Saturday 26th May ..
All ready to go, we sacrificed the “match” in favour of an
early night.
Up early on Thursday and
raring to go, we had no idea
what sort of a day we had
in store ….
As we pulled out into the Aeigina
Harbour and raised the
anchor we pulled up some old rubbish that even the locals had not seen before. Apparently
there used to be some old massive chain moorings, and we had brought up the
chain, some other smaller gage chain, and some old rope that had been
discarded by previous unfortunates …. It took us 2 hours to disentangle
ourselves from all this rubbish.. Eventually we had to cut ourselves free
using our bolt cutters, with Mike, mask in place, dangling in the water
and Sue, going beyond the call of duty, ensuring that he did not fall in and
keeping the dinghy in position at the same time! …..
Competent crew training I am reliably informed ..
Two hours later the anchor was free but the anchor winch was not
working…..a call to Wim soon solved the problem and we eventually departed
Aegina at about 2.30pm…..
Hans and his yacht the Ariahna were leaving at around the same time and
so we sailed together to the Corinth
Canal.
Three hours later and we reached the Corinth Canal…..an
amazing sight…
We were lucky we did not have to wait long before we were allowed
through….eerie sailing up through this narrow, high sided channel of
water in the pouring rain!!
Once through we decided to stay with Hans and continue sailing until
midnight to make up some time….we dropped anchor at Galaxidhi.
Up early on Friday morning to make up as much time as
possible….on our way to Kefilinia. We had some wind and so had the
fore sail up and we had speeds of up to 7.8 knots at times.
We sailed most of the way with Hans and then he left us to sail onto Malta….
We could see the island of Kefilinia but it took forever to reach the tip of it
and then at least another three hours to reach the Port of Argostili….
The GPS system really came into its own whilst trying to feel our way
up and around into the Port. It was 3.00am when we entered the Marina and whilst mooring
in darkness the bow thruster went!! Some pretty nifty changes meant that
we did manage to moor safely but pretty hairy for a while!!! Not quite
how I had imagined my second mooring alongside to be….!!
We all sat down and had a debrief and a glass of wine (or two)!!.. before
eventually falling into bed exhausted….
Saturday morning arrived and it was lovely to see the sun after two
days of sailing in the rain (not quite the Mediterranean cruise Sue had been
looking forward to!!)
A brief discussion in daylight meant that we decided to move Quilombo
over to the town side of the harbour…that accomplished we spent a quiet
day relaxing and looking around the town, which seems very nice with extremely
friendly locals…they even have an Indian Restaurant which we are going to
try out later….
A look at the weather forecast means that we are here until Tuesday at
least so tomorrow Mike and I will look at the bow thruster and see if we can
find out what the problem is…..yes yet another problem to solve!!!
A lovely meal out and an early night…..
Sunday morning and time to look at the bow thruster….problem
actually very minor and easily fixed….so time to look at the radio which
has been playing up a bit….and again easily fixed…!!
Sue went off and did some exploring and shopping….we are all
feeling much better for a good nights sleep..!!
