Back again!

Hello everyone, it's been a long winter but here we are in Greece, on the boat,  in our favourite spot in Aeginitissa Bay. The sun is shining, the sea is calm, all is well.

This season our plan is to stay in this sailing area. We'll do a few sails a bit further afield when the urge takes us but otherwise we are just enjoying being here.

To bring you up to speed about what we've been up to since we left Aegina back in October....

We drove back home, it all went swimmingly, no drama (I was glad that nothing untoward happened but it doesn't make for an enthralling read). If you ever want to drive to Greece from the UK or back let me know and I can talk you through it. In brief, our route home was ferry to Athens, drive to Igoumenitsa, day sail ferry to Brindisi in Italy, a drive up the Adriatic Coast then through Switzerland to France and home across the Channel.

We flew back for a week in January, just to keep an eye on things, and then in March drove back to Greece (same route in reverse!) for a few weeks to get the boat ready to launch. Greece in springtime is very different to the summer.

Everywhere is green, the roadsides are covered in wild flowers, the restaurants are quiet and the weather is cool and pleasant. The cats are extremely friendly too.

Plus of course as it's off peak things are cheaper. Highly recommended if you're not bound by school holidays.

We had a lot of bulky stuff we needed to bring with us so we chose to drive here. In particular we wanted to swap the tender (the small boat we use get to shore when we are anchored) for a smaller one we have. Driving meant we didn't need to deal with all the size restrictions airlines  put in place for what can and can't be carried. It also meant I had my own car with me when we got here.

One of my jobs in March was to service all the winches. These raise and/or tighten the various ropes that power the sails and we have five of them in three different sizes. A series of cogs and gears work together to apply the force needed to raise and lower the sails without needing muscles of steel to achieve this. Over time they can get dirty, as the cogs inside are covered in grease to reduce friction but this traps dust, dirt and debris.

Servicing them is relatively simple as they are designed for this regular servicing and maintenance. You take everything apart, degrease it, remove all the dirt, apply fresh grease and reassemble it. The hard part is to remember which piece is which and the order they go back inside the winch.

I've serviced the winches before, and as long as you take lots of photos, make sure you don't drop anything and maintain your concentration it's pretty straightforward. By the time I got to the final winch I had a proper routine. Hope I remember it next year when I need to do it again.

Igor was busy doing essential maintenance on the boat. I did some cleaning and helped him where I could but mostly got on with my work back at the house.

The drive took here us about 5 days including a full day on the 10 hour ferry crossing from Italy to Greece. When we were planning to come home we asked our son Viktor if he'd like to join us for the drive back. He loves driving, especially on continental motorways. As an added incentive we said we'd stop off in some nice places along the way. We didn't have to ask twice.

After collecting him from Athens airport on Monday 7th April we set off. We drove to the near side of the bridge to Patras, stopping for a look at the Corinth Canal along the way. Well, it's a wonder of the modern world and I am very happy to detour to have a good look.

We caught the ferry from Greece (Igoumenitsa) to Brindisi at lunchtime on Tuesday. The original plan had been to have a day sightseeing in Athens but there was a ferry strike on the Wednesday so the plan had to change.

Catching the ferry to Brindisi is chaotic compared to say the route to Dover or Calais. You're told where to wait then a port official tells you to go somewhere else. It feels like vehicles are boarded at random. They are mostly freight, huge trucks which you have to squeeze past to get to the passenger decks.

We 'allowed' Vik to drive onto the ferry as a learning experience. The guys who tell you where to park are very particular, it's a series of tight turns in confined spaces down steep slopes to the bowels of the ship. Vik 'let' me do the disembarkation. The crossing is about 9 hours so we arrived late evening.

We spent the night in the old town area of Brindisi.  The B+B was in a very narrow street, barely wide enough for a car, with a marble road surface. Parking is hard to find so we had a short walk to get there.

We didn't leave the boat until well after 9pm but went for a walk around town anyway, just to stretch our legs. By now we were hungry even though we'd eaten on the ferry. Ah well, we were in Italy so we had a pizza. It was so good, washed down with a nice cold beer. We were the last people in the restaurant but made to feel very welcome and wandered back to where we were staying, suffused with wellbeing. Let's face it, cold beer and fantastic Italian pizza are definitely wellbeing inducing.

As we were about to turn in for the night we heard loud bangs. Running outside in bare feet, on the marble roadway, I looked to the sky. Fireworks! Specially for us?

I like Italy.

By the next evening we reached Rimini, where we had booked two rooms in a seafront hotel. Each had five beds in it. A great breakfast was included and we had change from 70 euros.  To celebrate this bargain we had another fantastic pizza in another unassuming restaurant.

In the morning we took a short detour to have a look at San Marino. We parked in a carpark by the base of the cable car, which we took to the top. Even though the visibility wasn't great the views were stunning.

