May 2011

Settling in

Arriving at Ayios Nikolaos on 1 October 2010, we quickly renewed acquaintance with our returning friends from last winter, and started to get to know the new arrivals. Two days after we arrived, we attended our first Sunday lunch-time barbecue of the winter, which was a good way to catch up and get to know people.

On 6 October, we had the boat lifted out of the water and parked in a cradle on the marina's hard standing. We managed to get Roussos, the travel lift operator, to put us in a spot near the quay, with the stern facing south. This gave us an excellent view across the bay from the cockpit, a view which of which we never tire, especially when the setting sun colours the rocks and accentuates the contours of the mountains. In daylight hours, whenever it is warm enough, we have our meals in the cockpit or just sit and relax there and enjoy the view. In winter, our cockpit canopy enables us to do this even in less than ideal weather.

The Week of the Cowboys

The reason for having the boat lifted out so early was to enable work to start on the osmosis problem which we had identified last winter. This consists of a multitude of blisters, caused by water penetrating the fabric of the hull and causing a chemical reaction.

The first job was to remove the antifouling coat from the hull. Janni, the Slovenian to whom we had entrusted this job, decided to employ a team of Englishmen, who had a piece of fancy equipment which could remove surface material using a high-pressure stream of tiny metal particles. Unfortunately, they were not very experienced in the use of the equipment, so the job took longer than anticipated, and they caused some unexpected damage to the underlying gelcoat.

Their incompetence was compounded by equipment breakdowns and by strong winds, which meant the screen they erected round the boat had to be re-positioned every morning. Additionally, they fell foul of a rule in the marina which forbids the use of noisy equipment during the siesta period between 1500 and 1700 hours. They created a lot of noise and mess and took a week to complete the job. We were glad to see the back of them, and not at all happy with the quality of their work.

The removal of the antifouling revealed many more blisters than we had previously suspected, and this led to some discussion about the way to go from here. Any yachtie who has read a few yachting magazines thinks he knows about osmosis. All these supposed experts have different ideas, which they are keen to share. Inevitably, a lot of the comments we got were along the lines of "If I were you, I wouldn't be starting from here"! Hindsight is a great thing, but, for better or for worse, we were in Crete not England, and couldn't get the boat seaworthy again without continuing down the path on which we had started.

We left it to Janni to get the epoxy coating (which is supposed to prevent osmosis!) removed from the hull while we returned to England. We suspected that we would find many more blisters underneath it. The rest of October we spent on routine maintenance, to get the boat ready to leave for the 3 months we would be away. In between the work, we socialised with our friends and swam regularly from the nearby beach.

Holiday(?) in England

On 3 November, we flew back to England. After a few days at Jenny and Allan's new house near Guildford, we travelled by bus to Graham and Emma's, near Cambridge, to await the arrival of our first grandchild. He duly arrived, on 13 November, and was named Sebastian (Graham says he'll grow into it!). As the birth was by Caesarean, Emma was banned from doing anything strenuous for 6 weeks, so we stayed with them and helped by keeping house, cooking, shopping and walking and feeding the dogs. Kay also sat up some nights to feed Sebastian and help his parents get some much-needed sleep.

After Christmas we spent a week with Kay's sister Anne at her new flat in Highworth, near Swindon. During January we made a further visit to Cambridge, one to Lytham, and two more to Guildford, travelling everywhere by National Express coach, and visiting lots of family and friends.

Return to Crete

On the afternoon of 7 February, Jenny gave us a lift to Heathrow, to catch an evening flight to Athens. After a 6-hour wait in Athens for the onward flight to Crete, we finally got back to Ayios Nikolaos at about 2 pm next day. Although we were tired, the weather was warm and sunny and we were very glad to be back.

Back to Work

After a couple of days spent recovering from the journey, shopping and generally getting organised, we started to think about getting back to work on the boat. For Peter this meant dealing with the osmosis. As expected, removing the epoxy layer had revealed a lot more blisters, and each of these had to be opened to get rid of the contaminants in the hull material. This was a long and tedious job, but, to cut a long story short, P finished drilling out all the blisters he could find by the end of April. By this time there were so many holes in the hull that we wondered whether to rename the boat Jumbly Girl (the Jumblies went to sea in a sieve).

The next stage in this process is to wait for the wind and summer sunshine to dry the hull out, before we can fill the holes and treat the hull with a protective epoxy coating and antifouling paint. If we are lucky we'll be able to sail for a month or two at the end of the season. If not, we'll just have to settle for an extended holiday in Crete. We can think of worse places to be stranded!

While P has been engaged in the battle to get the boat seaworthy again, Kay pressed her trusty sewing machine into action yet again. Her jobs have included repairing the sprayhood and making a cover to link the sprayhood to the bimini (sunshade), to provide better protection from sun and rain.

Not all work

Of course, we couldn't spend all the time working, and have taken a fair bit of time off to enjoy ourselves. Kay's major activity this winter has been learning to play bridge, and playing a least one evening a week, mainly with other people from the marina. She also joined the Rainbow Choir, a group of about a dozen English, German and Dutch, with a Norwegian conductor, who put on a concert in a local restaurant in the middle of April. The music was not the classical stuff which we used to sing at home, but good arrangements of light music from various countries, and well-sung. On 7 May they put on an Evensong Service in a cave in the hills nearby, in commemoration of a massacre in 1823, when the Turks killed several hundred Greeks who had taken refuge there. P joined the choir for this service, and will probably carry on singing with them next winter.

