As Kerry mentioned in her previous blog, we successfully launched on 28th August and Barberry did not appear (at the time) to be sinking after nearly a year dried out. Of course boats can sink quickly or slowly and it was not long before I stuck my head in the bilges and noticed a puddle. It seemed we were sinking slowly. This could have been affirmed by a ‘taste test’ to check if the water was salty or fresh. Kerry had to do such a test a few years ago when our previous boat was sinking, under the then skipper’s instructions (me). Kerry did not find this pleasant, mainly due to the dog and cat hair the water contained. Kerry, our current, nice skipper, did not order me to lower my head in the bilge and suck up a mouthful of water, which I was relieved about! Best just to assume we were sinking.
Eventually I identified the leak as coming from the lifting keel mechanism, next to the saloon table. Skipper ordered bungs to be make ready while I mixed up some epoxy paste and generally spread it around the leaky area. As you would expect the leak continued to ooze through the epoxy, so it did not completely seal. Nevertheless I declared Barberry seaworthy and hoped the leak would eventually clog itself up somehow. We have a leak detector alarm, so hopefully we can sleep peacefully.
There was lots of paperwork to be done the first day with our checking into Greece procedures, but finally it was all handed in to the authorities and appropriately rubber stamped. Now we could have cool showers and our traditional mixed-grill at the marina restaurant, Celeste. The next day, after a fitful, hot sleep, despite lying naked under a fan, we had our traditional greek breakfast of yoghurt and honey at Celeste. I wonder how long we can maintain such traditions?
We had a few blissful days of swim, ice cream, siesta, dinner, chocolate, sleep, repeat; intermingled with boat jobs. Dinners included pork, lamb and any other meat available for Kerry, and anything with bread included for me. I had made it my healthy policy not to order bread, but if bread came with something, unrequested, then I felt that that’s okay. Boat jobs included some sprucing up of Barberry with a new anchor, fenders and boarding plank, whilst occasionally checking that the leak was slowing. Which, fortunately, it was.
The other boat job involved plumbing, something I’m either bad at, or possibly cursed. It does not usually go well, often causing more leaks than it prevents. In this case the plumbing related to our one and only toilet (or ‘head’). Flushing involves manually pumping (about 15 pumps) and our pump was getting really stiff, to the point where you almost had to swing off it. Something wasn’t right, and it was not to do with solids getting stuck, as you might think, as we use the marina toilets for that. Anyway, the whole lot needed dismantling and the pipework inspected for mysterious blockages. Maybe we’d sucked up a jellyfish?
The toilet investigation found everything clear on the inlet side, but the valve on the outlet side was none too pleasant. It seemed to be all crusted up with a fascinating deposit which presumably was due to a reaction between seawater and wee. This is something I don’t remember them covering in A level chemistry. Let’s hope it’s been added to the syllabus. I tried dissolving the deposit in vinegar, but this seemed ineffective, so I resorted to scraping it off with my finger nails and hoping I remembered not to chew them afterwards. All sorted now and ‘good to go’, literally.
By Tuesday (five days later) we had started to run out of excuses for hanging around the marina so decided on a test sail. We planned a trip into a sea lough, east of Preveza (the Ambracian Gulf). This is a bit like Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, except a lot hotter and with no tides. It was a lovely, safe area for our first trip and seemed much quieter than many of the more touristy Ionian islands. We motored to a little island called Koukoumitsa and anchored there for the night.
The nearest town was Vonitsa, only a mile along the coast, so we headed there by dinghy, hoping to find a nice Taverna for dinner. The wind was against us and it was a little choppy, so the poor electric outboard had to work quite hard. I carefully monitored the battery life as it quickly dropped to 80% and it didn’t feel that we had gone very far.
Fortunately we made it to Vonitsa and parked on the beach, right next to a taverna. It was an amazing feeling, jumping out of the dinghy, taking two strides, then sitting down at a table to peruse a Greek menu. We watched cats playing in the shade, under our dinghy, as we munched on pork chop and calamari, washed down with local wine and beer, “hic”.
We had an exhilarating trip back to Barberry, on Dingleberry, as I was feeling gung ho after 0.5l beer. Rather than going the same route back to Barberry, I decided on a short cut, aiming for the bridge that connected to the little island of Koukoumatsi. It looked okay from the distance, but close up the depth beneath the arches was clearly limited, which can cause trouble for boats. In a valiant effort to make it under the bridge I jumped ship to lighten the load, aiming to impress my skipper. Fortunately it worked and we scrapped through, with Kerry poling Dingleberry with a paddle, just as if she was punting on the Cam.
We headed back to Preveza the next day, feeling in need of marina comforts, such as well-needed showers and ice creams. Our first mission was successful though. The next one will be even more adventurous, but Kerry can tell you about that next time.
