we return to Vancouver.

Midnight Move

One of our Neighbours, a nice 120 footer anchored and tied
to the shoreline

At around 1am Ross banged on my door “Dad, get up I think we are dragging the anchor” Considering we were 30 meters from shore, the wind was blowing high teens and we’re in 3 meters of water, it didn’t take me long to throw on my shorts and get out of bed.

The Anchor Dragged straight back. We were less than 2
boatlengths from shore

We checked the GPS and anchor alarms and they weren’t going off, but you could see the track was definitely inching closer to shore. We had tried to set the anchor in sand but were probably too close to some weed – expecting it to be calm at night like it usually is in the Ionian. We also had more than 40 meters of chain out in 8 meters of water, so lots of scope.

After a few minutes of watching, Ross on the bow, me on the stern, Ross ran back and declared “We have to move now!” I had the engine idling and we had to execute the dreaded “Midnight Move” off a lee shore in  15+ knots of wind – and if you look at the lunar charts – during a new moon … so it was dark, completely dark. At least it wasn’t raining or blowing 30 knots, though if it were either of these there is no way we would have anchored there in the first place.

Ross had his headlight on and took the brake off the windlass and began grinding in the chain, clearing the hawspipe every 5 meters or so to make sure that we don’t jam the mechanism (maybe jamming the windlass on our first anchoring this year was actually someone looking out for us and getting us prepared for this one). I kept the boat on station with the motor. You can sure tell when the anchor comes off the bottom as the bow swings about 90 degrees. As we were getting close to the anchor being off the bottom I had turned the boat away from the 120 footer parked beside us and towards open water. Ross finished hauling the anchor up and we were on our way … but where.

The track from Ormos Skhidinos to Vathy at 01:30am in the dark, no moon either.

Basically we had 3 choices – motor around in circles for 5 hours staying clear of stuff along the way, head out to open ocean, put up the sails and sail towards Athens, or try to navigate into the next bay that has a much better anchorage. My vote was for heading out towards Athens but Ross tempered this with “I don’t want to go out sailing in 20 knots with big waves at night”. When put that way, neither did I. That left powering around for 5 hours until dawn – not my preferred approach, or head into Vathy and its protected anchorage. Plan C it was. Using the GPS(s) … the main Garmin GPS, the IPAD’s Navionics GPS and Mark 1 Eyeball, we gingerly navigated into the fairly narrow pass of Vathy avoiding the island park towards the end of the bay. Ross thought we might want to go stern-to-the-mole, though I think that would have been exceedingly difficult. My thought was to tie up to the gas dock side-to and then get up early and leave – but someone already had that idea and was tied up at the gas dock – plus our charts said that the depths were marginal there for us.

The narrows at Vathy ... nice and wide during the day,
seemed a lot tighter at night-time

In the end we did a couple of loops close to other yachts and dropped anchor. We remained on deck for a half hour watching the other boats and how we anchored relative to them and the wind. At around 02:30 the wind dropped and the boats all changed direction 180 degrees. After a few minutes of near-calm while we were perfectly aligned with the other boats, we declared victory and I went to bed, Ross made himself a sandwich and, I think, made it to bed a little later.

In the bright morning sunshine we see Vathy, a pretty little Greek Island city with an excellent anchorage. Reflecting on it, we dodged a bit of a bullet. Thanks to quick thinking by Ross and some decisiveness, he got us off that bad anchorage. Also it’s fun to see how we all react in difficult situations. Hard to believe – I am the calm one. “Don’t worry, I can control the boat”, “I think we need to start turning here, there is the light, I understand where it is on the chart”. Ross was switched into Overdrive, thinking through options, “I’m going to put the fenders down now so we don’t have to worry about it later”, “do we have the proper lines on the bow and stern if we need them?”, and heading down to the Garmin chartplotter to confirm our positioning relative to the IPAD. I think in the end each of us gained more confidence in the other and each of us credits the other one with having saved the day. I guess that’s what they call Teamwork.

On the Move to Athens

A "Superyacht" doing a flyby

Finally getting on our way to Athens we left Tranquil bay for points East – destination unknown as we were not sure what we were getting into weather wise and reality is that there aren’t all that many places on the mainland coast that accept yachts of our size. If you have a Super Yacht – 45 meters or longer, no problem – you anchor out securely and take your 15 meter matching powerboat into town, but for us with a mid-sized yacht, you need to find a place that is both safe at anchor and close enough to where you need to be.