There has not been as much organised music in the marina as last year, but P has continued playing the guitar, and occasionally the clarinet, for his own amusement.

As last year, the Sunday lunch-time barbecues continued throughout the winter, with only the occasional cancellation for bad weather. The resident yachties take it in turns to set things up and light the fire, and everyone brings their own meat and drink, and a vegetable dish to share. As well as this communal feasting, there were of course lots of evenings spent socialising over drinks or dinner with one or two other couples.

There have again been walks in the mountains/hills most weeks, and we have joined in with these. This year there have been two walking groups, catering for the very fit and energetic, and those who would rather take their time and enjoy the surroundings. After our relatively lazy time in England, we decided to join the tortoises rather than the hares, though even a gentle walk up these mountains is fairly strenuous at our age! More recently, as people left to go cruising and the tortoise walks stopped, we have joined the hares, but so far the walks have been within our capacity (the longest was 13 kilometres and took about 4 hours). We still enjoy the Cretan landscapes, and every week there are new flowers to enjoy, as well as birds and insects. On our last two walks we have had spectacular views of Griffon vultures soaring over the mountains, and buzzards engaged in courtship displays.

Wild Weather

We arrived back in February to the news that we had missed the wettest winter anyone here could remember, and the worst storm for 50 years. On 5 December a north-westerly gale had created a huge surge in the marina, which caused a lot of discomfort and damaged a number of boats. Fortunately Wild Thyme, being safely parked ashore, escaped these disasters.

One feature of the weather here is that occasionally we get strong winds from the south which, when they bring rain, also bring a load of red sand from the Sahara. Unlike the sand we get on beaches in England, this stuff is as fine as talcum powder, and gets into every nook and cranny. It takes some getting out too, and cleaning it from the deck and rigging was one of our first jobs on our return.

After our return, the wet, windy weather continued intermittently, but caused us little inconvenience. There is of course a silver lining, in that water levels in the reservoirs are higher than usual, and there is a chance that we'll get through the summer without water shortages.

Ayios Nikolaos is at the foot of mountains which rise higher than Ben Nevis, and during the winter these are often snow-capped. When the wind blows from that direction, it can be quite cold down here, and this last winter was also one of the coldest of recent years. On 9 March we woke to find that the temperature in the cabin had dropped to 8° overnight, and the deck had a thin coating of snow. It's not always warm and balmy this far south!

Exodus

The arrival of April is the cue for yachties to start thinking about moving on. As last year, the weather in April was terrible, and we had no regrets about being trapped in this comfortable marina. Some of our friends set out but got no further than the next bay, about 8 miles up the coast, where they sat at anchor through nasty weather for anything up to a fortnight. Crete is a long way from the next safe haven in most directions, and is therefore a difficult place to escape from.

Gradually, people took advantage of breaks in the bad weather to make their escape. Some had uneventful trips, motoring with little wind, while others were not so lucky and took a battering on their way to their next stop.

Now, on 21 May, there are still about 6 crews left of those who spent the winter here, plus a similar number who have returned after spending the winter back home. Most don't appear to be waiting for better weather, but just enjoying being here. In some cases their boats, which are more spacious than Wild Thyme, are acting as floating holiday accommodation for family and friends.

At the same time as people have been leaving, others have arrived, on passage east or west. Some have been delayed here by the weather for as much as a week, but most seem quite happy to stay for a while in this pleasant and not too expensive place.

Trip to the West End

Although we sailed all along the north coast of Crete on our way here at the end of 2009, we did not see any of the interior, and last year only explored a small area at the eastern end. Having reached a convenient point to take a rest from working on the boat, we decided it was time to travel further afield. On Monday 16 May we hired a car and drove to Kissamos, at the extreme west end of the island. There we found a comfortable hotel room at a reasonable price and stayed for two nights.

During the next 4 days we visited ancient sites and little villages, many of the latter clinging to steep mountain-sides. The winding roads took us past towering mountains and through rocky gorges and broad, green valleys. Everywhere there was a profusion of wild flowers, trees, birds and butterflies. We had found the east end of the island beautiful, but this was better still. One of the most exciting sights was a group of 13 griffon vultures wheeling around in the sky together in the same valley.

On the third night we stayed overnight at Sougia, and next morning we walked up a gorge and across the hill-top to look down on the remains of the ancient port of Lissos. The next night we spent at the seaside town of Sfakia, from where 11,000 Allied servicemen were evacuated following the German invasion of Crete in 1941. In the morning we visited the memorial to the 4000-plus Allied servicemen who died defending the island, and the thousands of others who were wounded or taken prisoner. Quite by chance, we were there on the 70th anniversary of the invasion, which was also our wedding anniversary.

That afternoon we returned to Ayios Nikolaos and went out for dinner at one of our favourite restaurants, which specialises in typically Cretan dishes. It was a fitting end to a satisfying few days.

That was yesterday (Friday). Tomorrow we'll enjoy the weekly barbecue, and on Monday we'll get back to work (if we can't find any reason not to).

Our plan now is to get the boat seaworthy, if possible in time to do some cruising before we settle down here for a third winter. Some friends at home have suggested that we appear to be "going native", a suggestion which we have denied. Despite appearances, we do intend returning to England in a couple of years, as we want to be nearer to our family. Still, given that our plans rarely survive unchanged for very long, there could be more surprises before we finally settle down.