25 July 2013, Arriving Preveza

At last we have arrived to Preveza City hotel after 17,5 hours from Santander to Preveza by air, bus (7h) & taxi. Kimberly joined in Athens with a flight from Copenhagen. With that long travelling time we could have arrived Honolulu, Hawai instead. The aircondition in the bus did not work, and we had like 33-35C outdoors. So we were all very tired and exhausted when we arrived Preveza. We had ordered a non-smoking room with three beds. We only got a two bed room for smokers. Not acceptable. After changing rooms three times (this was around 23:00 in the night) we ended up with 2 separate non-smoking rooms, one double and one single bed room. With air-condition, halleluleah! It was still something like 30 C outside.

30 July 2013, Towards Zakynthos!

A pretty early start 8.30 with breakfast onboard while motoring south through the mirror like sea. A real magical feeling when the sea is like that! A couple of hours later, outside Ithaka, we discovered a big turtle swimming just 20 m from the boat. I’m sure it was not as exited with pleasure as we were circling around it on a respectable distance, so after few camera shots we quickly left it alone.  Half an hour later we enjoyed a quick swim in the middle of the sea with 320m depth, still dead calm. Extremely blue water and 27,7 C in water temperature. It is always a special feeling swimming out in the sea far,far away from land. The film “Jaws” always comes into mind J Although the white shark is present in the Mediterranean it is 35 years ago anyone was attached, I have read. Anchoring outside sandy beach at the very south peak of Kephalonia we enjoyed a lunch onboard and a few swims. Some noisy speed boats with dragging tires/people found pleasure in use our boat as a rounding bouy. We did not.

The afternoon wind started to increase so we left with sails heading Zakynthos. Two reefs on the main were appropriate in the wind which at times reached 15 m/s, and we were heading towards it. Not so nice, but with 8-9 knots speed we reached the lovely harbor San Nicholas on the north tip of Zakynthos in just 1,5 hours. No-one got sea sick, amazingly, but the waves hadn’t built up yet.

Although the strong wind we managed to more without incidents, but the anchor was not holding much. But the wind came from land so it did not matter.

We had a special very charming restaurant “La Storia” in mind. It is lying directly on the sandy beach and is embraced with a lightbulb populated rope, very cozy. We had a corner table directly at the water front and ordered barbequed sea bream. Really tasty! The Rod Heikel guide had warned us for having one of his worst meals ever in one of the restaurants here. But as last year, we were very pleased with the food here!

The evening ended, as usual, with three ouzos at a nice bar (more or less the only bar here) which was newly opened last year and we visited it on the boys sailing trip. I help the owners establishing a Facebook check-in place for their Regatta Bar

. We really liked this bar, pleasant atmosphere and really good cool music. As it was last year as well.

The wind increased a lot during night and was probably exceeding 20m/s. It felt good to be safely moored at the quay. 

29 July 2013, Second attempt!

How difficult would it be to get new batteries? I expected the worst, like a week of delivery time if being lucky. After been talking to Cleopatra Marina over the phone it turned out that they actually had three similar batteries in store! But with slighthly less capacity. How about Lefkas Marina shop then? Well they had exactly three batteries with the required capacity and size at a reasonable prize. I bought them and a new start battery as well on the spot and ordered installation. Two hours later, with two really sweaty marina service men, we were equipped with brand new full capacity batteries installed in the boat! Meanwhile, I managed to buy two appropriate battens in replacement for the missing ones from Boding Sails Sweden. The boat was now ship shaped! After lunch we set off for Fiskardo at Kephalonia or Sivota at Lefkas.  Well out from Lefkas canal we hoisted the sails, just to experience the weak wind was turning around all the time. We stopped trying to sail an hour later and went by motor southwards. Sunset was closing up so we decided to go for Sivota and were lucky enough to get a place at one of the bridges attached with a 35€ fee including electricity but without toilets/showers…. The bay was full of anchoring boats so it would have been difficult to get a proper spot. A nice meal at Delfines tavern, established already 1976 when sailing tourism where not so frequent, followed. 

28 July 2013, Clear sky and troubled mind

A great and beautiful morning. The scenery with high mountains all around us and mirror calm sea is breathtaking. So was the breakfast, well at least eatable…Time to move on.

Start the engine and switch on the navigator equipment! The engine started, but all electronics including the navigator equipment was alarming or completely dead, unable to function. What had happened? I had not changed anything, and all was working the day before. Was it too damp, a sudden corrosion problem? Where is the volt meter? What is the battery voltage?  The manouever panel volt meter showed 12V, this should be enough.

