Sunday 10th September...
Dean - Have I mentioned the weather here in the Med (Motor Every Day)? So we have decided to stay here until Wednesday as there is some more wind due, although not too bad this time. I have some more jos to do before haul out, and here in Kalymnos seems the appropiate place. We had a refrigeration technician yesterday to look at the fridge, he said the gas was low so refilled with R134a special gas, the freezer too. Now neither of them are working correctly. Piss useless! He's due back soon and once they're fixed I've promised to release his children.
So after a good swear this morning, after all it is Sunday! I set to again on the forward holding tank. It keeps blocking up. The holding tank is where the poop goes before we either pump out or dump it offshore. Last week I tried my usual trick of poking my fibre glass jointed fisch down from the top but it caught on something and in the end it left 3 pieces wedged down the pipe. As you can imagine this was a little disappointing and resulted in a few choice nautical words which are better left imagined right now.
Anyway good news today. With the help of an old fishing rod I found on the shore some weeks ago we managed to hook a line on the lost fisch and retrieve it, to be honest its a bloody miracle so we celebrated with a cheeky rum and coke.
We had a bit of entertainment today also when a boat got his anchor stuck under another chain, two lost boat hooks, a German in the water, re-anchoring and a few lost tempers, excellent entertainment on a sunny Sunday.
Stay tuned for more poop clearing and fridge news to follow....
Me with the retrieved fisch part
Monday 11th September...
Dean - Sorry no photo's today. We've been waiting in for the fridge man all day and guess what. The wanker didn't turn up. It's no good beating around the bush, thats what he is and thats what I said.
I spent another couple of hours with my eye wedged down the waste pipe of the forwards heads which I'm now 90% confident is all clared out.
Tomorrow I'm going to try and open the aft heads damaged sea cock and work on that tank, if I can!
I'm also going to take a look at the fridge and freezer of course.
Did some shopping this morning, although nothing for the freezer and had curry for tea. yummy. Has been quite windy here first thing and again just now-9.30pm.
Tuesday 12th September...
Linda - Back to me again today. We couldn't wait for the fridge man any longer. Dean has done a lot of reading up and it seems that the fridge man put too much gas in. The compressor is cold and the pipes have ice on them. This shouldn't be the case. The ice cream in the freezer has already melted and been eaten, and the ice cubes for my Rum & Coke have turned back into water, so something had to be done urgently.
Dean set about releasing small amounts of the overfilled gas throughout the day, and it seems to be working because the temperatures are coming down slowly. It's been a long day watching and recording numbers, but the ice on the pipes is now gone and the compressors are now warm, so it's all coming together, albeit slowly. It's a good job we are plugged into mains electricity because the compressors have been running constantly ever since that awful fridge man came, and I don't think our boat batteries would have been able to keep up with the demand.
Dean checks for an update on the iced pipes
You can see the ice here
Fingers crossed the temperatures will be correct before we go to bed tonight. I think one of us might be awake all night..... again.
Wednesday 13th September...
Linda - Well last night the fridge did come down to the correct temperature 4 degrees, but the freezer didn't and it was still not correct this morning. There was a lot of cursing going on, teddies thrown out and all. It was around lunchtime whilst Dean was napping in the cockpit, that the fridge man eventually turned up out of the blue. I think Dean thought he was dreaming when he was awoken. Well now the fridge man has fiddled once more with his gas refilling in what seemed to be a more professional manner, Dean is more confident about it all. Let's see what the thermometers say tomorrow morning.
We cheered last night when the fridge reached 4 degrees
Along the lovely back streets on the way back
Statues outside the Coastguard office
Last night it blew a hoolie until well past midnight!
They even have a very well marked swimming area for visually impaired people, with a special seat that wheels into the sea. WOW.
Our electric meter has run out now so we're on battery power.
And lastly, we have more ice cream.
Thursday 14th September...
Linda - It's been two lovely weeks on the quay in Kalymnos but now we have the opportunity to move on as the weather has subsided somewhat (well at least for a couple of days). Dean popped to the bakery to grab a nice crusty loaf for our travels, and just before we left we noticed that a large motor boat was being towed into the harbour.
Motor boat getting a tow from a small fishing boat
We left at 9.15am without any problems, to head north 12 miles to Palionisos on the east coast where they have about 15 buoys. It's our first time here, and I think only the second time that we've picked up a buoy in Greece. When I say first time here, that's not strictly true. It's our first time here with the boat. We did come to the bay last year when we hired a scooter, but it was only a quick visit.
So by just gone 11am we had arrived and there were only three other boats here. We had the pick of the buoys. By 4pm all of the buoys were full. The bay is surrounded by high mountains and very scenic. We like it very much, except now at 9.30pm as I write this the boat is rolling around quite a lot. Looking at the charts you would think this bay is sheltered from the swell outside, but it obviously does creep in here.
