After a short visit last November, getting Barberry spruced up, painted below the waterline, her teak oiled and generally prepped, we flew away home and haven’t been able to get back to her until now.
That doesn’t mean we haven’t been thinking about her, and dreaming of sailing her again, but we’ve been pretty busy in the intervening months. We usually aim to fly out to Greece in the spring and the autumn, when it’s cooler and less busy, but this spring we (the entire family) visited our daughter, Laura, in Canada instead.
Fraser and I also sneaked a short trip to Sorento, where we managed to tour the ancient ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum as well as staggering up to the rim of the still active volcano that destroyed those cities a couple of millennia ago, Vesuvius.
In May/June, we escaped again, this time to the beautiful island of Orkney where we visited megalithic tombs and the beautifully preserved remains of the village of Skara Brae, which is older than the pyramids.
Finally, before we came back to poor little Barberry, who was probably thinking by now that she really had been abandoned, we took our other boat, Clàr Innis, down the River Bann from Lough Neagh almost to the sea at Coleraine. Our eldest daughter, Katrina, and her husband, Peter, joined us but they paddled the entire three-day journey in an open canoe! Fraser and Patrick did this trip in the same canoe in 2022, but it was the first time for Katrina, Peter and me for probably around 15 years (Peter did it for his Duke of Edinburgh Award).
The Bann trip was the weekend before we flew back to Greece, so that was a hectic few days, packing everything we thought we might need for ourselves and the boat. As always during the winter, Fraser had taken on several boat projects. His way of distracting himself from boat homesickness, maybe, while mine is to paint boats in watercolours! This year, he made semi-opaque drop-down sides for our Bimini shelter, to protect us when the sun is low in the sky. He also designed and built a fuel-filtering system to help prevent the problem we had last spring with diesel bug. He also made a pair of stainless steel plates for Barberry’s bow, so we can fit a new, modern anchor to replace Barberry’s ancient CQR.
The other project we had to do over the winter was to get my electric bike fixed. You might remember that it died towards the end of last season, and with my arthritic knees, hips and elbows, this was a big problem for me. Luckily the shop where we purchased the bike, McConveys Cycles in Belfast, did a great job, replacing all the parts on the bike that might have been causing the problem. Unfortunately, they couldn’t examine the battery and its attachments, as we couldn’t bring a lithium battery home with us on the plane, but it tested perfectly with one of their batteries. Sadly, as soon as we got the bike back to Greece, it started to present its old problem again. Wonderful Eamonn McConvey spent a long video call trying to work out a fix for us, but in the end, he says he’s going to get a whole new battery pack sent out us here in Greece. Couldn’t ask for better service! Watch this space to see if we manage to solve the problem once and for all…
In case you’ve been fooled by Fraser’s jibes at me having an electric bike when he has to pedal hard, my arthritic knees and hips find a normal pedal bike painful, not to mention the elbows and wrists. As I also have very limited walking mobility, this is the only way for me to get around over longer distances, such as when we have to get our Transit Log stamped in and then out again at each port we visit in Greece. Also, without it, I couldn’t get to the lovely swimming beach a mile or so from the marina where we’re currently baking in the mid-30s beneath a cloudless sky. For some reason, I’m not feeling waves of sympathy coming from our readers….
Anyway, enough complaining. We had so many boat jobs to do before launching that we were both kept busy for three sweaty days before our splash day. Last November, we’d scraped all the old antifouling bottom pain from Barberry’s hull and painted it with primer so this time we had to paint two coats of new bottom paint onto her. There are always plenty of boat jobs before launch, as we strip everything off over the winter: sails, bimini, dodgers, all her halyards are pulled inside the mast and the bits left outside are wrapped in canvas to protect them from the sun and Sahara dust storms. All this has to be reversed before we can be craned back into the water.
We tried to do most of the worst jobs in the early morning or late evening, when the heat isn’t quite so punishing, but it was still very sweaty work.
As always with boat jobs, things went wrong. The anchor windlass refused to fire up, so much frustrated muttering ensued before we got the anchor and its 80m of chain stowed aboard. And then, Fraser had made a pair of stainless steel plates to protect the bow of the boat from the new anchor we intended to buy, and fitting those meant he had to alternate between standing precariously on a tree log, tightening bolts from the outside at full arm’s reach, and crawling across our bed into the anchor locker to tighten them from the inside. Each time, he had to ascend or descend a wobbly ladder at the stern of the boat. There were 6 bolts, so that’s a lot of clambering.
Finally, our last day on land drew to a close. We packed up all our bags and trollied them through the dusty yard to the boat for the last time before setting an early alarm and going to bed in our lovely little air conditioned apartment in the marina.
I should have mentioned that as Barberry had been left for a whole year, the local wildlife had tried to move in. We discovered this interesting nest, presumably belonging to insects of some sort, tucked away under a locker lid in the cockpit. Luckily, the owners were long gone, so Fraser bravely tugged it free and threw it over the side into the long grass.
The list of jobs was gradually getting ticked off (although several of them led us to further, unanticipated extra jobs, as is usual in boat work). Launch day arrived and we got up early to meet the tractor for our 08:30 lift-in.
The tractor arrived, and Barberry was lifted onto the specially designed trailer to be carried to the travel lift. The staff in Cleopatra Marina are extremely professional and know their job well, but it’s still a little nerve-wracking when she’s lifted and moved like this.
Once the boat was in the water, lowered carefully in slings, Fraser disappeared down below to check all our through-hulls in case of leaks, and I started the engine, making sure there was water coming out of the exhaust, which meant all is working as it should. Once we were happy, the crane men released the slings and we motored out to sea. This time we hadn’t too far to go, as we’d booked a month in Preveza Marina, just across the channel from Cleopatra. We were very lucky, as they’ve given us an alongside berth which is far easier to get on and off the boat than walking a plank.
So finally we were in, safely tied up, only relatively minor jobs to be done and no deadlines looming. It was time for both of us to rest, relax, enjoy the beauty of Greece and her welcoming people, and no need to leave the pontoon until we were ready. A time for beer and ice cream, and writing blogs. Fraser will bring you up to date next week, and by then we might have built up the energy to untie our lines and go a nice, cool anchorage somewhere for a few days.
