14. The Ionion in Autumn

20^th October 2008

A week ago I spent an hour at the top of our mast. Andy maintains it was only 10 minutes as it took so long to haul me up (!) but to me it seemed 3 hours. This is the second time we have needed someone up the mast this trip – last time we sent Fay up in Dubrovnik and she fixed the anemometer. The Germans on the boat next to us at the time said (in German) “so the English send their children up the mast....” and rushed to make sure we were doing it safely. This time everyone around us ignored the spectacle – “giving us space” I believe it is called. We were in Vassaliki where Fay spent last summer and Andy hoped to spend a week windsurfing. Unfortunately there was no wind so we decided to find out why we were having so much trouble with the spinnaker halyard. We were sandwiched between a German charter boat who, despite us helping with their lines when they arrived had decided we should be ignored, and a British couple who were packing up their boat for the winter.

To get up the mast one sits in a fabric “bosons’” chair that is attached to the main halyard (rope up the mast) then, half climbing by hugging the mast with your lower legs, and half (mostly in my case) pulled up by a person in the cockpit winching the halyard one ascends up the mast. There are two sets of cross trees to get past – no mean feat if you are not very flexible (on the way up I was fine, by the time I came down all my muscles had gone into spasm due to my clinging on so hard and I couldn’t get my knees to move at all!) and once at the top Andy cleated me in place so I could work. After I got the hang of being up there and used to Andy pounding round the boat making it sway gently (Andy kept reminding me that Ellen Macarthur went up HER mast, alone, in a gale with no one to blame for the lurching) I actually enjoyed having a bird’s eye view of Vassaliki and the sea below. I could immediately see what the problem was – the block through which the halyard is supposed to run freely had a tear in its casing that meant the rope was not guided correctly – acting as a jammer, in fact. It involved a lot of high concentration to change the block and time waiting for Andy to send the new block up the mast, so I WAS up the mast for an hour!

Today we tested the new pulley (at last) – what a difference. The spinnaker went up, and came down again a few hours later, like a dream.

Since our last blog our journey has taken us from Corfu, into the Gulf of Amvrakia – a huge natural inland sea lake on the mainland of Greece and through the Lefkas Canal to the island of Lafkas.

Currently we are circumnavigating the Greek Ionian island of Cephalonia (the setting for Captain Corelli’s Mandolin) over one week. Our first port of call was a very picturesque village at the North of the Island called Assos. There is a Venetian fort above the village and we wandered up a €980,000 EU funded road – wondering if anyone had inspected the mess that was being made (shoddy workmanship, plastic rubbish tipped over the side of the mountain, the roof of the part-completed visitors centre collapsed and a fire to burn the ever present plastic bottles, polystyrene and other flammable rubbish not tipped over the edge). We ignored the waste of tax-payers money; the view from the Fort and the impressive size of the ruins were well worth the climb.

As we walked down, collecting pine cones for our barbeque, we watched a huge catamaran arrive in our small bay. We knew it was huge because the one person we could see on deck looked tiny! We were anchored among some unused buoys for small boats. John and Midge were still trying to anchor when Andy was lighting the barbeque. He had an impressive flame going and John hollered to find out what was for dinner. The next morning we rowed over to say hi and ended up staying for an hour. John and Midge are from Aussie, bought the enormous Catana 58 foot cat in Turkey for just the two of them, after crossing the south China sea and Indian Ocean, surviving the Boxing Day tsunami in a 45 foot steel mono-hull – John got fed up of the movement of the mono-hull and decided a cat would not move around so much. They still have the 45 foot boat – it is going for a “very good price” – in a Turkish boatyard. As we left we offered to help them free the impressive crop of small buoys they had collected while anchoring the previous evening. We were in our tender under the trampoline which was several feet above us. The throbbing of the boat and the occasional spurt of water made us feel like we were under some space mother-ship. After struggling for some while I told John we would be claiming salvage rights – it was a proper “buggers muddle” – they had collected an anchor and a concrete block as well as the buoys wrapped around their anchor chain. We eventually managed to free them all and handed them up to John for re-laying as he left!

We have worn out our in-board batteries. This means that the fridge defrosts overnight (warm beer!), we cannot use the lights in the saloon and NO MUSIC! Something had to be done. We decided to go to the main town of Argostoli on Cephalonia to see if we could buy replacements. Again more EU money has been spent here - €10 million this time – on an unfinished and useless yacht marina. Another €10m is needed and anyway it is in the wrong place and gets the prevailing winds according to our friendly cafe waiter who caught our ropes as we came alongside at the town quay. Argostoli is not the prettiest of towns and had a western frontier town feel to it. Greece really is a very poor country. We see many subsistence farmers and fishermen and our waiter has two jobs to pay his bills. Tourism has taken a real knock this year – the main holiday company bringing British holidaymakers to this part of Greece – Excel – has gone out of business and so many people did not make it out this summer. Those that came are spending less (Greece seems really expensive to us: €20 on coffee and cake for two is not unusual). Our waiter friend tried to help us find a battery until he remembered that it was a special festival day and no one was open. We went for a walk around the town instead.

While wandering around the town we found a petrol station. The door of the forecourt shop was open so we wandered in – do you sell batteries? “Yes, but today is a festival and we are closed – come back tomorrow”. We walked round the corner then realised that the forecourt on this street was not the same petrol station and there was another shop. We wandered in and there were LOTS of batteries! The young guy who sold us the new battery was from Pakistan and spoke a form of English. He said he would deliver the battery to our boat on his moped. Andy went with him. “Can I come with you back to England? When are you going back? Do you know how I can arrange a marriage of convenience? I hate Greece, I love England – I want to get to England. Can you help me? I am illegal here but the Greeks are too proud, I do not like it here...”. Apart from “no” what can you say?

We have found the Greeks friendly in a very genuine way. They have a generosity about them. Also they are good cooks and the average taverna serves a very good meal. Buying food to cook on board has proved fairly difficult. All the places we have been so far are closing down for the winter. Vassiliki was almost completely packed up and those shops still open had very limited stock. We have not had much success at finding markets to buy fresh fruit and veg and when we find a shop there is very limited good quality produce to buy. We only want to buy locally produced, in season anyway so we are now living on onions, aubergines, peppers, end of season tomatoes, pears and grapes. Fish is scarce – today I was offered two small fish for €20 from a fisherman. I tried to negotiate but my offer of €5 was turned down. So no fish tonight! We shared a substantial tunny fish at a restaurant in Vas when Andy took me out for lunch to say thank you for going up the mast – the two very good meals cost €24 with more fish than we would normally eat. So €20 for much less and unprepared fish did not seem a bargain. Unfortunately we cannot spend over €30 with drinks on lunch every day so the food search continues.

Life on board Deep Blue continues to be harmonious and fun. We tell ourselves how lucky we are everyday. Fay is counting the days until she leaves for the Caribbean on Windrose and Piers seems to have settled into China now that he has met a group of Chinese like-minded people through his AEISAC group.