On arrival at Palionisos
Empty buoys
We lost the AIS signal on the way
The buoys are MASSIVE. Dean went to check the quality and lines on our buoy and you can see the size in comparison to Dean is ridiculous.
This aftenoon there was more heads maintenance that needed to be carried out, and then Dean started on the freezer. Now the two little fans inside the freezer aren't working. There's a problem with the wiring and it was quite a job to carry out this repair as he has to remove part of the cold plate. So our almost frozen freezer was now unfrozen again.
Since we've turned it back on later this afternoon it seems to be much better, and it's currently only 0.4 degrees from reaching its maximum setting of minus 20 degrees.
Good news is that the batteries charged up to 100% today, partly due to us motoring for two hours, and partly due to the solar power.
At work fixing the freezer wiring
There's two restaurants here, a bar, and a stony beach, but nothing else really apart from a camp site, which looks like it's used for groups. It's kind of expected that you eat at a restaurant if you are on one of the free buoys, so we did. It was very nice and the staff very friendly, oh and a little dog that liked a bit of fuss.
Rowing to the restaurant
The beach
All the boats on buoys
View of the beach from the restaurant
The buoy field
In the restaurant
Beach
Camp site
Group huts
Friday 15th September...
Linda - Hoorah! (Late) last night the freezer reached max temperature of minus 20 degrees, so one and all went to bed happy.
Freezer at minus 20 degrees, fridge at plus 4.5 degrees
And guess what? Today there was no maintenance happening! 😵
We have moved an hour and half up the coast and across to the south end of Leros. Kalymnos and Leros are only separated by a fairly small channel of water. We are now in a v shaped bay at the very bottom of Leros. It's called Xirokampos. A few times we've passed by but never came in here due to the mediocre reports on Navily website. Navily is one of the apps we use where people can write comments about the places they anchor.
So today it was time to come and have a look at Xirokampos to see if it was a suitable option for sitting out some winds over the coming weekend. On arrival at 11am first impressions were good. A lot of boats already here. No charter boats as it's Friday (change over day), but private boats / long term cruisers which was a good sign. You kind of think these type of people know what they're doing 😂.
We spotted a small buoy and picked it up. Dean said it was in good condition, in fact so good it looked like a private mooring. After a short while he dived in to snorkel the buoy. Not a good impression, he said it looked like the concrete block had been dragged at some point. Feeling uneasy about it we decided to move and anchored at the second attempt further out in the middle of the bay. The anchor was well dug in and we sat for a while pondering over our position which seemed a little exposed.
Could we get a better spot further in? A couple of boats had left and there seemed to be some empty buoys, although they are only marked with a clear plastic water bottle. We offloaded the dinghy and went for a whizz around to check the condition of these empty buoys. Dean said one in particular looked good, so we quickly went back to Thesee, raised the anchor, and headed straight for the aforesaid buoy. We picked it up like professionals (second time today). Dean jumped back in the water for the third time and tied an extra spare line to the concrete blocks as a back-up. So we had spent nearly 3 hours moving around the anchorage by this point, lol. I'm pleased to say we are now settled and took a nice walk along the small fisherman's quay and beach front this afternoon, with a quick beer and coke (they didn't have rum (losers!)) before returning to the boat.
Some nice photos of where we are this evening in Xirokampos....
Duck family on the beach
Fishing nets piled up high
Fishing nets drying out
Beautifully coloured fishing boat fleet
💙 Thésée 💙
At the harbour wall
End of the breakwater
The restaurant looked welcoming with a tree marked with 'hello' in many different languages.
'Hello' tree
Horse in a field on our short stroll
...and cows
Lovely apartments
Beach bar with big shell decorations
Old anchor, fishing net, and weighing scales
View from the beach bar. Thesee is the blue boat.
There he is in a stunning location
Tonight, two very strange clouds. What does this mean?
Saturday 16th September...
Linda - Deciding to stay onboard and not go ashore this morning, Dean got stuck into trying to repair the varnish on the cockpit table top. It's gone all gooey and we are concerned about putting anything on top of it because it just sticks to it! We've even found small fluffy bits of red felt from my large piece of felt we use for playing Rummikub on it.
Unfortunately I missed Dean doing the rubbing down bit, and even the re-varnishing bit, but I did catch him vaccuuming up the gooey bits after rub down!
First try at varnish failed once more, so one more rubbing down episode for today. He wants to wait until the temperature is less than 20 degrees to do it. Maybe try in the morning. I did ask him not to lose his temper with it today, and he has been very good..... so far.
