39 37.49N 019 57.56E Corfu' Greece - Gouvia Marina
Pipedream
Sat 25 Sep 2010 08:01
Guy comes out in a dingy after a couple of radio calls and actually speaks pretty good English. We follow him to the slip he parks and gets on the dock ready to catch our stern lines. There is maybe a 10 kt cross wind pushing us back onto the dock... usually ok. I maneuver the boat more or less into position, put it in reverse to start my back in thing and the engine grunts and starts to stall. I wrote before about the possible transmission issue, but I now realize that my fancy feathering, four blade prop is not changing directions (the blades rotate from forward to reverse depending on the direction of shaft rotation) and is locked up! I rev the engine and try again and with a grinding clunk it goes into reverse. We start moving back toward the dock with the wind. I put it in forward to slow our approach and the engine starts to stall. I whistle for the dock guy and quickly rev the engine some more -nothing. Through my concentration on the engine I here Katie yelling forward! and look back to see her jousting with the front anchor of a quickly approaching docked boat with the 2 inch diameter aluminum boat hook . We are moving maybe 3 miles an hour by now. Katie losses the contest announced by a resounding cacaphony of bad sounds erupted from Pipedream's stern. By this time the dock guy is back in his dingy as we rebound off the first boat and the wind starts pushing us sideways into the waiting line of moored boats for another try at maximum damage. We were finally towed ignominiously into a slip to await dawn and a compete damage assessment. Fortunately Katie forgot my lecture about throwing her body between the boat and immanent disaster to avoid scraping Pipedream's new paint job and remembered the end of the last safety briefing, "that is what insurance is for...".
It was now time to read the prop manual... 'should be greased once a year' well that explains a lot. We put that thing on three years ago. Long story short we had to have the boat hauled again just so the prop could be greased. $$$ Still don't know if the greasing fixed it, but it went into forward and reverse afterwards. The Greek 'engineer' that expertly wheeled the grease gun wanted to take it apart to see if anything was broken and clean the inside parts even though he had never seen one of these and had no hope of getting replacements. I had him look for a conventional replacement prop but they would have to have one flown in form Athens at over 1000 Euros... I have two sitting my shed in Orange Park. If we still have problems we'll try again in Athens... in the mean time I'll have to brush up on my sailing skills this is after all a 'sail' boat... I've actually sailed my hobie cat backwards.
Lots of Brits at this marina. We have the only American flag I have seen. Everyone was telling us what a nightmare it was getting through the bureaucracy here in Greece. They really aren't part of the EU yet as I can see. We had to clear customs in town since we were a non-EU register boat. We jumped in a cab outside the marina driven by Nikos... no meter... warning Will Robinson! He said he would take us all around town, and even wait for us to get all our business done. Immigration... five words from Nikos and the three striped customs officer (a full Commander ?) was making out our Greek ' Transit Log'. Next stop was the passport police... again a few words and we were stamped through. A short cab ride to the Port Police... even though I had grabbed the expired insurance rider instead of the new one... which they noticed, we were stamped through. Nikos even loaned us 15 euros for that fee when they did not have change for the 50 euro note I offered. Then off to the Vodaphone store - closed until 5:30 for siesta. We bid farewell to Nikos - I did get his card. (talk about value added...) A tip I leaned from Mark and Ruben at Quantum Engineering - in a strange land get a good driver and stick with him.
Katie and I had lunch (hot dogs with olives and feta cheese) and three or four beers at a sidewalk cafe in down town Corfu and just watched people until the phone store opened. We bought Greek cell phone and internet dongle sims. We took the number 7 bus back from down town and stopped at the supermarket on the way back. Best stocked market we have seen in Europe. Going back to the marina we stopped at the wine store, (the brits in the boat next to us had recommend this) tasted several local wines - from barrels and bought a 2 liter jug of pretty good local white for 2.5 Euros.
We passed a restraint that had a sign saying 'Greek Barbeque we took a look... four six foot rotisserie type secures over a wood fire, two full with chickens, two with legs of lamb. Dinner out tonight! Nice internet cafe here at the marina, leather chairs and couches opening onto the Olympic sized swimming pool.
We riding out the gale that had been forecast... nature is washing the salt water off the decks and rocking us to sleep. The dark side... swarms of microscopic mosquitoes topside. Last night we had to button everything up and turn on the AC. Waiting for Chuck and Judy the next couple of days. Katie and are ready for some R&R after yesterday... its 10:30 AM local time and time to wake the crew before the whole day gets away.