We powered out of Tranquil Bay and headed out of the Stenon Meganisiou – basically the Meganisi Straight, and we found wind. Lots of it. 25 knots close reach we had a half a jib out and were averaging eight knots in lumpy seas. For those of you that don’t think 8 knots is all that fast – it’s a fairly brisk run of about 15 km/hour … think of it as driving a Motorhome at 90 miles an hour on the road to Whistler. Things are flying around in the cabin, you come down below and find kitchen knives on the floor, the coffee pot in the sink and anything not tied down is now somewhere else.

A good portion of the journey was sheltered from the waves, though as we went between Lefkas and Ithaki there was precious little between us and Italy and you can certainly tell when the 1-2 meter wave surface wave pattern (waves close together) hits the underlying 2-3 meter long swell from Italy (waves 50 meters between crests). This made for some lively up and down sailing.

Ross continues to wear his IPad while trimming the jib

After a couple of hours of this we decided to go to a place we had anchored before. Approaching Ithaki the wind completely shut off, and we anchored in this secluded bay with only 3 super-yachts in it. We had anchored here before, it’s a bit of a dodgy place, very deep in the middle so you need to get close to the shore. Most people take a long-line ashore but we chose just to anchor as we’re short-handed. Both Ross and I were tired and kind of bored, so I suggested after a couple of conference calls that I would turn on the trusty Honda generator and we’d watch a movie. We watched Will Farrell in “Stranger than Fiction” – not at all his normal stuff (thankfully because I nearly switched it off when I saw he was starring in it). During the movie the wind came up from 5 to 10 to 15 knots. After a final check I went to bed leaving Ross on his computer and watching over things.

The Work Continues …

Once we spashed Tara there was still plenty of work to do. Somehow during the installation of the new Alternator, a ground was loose and that affected both the windlass and the bow thruster.

Some assembly required

The wind in the afternoon at Preveza is a thermal and it is generally calm in the morning building to 18-20 knots in the afternoon. We launched at 3pm and we didn’t know yet the thruster and windlass didn’t work so when we were told to go to a dock it was “yikes” I haven’t done this in a year and I don’t have a bow thruster. Gulp!

Tara back in the water ... She's Happy Again!

So we took her out of the marina entrance to get a good long run at the slip, testing the new alternator, and her new gear shifter in the process. The Yanmar engine worked flawlessly – always like a champ. We pulled 100 meters out of the marina put it in reverse and promptly went sideways – attempt 1. The next time I remembered to orient the bow 30 degrees to the left and then the prop-walk will bring the transom up by the time the boat gets moving.

We backed in a ‘warp speed’ into the slip and thankfully there was another 50 foot sailboat beside us to hang onto as the wind pushed the boat sideways hard. We managed to get it all tied up and secured, and then we plugged in for the first time with the new charger – 14+ volts … high fives for everyone.

Also delivered at launching was the mainsail, and Bonnie Blue – Tara’s trusty RIB – rigid inflatable boat. More work to do.

The new 140 Amp Alternator installed

Once we figured out the windlass and the bow thruster weren’t working it became obvious that there was a wiring problem. I reckoned it had something to do with the alternator because both of them only work with the engine running. I tried some combinations that didn’t work, and finally figured out that it was a ground. The windlass was working but not the thruster. After an hour of cleaning contacts and testing, it was ready for re-installation and it worked. Yes! Then it stopped working. No! Finally after putting new connections on, it worked and we’re not touching it again.

The only other nagging problem is the engine driven freezer needs to be charged with Freon. This has happened before although we had a technician think that he had fixed the problem. It could be that the o-ring that he installed last year broke again as there is a fair amount of vibration.

Anyway, we figure we can get a refrigeration technician somewhere along the route to Athens.

Out of Preveza – onto Lefkas

Two days in the water at Cleopatra and it was time to go. The afternoon breeze there funnels down the channel and creates an unpleasant 2 foot chop that attacks the docks and the transoms of the boats. We didn’t have the main in the mast for the first night and we got to listen to the Clang, Clang, Clang of the roller furling hitting the inside of the mast.

The afternoon thermal arrives at Preveza and keeps you
awake at night. This is the view from the Restaurant where
we ate Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner for nearly five
days in a row.

Day 2 morning we got up really early and installed the mainsail. We also put the jib and the jib sheets on properly – though we threaded the jib incorrectly and had a spinnaker halyard between the jib and the forestay so Ross had to go all the way to the top of the mast a few days later to fix it. We were feeling better about ourselves, we had fixed the windlass and the thruster, the sails were on, the water tanks filled, we had gas for the outboard, and some food in the fridge. I put an extra fender on our right transom corner as we had a tight left turn to make and I didn’t want to bash into the boat beside us. We dropped the lines, cast off, hit the throttle and we were off. We decided to put Bonnie Blue in the water.  It was a bit of a gong-show, but we got it done. Off to Lefkas. We pulled out the jib and were tooling along pretty well. Lefkas opens up the floating bridge on the hour. We were going to either be right on time or an hour early. We got there and the bridge hadn’t opened up yet. We drove by a guy that was hard aground who yelled for us to give him a rope to pull him off. I had 0.3M of water under the keel, one other person on board and a channel about 50 feet wide. I felt bad about not helping him but the reality is that 1) Tara would have been put in danger; 2) there are commercial operators that could help him if he wanted to pay the fee; and 3) the bridge was open and damned if we were going to float around for an hour waiting for another opening.

