19 June 2012

Today we took a much earlier bus both there and back and it was MUCH better.

We spent a few hours in the Istanbul Archaeological Museum.  The main museum has an extraordinary collection of Sarcophaguses  Sarcophagusi?  I’m pretty much snapped out but  will attach a couple of shots from today’s adventure. They claim to have over one million artefacts,  The most famous being The Alexander Sarsophagus.  It turns out he wasn’t buried in it, it was  merely some King who knew him.  We didn’t quite see ALL the artefacts.

Today Vagelis did a load test  with the batteries drawing the sort of amperage we would normally have under sail and they lasted over 4 ½ hours with  hardly budging. This is extremely encouraging. I though t first we would probably need more generator time as the battery capacity is now greatly reduced, but upon reflection it probably will be more or less the same in 24 hours as it was as the generator is only replacing what we use. Instead of 2 x 3 hour sessions a day it may be something like  3 x 2 hour sessions.  The other good news is that we found the solenoid controlled day tank return fuel valves and one of them (a new one) is faulty. There is a manual cut- off which we can now leave closed until we take on fuel and need to drain down both wing tanks from the header tank.

Tomorrow we will head up the Bosphorus , hoping to stop at Bebek which I misspelled horribly in yesterdays entry .  Its only  about ten miles from the Marina.  We had originally  hoped to carry on to Odessa but as it turns out we don’t have enough time to do it comfortably.  So we will stick a big toe in the Black Sea and then start back.  We want to be in Hydra by the 5^th as Timberlake will be there for a performance of her play AJAX.  She wrote her first play in Spetses many years ago.  I think it was the year before Demetra and I met.

The NNE Wind still carries on Force 6, actually it’s blowing 30 knots at the moment.   Just looking at the wind forecast for tomorrow.  It looks like the wind is not abating for quit a few days.  So we may not head further North .  At the moment the plan is to set out earlyish tomorrow morning and if its too lumpy head back to the Princess Islands where there is a safe bay and fly South the next morning. Watch this Space!

Don’ t know when  we’ll have the next wi-fi connection but I will send the blog with hardly any photos via satellite.

Archeological Museum

 

Archeological Museum

 

Archeological Museum

 

 Roman BES which protects against evil

 

Archeological Museum

 

Archeological Museum

 

Alexander Sarcophagus

 

Archeological Museum