First rub down completed
Surprise, Surprise, it's forecast to be a blowy weekend, not over the top though. However, we are still on guard which is why we've not been ashore. You never really know what or when the wind will come as it's often when you don't expect it. Sometimes during the night, but quite often just before sunrise and after sunset.
I busied myself by starting to go through the cupboards in preparation for leaving Thesee for the winter. I like to make sure they're clean and tidy, and it also gives me a chance to see if there's anything I want to take home with me. So far, a cookbook, and some new table mats.
A few more photos from the boat...
Look at that blue sky
Some boats left and some new ones came
I came across these new tablemats we bought in Turkey and forgot about
Sunset on the mountains
There's another blue Beneteau 50 here today
Sunset shots
Linda - The table has been varnished and is looking good, just a little more TLC required.
Fed up with sitting on the boat all day listening to the wind, we took ourselves off for 3 hours on a walking trail up Cape of Diaporo. That's right next to the anchorage. Apparantly there are a lot of walking trails on Leros and most of them take you past remains of different Italian military installations. Today's walk took us to Terra Amata, an old Italian military structure with wall paintings made by soldiers during World War II.
There were super views all along the way too.
Start of the walk, leaving the anchorage
Lovely views already
Bee Hives
Me with the anchorage in the background
Looking towards Kalymnos
Some sort of old building here
A fence here, made out of old army beds it appears
Sheep on the hillside
Rough trails
Thesee looks OK down there
We finally reach Terra Amata
The paintings still in good condition
Looking inside
Bit of a cave round the back
Another lovely painting on this wall
And a dog too
Back outside
Nearly back at the anchorage we find a little chapel
Let's go and have a look
Here it is, how cute
Inside, even cuter
Back on the road and more lovely flowers here
Our dusty boots
When the walk was over we stopped for lunch, it was a bit wierd. No tuna, No mayonnaise. Seemed to be the owners mother serving us, or not serving us as the case may be. Not much of a restaurant experience really. And Dean was overcharged too. Not happy. We'll give that one a miss next time.
Monday 18th September...
Linda - A short blog post today. Yet another meltemi has been going on this weekend and is lingering for a few days more with the worst day today (I hope). I've lost count how many Meltemi's we've suffered this summer since we arrived in the Aegean, but a quick tot up I think makes this the 9th one 😒. And that's not even counting the times we had to hide in Turkey beforehand.
We were going to do a short walk but decided to stay onboard instead and keep our eye on things. Dean has been re-splicing the anchor snubber line. OMG it's a nightmare. I can't even begin to start explaining what it entails so will just move on.
We are on a buoy at the moment along with many other boats on buoys and at anchor further out. Yesterday afternoon a BIG catamaran came in and dropped his anchor right in front of us. He's a Twanker.... remember. What an idiot, anchoring between the beach and the buoys. I couldn't go to bed until after midnight last night because the wind was blowing and we were frightened that the catamaran would drag into us. Eventually I had to give in and went to bed. Dean was awake most of the night worrying too.
Then this morning when we were up, the inevitable gust of wind made the catamaran's anchor drag and they went into panic stations. Fortunately they missed us, but imagine that if it happened in the night. They tried to re-anchor in the same spot..... double Twanker, but after a short while anchored further out and eventually left the anchorage all together. GOOD.
Linda - Day 5 here in Xirokampos. Wind still blowing all day but in the last hour it has abated to a breeze. I've resigned myself to the fact that it's not going to go away entirely, right up to the day of our lift out in 9 days time.
We have to amuse ourselves again and this began with polishing the newly varnished cockpit table top. Dean appeared from his man cabin with a bunch of brightly coloured spongy polishing pad attachments for his cordless angle grinder/polisher. Why have I never seen these spongy bits before? Who knows what's in that man cabin! Anyway, the polisher sprays polish everywhere, so my job was to hold a towel up to catch the rogue spray from going everywhere.
The big question is.... Will this be the end of the table varnish saga? I fear not.
Preparing to polish
Spongy attachments
Just after lunch Dean rowed us ashore in the dinghy. We are near the beach so not a great distance into the wind, and we knew on the way back we would just drift back basically. It was an opportunity to drop off the rubbish, visit the nearby grocery store, and stop for refreshments on the beach. There's a football ground nearby... Leros FC 😀. I wonder who they play against on this small island?
Leros written in Greek on the seats
Unfortunately my camera is having a headache and won't do close in zoom shots. Hence I couldn't really get a good photo of the word Leros.
Sign to the grocery store
Plants in old crocs here on a wall, good idea
If the wind picks up again tonight we'll be getting no sleep again, now we have two boats anchored in front of us. There's always something to worry about.
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