Matt happily steering Tara towards Lefkas

We charged through Lefkas channel … me swearing at the guy in front that was going so slow that I needed to put the boat in neutral half the time. Also in 20 knots of breeze, the boat can be a handful if you lose tracking of the keel and rudder. I was tailgating him enough that he got the message and pulled over to let us through. Freaking pushy Canadians!

We went on to Meganisi island. Reading the Imray book you must be mindful of lines ashore on Meganisi as rats have a habit of climbing on board your boat. Ross was reading an annotation for a bay we were looking at and it said: “There is 100% chance a rat will get on board your boat in this anchorage. They only come on-board at night though – so you can enjoy all the wasps during the day”. We have seen up close what a mouse/rat can do on board a boat – we saw one at Kremik and they needed to tear the boat apart to catch the thing after it had chewed through a bunch of wire and hoses. Just as we were about to give in we went into an anchorage and threw the hook and it held. The disco pumped out fireworks at midnight and kept going full-tilt-boogey until 6am Sunday morning. We hope that was because it was a holiday and not just Saturday night. We got up a little late the next morning and went ashore, had a coffee, breakfast, bought some provisions and surfed the internet. Ross downloaded $30 of Archie Comics. That IB program is really paying off!

Ross on Meganisi resisting the temptation to hold up Tara with one hand

In the afternoon we headed to Tranquil Bay in Nydri, a town about half way down Lefkas. There we secured rental of 2 scooters that we would take to Preveza on Monday morning. We ate out, bought food and hung out on the boat. Monday morning at 9 we picked up our scooters, a 50cc one for Ross, 100cc’s for me, and rode the 50kms to Preveza, including the 2 km tunnel under the Preveza harbour. We payed our 800 Euros tax, got our cruising permit stamped and we were good to go. On the way back we stopped in Lefkas town and checked out the beach there – a mecca for windsurfing and kitesurfing. Both Ross and I looked at the kitesurfing and thought it would be a blast – provided the water is warm.

Ross and I both enjoyed the ride, once I got over being a bit panicked about how people ride your butt when they want to pass. We are thinking about a motorcycle trip next June to visit Marina’s brother Mike in the Yukon for the summer solstice.

Safe and sound back on Tara, we loaded up on more food and beverages and started thinking about getting to Athens. We have about a week to get there … and we always like to be early as opposed to late to the party. Looks like it’s time to leave Tranquil Bay for the windy side of Greece.

Beware Hidden Taxes in Greece

Surprise surprise, there is a tax on non-EU boats in Greece that stay longer than 2 months. Unbeknownst to us, that includes being in dry dock. At 14.5 euros per meter per quarter * 3 quarters * 15 meters = 806 Euros … that’s what we need to pay to get our cruising permit. Ouch.

To make matters worse, there are other factors. The first is that the  Port Police write up a statement that you must take to the Tax office – 15 blocks away – so they can type it into a system, you can pay, they give you a receipt to take back to the Port Police, so you can get your Transit Log (cruising permit). The second issue was that the Government employees were on strike on Thursday and Friday. Forget about paying until the following Monday. The third problem is that it was due in cash. I had 300 Euros when I left Canada … thinking this would be plenty. The work done on the boat ... payment only in cash – there’s 900 Euros required. The tax on the boat – 800 Euros. The rub is that I can only get a maximum of 600 Euros out of the bank machine at any time. I had to go to the bank on the 28^th, 29^th, 30^th, 1^st, and 2^nd of July to take out 600 Euro’s each day. Why the extra thousand … everyone wants cash and if live in a cash economy you had better have more than $100 in your wallet.

Ross and I rented scooters and rode 60km's to pay our taxes.

It makes the price at Cleopatra a little less attractive, but I need to remember that it costs me 25% more to keep our 24 foot powerboat in Coal Harbour than it does to keep Tara at Cleopatra – taxes and all.