The easiest part to measure was on the autopilot down in the aft locker. It is possible, but not much more, to get down with your whole body into that locker. Then slowly turn around ( in 35-40C) and find space for all limbs and measure the voltage of the autopilot unit half-lying on your back with the sweat running intensively over your face. 7,8V. What? And the maneuver panel in the saloon showed 12V! Do I have a shortcut somewhere? Or is something consuming a lot of current? After a while, with some dismounting of equipment I found similar values all over. Ok I have to measure directly on the battery poles – why had I not done that in the first place? Well, the maneuver display said 12v that’s why…but now my mobile volt meter showed 7,9V…directly on the battery poles! Is something wrong with my mobile volt meter? Then I remembered, that there is a switch on the maneuver panel to either display the voltage of the start engine battery or the equipment battery…The 12V displayed turned out to be the voltage of the start engine battery. When the switch was set to the equipment battery it displayed less then 8V….Problem found, but not solved.

The equipment batteries was completely finished for some reason. If these kinds of batteries are discharged to a level below 11V they are ruined. I had to replace the batteries, which are no ordinary car batteries. There are three equipment batteries of 140 Ah each (a car battery holds around 65Ah) and weigh around 50 kg and measure 50x20x20cm. So where could I get hold of new ones? Well, the best option would probably to go back from where we started, either directly to Cleopatra Marina or take a chance with the more closely situated Lefkas Marina. We moored in the late afternoon in Lefkas Marina and we managed to get there with hardly any electronic guidance, just like in the old days. Well, as you tell from the pictures, we compensated the unfortunate development during the evening in Lefkas town

27 July, Sailing away!

At 9:00 in the morning, just after our breakfast the two yacht service guys arrived. One hour later the gennaker block in the mast top was mounted. Meanwhile we discovered that the mainsail delivery was not complete…to the two top battens were missing in the delivery. Not good at all since without battens the sail would wear out must faster. But I managed to fix some temporary battens by using/adjusting some remaining from the old main sail. But not really perfect. Grrr.

After lunch we sailed away at 4 pm. One and a half hour later we reached Lefkas canal. We have heard horrible stories at dinner the night before from another Swedish boat at the marina. The canal had some big rocks at the “right” side of the red buoyed line of the canal. Just a week ago a boat had grounded there. So better keep at the “sand” side of the canal was the guidance we got. We did, but it still felt a bit scary when the depth meter displayed 2.2 m at one occasion. Well, the draught of my boat is 2.2m…However everything went fine and we arrived to the lovely and from wind very well protected Ormos Vlikho (a bay shaped as a lamp bulb)  half an hour before sunset I switched on the anchor light and we made the short dinghy trip to the Taverna Elena where we had a really good meal. Pitch dark on the way back,  trying to find our boat among tens of other boats lying for anchor. Bedtime.

26 July 2013, Preparations at Cleopatra Marina

Exiting day, so many things can go wrong in preparing for a sailing holiday. The boat had been suffering from a severe water damage during the winter. Were the long repair and cleaning list really executed? Was the boat still possible to live in or just disgusting with stained and moldy interior? I had ordered a new incredibly expensive main sail to be delivered from Sweden to Preveza. Had it arrived, and would the sail really fit in reality to the measures given? And was all parts delivered? How about the port police, did I have to report my sailing start to them and what kind of tricky questions could they ask. The launching of the boat into sea was ordered already at 11:00, would we have time to shop all food and bed clothes (since the old ones were mouldy and thrown away) before the launching? Cleopatra Marina is situated on the other side of the 1-2 km wide sound from Preveza, at which times did the boat taxi/shuttle departure/arrive? All the shopping had to be done in Preveza town across the sound. 

We started early arriving to Cleopatra Marina at 8:30 in the morning. A quick check on the boat revealed that the boat did look the same as when leaving it in August 2012! What a relief!! All the repairs and cleaning seemed to been done properly! We were able to postpone the launching to 14:00 giving us time to do all the shopping in Preveza town and the visit to the port police (which went really smoothly). Also got time to purchase two internet prepaid Vodafone internet SIM-cards, and this year it seems to work and instructions were given in English instead of Greek. So much easier, even if I still do not understand why it was not possible to top up the GBs directly from Internet instead of being forced to visit a silly Vodafone shop somewhere. Is Vodafone a real true Internet provider? No.  

Anyway, the boat went into sea and the heavy and tedious work of getting the sails, the sprayhood and the bimini mounted. To put all the lines in place, to test that everything really works at it should Sounds easy, but take such long time and is really exhausting in 32-35C. The mounting of the gennaker block at the mast top had to wait until Saturday morning, since no marina staff would be available until Friday morning. After a nice dinner at the marina restaurant we fell in deep sleep. All windows open, and no duvets….