From here we drove a couple of hours to the outskirts of Venice where we would stay the night. Maestre is a short bus ride from the beautiful city and Vik parked the car on the street. It was mid afternoon.

Venice is so stunning that words fail me. We wandered around, not going to any of the main tourist attractions as we hadn't booked, just walking down endless alleyways, each terminating in a magnificent view that in any other place would be unique.

Around 6pm we took a break, getting Aperols and snacks and resting our feet, then carried on for another couple of hours.

Then it was back on the bus to Maestre, to an Indian restaurant we discovered when we were here previously.  The Namaste has over 2000 positive reviews on Google, which we assumed must be fake...until we tried the food.  It isn't in a pretty part of town and it's nothing to look at. There's a fast food area at the entrance and the seating area is off that. The menu is short and basic.  Then the food arrives and is utterly splendid. Every one of those reviews was well deserved. If you like Indian food and you visit Venice and don't feel like pizza I highly recommend the Namaste.

Next morning was spent in Venice then we drove to Como for the night. A quick look at the lake, an ice cream and a walk was all we had time for in the way of sightseeing.

The following day we crossed Switzerland, stopping at Lake Lucerne and reminding Vik of our ill fated attempt to use the Gotthard Tunnel back in 2019. Our car broke down right in the middle of this, one of the longest tunnels in Europe, and we had to be towed out causing traffic mayhem

I could Vik was worried until we reached the end of the 17th km and exited to the open air.

The route then took us through France, to a corner of Reims where the only place open for food was Burger King. Luckily we're not food snobs. After this it was a short drive on Sunday morning to Dieppe, where we took the ferry to Newhaven and dropped Vik back in Brighton that evening then went home.

Having visited Aegina so recently, practically everything we needed was already on the boat so we could fly back at the end of April, arriving in Aegina on 30th. The hope was to launch by the weekend but the weather had different plans. The wind was blowing hard and constantly.

The boat cover was on, so I couldn't clean the decks, and everywhere was covered in dirt. It was obvious that once the wind died down the boatyard would be working flat out to clear the backlog of boats needing launching, and late on Friday, with the wind starting to subside, we were told that the launch would be Tuesday or Wednesday.

The weekend was spent in a flurry of preparations. Off with the cover. Clean the decks, wash and polish the hull. Spot treat stains on the deck. Fit the foresail. Air the mainsail. Touch in the antifouling on the bottom of the boat. Clean and organise the interior, making sure everything was stashed away safely. Igor had techie stuff to do as well. We worked all day Saturday and Sunday, and on Monday were told that we'd launch at 10am on Tuesday so no rest then either.

Should we stay on the boat in the boatyard on Monday night? This would let us sleep in a bit later as there was still stuff to do. We decided against it, the creature comforts there are somewhat lacking compared to where we were staying, so we were up and at the boatyard by 8am on Tuesday.

We didn't actually launch until around 11, as we had to wait for one last area of antifouling to dry. I then stayed on the boat while it was craned into the water. In England they won't let you anywhere near a boat that's being moved - obviously different risk assessments in the different countries.

Finally we were in the water. Igor got back on board (he'd been watching from the yard) and we set off. There was a gentle breeze so we raised the sails, then plodded eastwards for a while. We were only travelling at a couple of knots - will we be disqualified from owning a Pogo for going so very slowly? It was great though, we weren't in a hurry to go anywhere.

Then Igor remembered. Our trusty gangplank, bought in Southend-on-Sea and a faithful companion through the French canals and the Med, was still in the boatyard. We turned back so we could retrieve it.

The plan was to anchor nearby and collect it and bring it to the boat using the tender. Only problem was that the wind was a bit iffy and we couldn't find a clear patch of seabed to anchor, so we decided to collect it in the car later.

We carried on towards Aeginitissa, and a few moments later got a call from Notis, the boatyard boss, asking if everything was alright. He'd seen us dithering and wondered if something had perhaps got broken over the winter. Thankfully we could explain what had happened and said we'd be back later.

When we did eventually retrieve the plank, or to give it its proper name, the passerelle, it was a bit too big to fit in the car but we fiddled around and managed to get it back to the boat. We're all set now.

Since then we've pretty much spent most of our time in the bay at Aeginitissa.

We had a short 20 mile sail around the area on Thursday 8th May. We'd raise the sails and the wind would drop just as soon as we relaxed into the rhythm of sailing, then once we packed them away the wind would pick up again. It didn't matter, we don't have a timetable or a destination.

We've also discovered that the easiest way to get to the nearby small town of Perdika is in the tender. The electric motor can take us over 15 km provided we don't go fast so gentle progress across the kilometre of blue sea with the quiet hum of the Torqeedo is much nicer than braving the roads or doing the 4km walk, scenic though it is.

We'll be here for another couple of weeks when we may have to pop home to sort some things out.  All we need to do is find a safe place for Libra to stay while we are away, easier said than done, but I'll elaborate once we have sorted out the riddle of how to arrange this.

Lovely to be back.

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