Now what can happen to you when the tax collectors are on strike and you haven't paid your taxes?  Being both experienced, cautious and wanting to follow the rules (like who really wants to be in jail in a foreign country), we had a couple of choices ... stay in the Marina or not stray far and then return on Monday to the tax office via scooter. We quitely made our way to Lefkas and then took scooters to pay the tax the first morning the tax office was open. Waited in line an hour to get them to enter it into a computer, then another 15 minutes to dole out seventeen 50 euro notes and get a receipt. Then off to Port Police for our stamp and away we go. I did ask for a receipt -- they almost didn't give it to me, but I have a very dim photocopy of the receipt -- in case someone else decides we need to pay again.

Getting Rid of Electrical Problems Once and For All

Electrical problems are the bane of my Tara existence. This year I resolved to tackle them completely. I hired a consultant, former TELUS CSE Jeff Cote, who now has a company called PY Systems. If you have electrical needs on a boat, they’re the guys to call.

My friend Trevor calls Jeff “Caviar” Cote – because he’s the kind of guy where only the best will do. With respect to Tara, I am OK with that. So he gave me a number of ideas and a buy list that topped $3,000 and 125 pounds, that Ross and I humped to Greece in three very heavy bags.

The heaviest thing we brought was 70 feet of 2/0 battery cable – and it turns out that the boat has 4/0 cable already installed, so 2/0 is a major step down. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it – I might use it for some accessories or I might end up selling it. Oh well … live and learn. Like someone that orders two meals because they’re hungry, I often end up biting off a little too much work. When we were at Cleopatra I installed a new alternator – 140 Amp along with a Serpentine Belt pulley conversion kit. This lets me use a standard automotive serpentine belt – like one on any car built in the last 20 years, instead of small fan belts – that break and also contribute a surprising amount of black sooty dust to the engine room.

In addition to that we had to install a new shifter – the old one had rotted away, and a new “smart” battery charger. In addition to the battery charger we had to string entirely new #2 cable from the battery charger to the battery packs. The old wire – a number 8 I think, is just too small to manage the load without dropping voltage.

I also removed the battery isolator – the device that was chewing up nearly a volt of energy in order to distribute electrons from the alternator to two battery banks. One (1) volt doesn’t sound like much but as Jeff Cote puts it … it’s huge. A dead 12 volt battery has 11.5 volts, a full one 12.5 volts. And you need 13 volts to get energy moving down the wire in order to charge the battery … so that volt has significance.

Still to go, cleaning up the wiring cabinet and simplifying it, adding some more fuses, and a meter that measures how much battery we have consumed and the rate at which it is being used.

Our new 140 Amp Alternator ... hoo hoo hoo
(channeling Tim the Tool-man )

The net of all this stuff is that our batteries are getting full, though I think we may have irreparably damaged them last year by running them flat all the time. As Jeff said, our alternator pushing out 12.4 volts is just like a trickle charger – we were always depleting our batteries and never charging them up.

Likely in next year’s budget are some Victron Energy 200AH big-ass batteries that my new alternator and battery charger (and did I mention my solar trickle charger) will keep full up… and then we won’t need to worry about electricity again! 

Reanimation

Air Berlin flight from Frankfurt to Preveza -- twice a week,
Tuesdays and Satrurdays

This year we had a fairly easy time of reanimation as we liberally used the tool called money. This year we paid to have guardenage done (this would be boat cleaning), also polishing the hull and painting the bottom. For about $1,000 we had this done before we arrived. Thanks to our friend Marcel for telling us how dirty the boat was and that it took them 2 days and 50 Euros of water in the Marina to get it clean. Rather than deal with that I did what men around the world have been doing since the age of fiat currency – I worked at something I was good at, and paid someone to do the work that I don’t like doing.

Two large men on one small bed. We need to get the boat
launched so we can have our own cabins!

That said, there is still a tremendous amount that needs to be done in order to get the boat ready. We had all the boards and cushions stacked into rooms along with about 20 Ikea clear plastic tubs of “stuff”. Add to that the need to raise sails, pull the halyards down the mast, replace the sheets, get the outboard and generator going, charge the batteries, put the canvas on, install new zinc cathode protection on the hull and propeller, grease the propeller, reinstall the exhaust elbow and reconnect the water pump. This is only a partial list – it went on for three pages.

Add to that the considerable electrical work I decided to take on and you have a very long and hectic three days of work. Also you must consider that we are now 10 hours ahead of our time zone and operating at less than full efficiency.

Tara safe, sound, polished and painted.

Throughout it all Ross was an able companion and assistant. In a lot of the electrical work he was great and he got the ugliest job done, a half liter bottle of oil split in the starboard lazarette (locker above deck) and he took everything out, wiped it up and cleaned the spill up in an environmentally responsible way.

After two full days work – 7am to 8pm each day with an hour for lunch, we had Tara ready for the water. She went in the water at 3pm on the 28^th of June.

22 tonnes of boat moves at a walking pace to the water