38:00.152N 024:26.663E

30/06/12

8AM.  We decide to motor sail to get down the coast of Evvia as quickly as possible.  Our speed over the ground (from the GPS) shoots up to 9.4 knots.  The engine alternator starts its new trick of over charging the batteries, so I begin turning on everything I can think of to create a load.  Then I have the  bright idea (Duh) of dropping the engine revs and after  little experimenting it turns out that simply reducing from 1800 rpm to 1700 rpm seems to solve the problem.  A much better solution that disconnecting the alternator.  I run around turning off all the lights in all the cabins. We leave the icemaker and the watermaker running.

Vagelis has to dive into the bilge to coerce the water speed impellor to behave.  Plus ça change .

13:00

The wind is supposed to be NE so of course it’s NNW.  It builds to Force 6 and is pretty much dead behind us. We stow the main and carry on motor sailing in excess of 9 knots with  just the Yankee.  Vagelis hand steers to minimize the rolling.  Only 55 miles to go.

14:00

 Wind increases to Force 7 and we go to a double reefed Yankee.

15:30

Wind moderates to Force Six and goes North (hooray). Engine revs down to1500. Back to a single reefed Yankee Rolling Motion improves a bit. Something is tripping the domestic mains breaker.  I turn things off to try to isolate the problem but of course it’s intermittent.

18:00

We fly through the notorious Dorou Straight with one reef in the yankee  and no engine.  The wind increases to NW Force 8 and gusts Force 9 frequently.  While furling the Yankee I nearly lose the sheet and manage to give myself several rope burns on my right hand. We motor the last 5 miles into a Karystos bay into the wind.  When we drop the anchor the wind drops a well.  Just to be safe we set the anchor riding sail to keep us facing the wind.  We have managed 107 miles in 12 hours.