Trawler Blogs

Envoy is now anchored at Ormos Milopotamou, Ios Island in the central Aegean Sea.

We made a conscious decision to use our Yanmar wing engine more this year as last season only used it for about two hours in total.
Engines must be used regularly and for periods of an hour or more so they reach full operating temperature. It is our emergency engine so we do want it to start easily if required. It’s called a “wing”engine as it’s installed to the port side of the main engine and has its own propeller shaft and folding prop. With such low power it only pushes Envoy along at a sedate three knots or so, but being not in any hurry we’ve now completed several short bay-to-bay trips under the wing engine alone with the Yanmar’s alternator charging the battery banks and powering the inverter.
It’s not suitable for rough weather due to its low power and the fact that only the main engine drives the hydraulic stabilisers, but it’s perfectly OK in calm conditions.

We move on to the village of Koroni, again dominated by a Venetian fortress. It’s an interesting village to wander around in with plenty of friendly locals to talk to and not over-spoiled by tourism. The water is superbly clear and we can easily see our anchor and chain seven metres below with a few small fish swimming by.

View of Koroni anchorage

We enjoy exploring some still operational churches and a monastery in the castle grounds, and one of the small churches is built on the site of an ancient temple where we can see the foundations and remnants of marble pillars.

Old church and monastery

Chapel with ancient temple pillars

Inside the chapel

An excellent use for an old boat

Castle at night viewed from Envoy at anchor

This “Quality House Construction” sign took our fancy

We spend one night anchored off the small village of Petalidhion and going ashore for dinner notice ominous black clouds looming before dusk. Later we just get back to the boat before a 20 knot squall and heavy rain descends on us. This is no problem for Envoy but would have made a tough trip for the three of us in our smaller RHIB.

Rain clouds loom in Petalidhion

Market day in Petalidhion

Chickens destined for the table in the market

From here it’s a short cruise to the marina at Kalamata, a large town where 50,000 Greeks live and work, with little tourism and which of course is famous for olives. The town centre is about 20 minutes walk from the marina through a park containing a museum of old trains. Kalamata has a hilltop castle too but little remains of it and it’s not worth a visit.

Laurie and Chris play engine drivers

An old hand-operated rail crane

This rustic taverna caught our eye

Here we rent a car and visit the World Heritage fortress of Mystras, near the town of Sparta, named after the legendary, militaristic Spartans who dominated this entire region from around 850BC, although little remains to be seen from their time.
We pass through the spectacular rugged Langada gorge, about 50km long, climbing to 1,524m, where the Spartans are reputed to have left any children too weak or unfit for military service to die.

The Langada gorge is extremely rugged with many caves

The Mystras fortress was built much later in 1249 by the Frankish Principate of the area, William 11, although the Byzantines took it over soon afterwards and ownership passed back and forth between them and the Turks. The castle looks impregnable, built upon the steep, craggy, natural fortress hilltop of Myzithra and in times of attacks the villagers living outside the castle and farmers tending the fertile valley would move inside.
We visit many castles like this and on hot days its exhausting enough walking up to them in shorts and t-shirts as we wonder how did soldiers walk the same steep paths laden with weapons and armour and avoiding spears, arrows, stones and hot oil poured down on them by the defenders.
Like Koroni the site has churches dating from the 13th or 14th centuries still in use.

Mystras fortress

The fertile valley that supported the populous with produce

The Despot’s palace currently being restored

This 14th century church is still in use

Laurie points out a recess used for heavy wooden beams to secure the main gate against attackers

As Envoy only uses about 8 litres of diesel per hour we don’t refuel often but Kalamata Marina was a convenient spot to do so as a tanker comes right up to the boat, so we take on 400 litres of diesel.

Here Chris departs for further travels leaving us grateful for his excellent company and tremendous contribution to Envoy’s maintenance, only a small part of which has been detailed in the Blog.

Fishermen repair the hull of their boat pulled up on rollers at Ormos Kitries

TECHNICAL
For navigation we use a Toshiba laptop loaded with MaxSea C-Map, receiving a position signal from a Raymarine GPS. In case of a problem with the Toshiba we have a spare Compaq laptop, but this has not been working properly. On screen is an icon in the shape of a boat representing your position and pointing in the direction of travel. On the Compaq the icon was pointing to the north rather than the direction of travel and our course over ground (COG) and speed over ground (SOG) wasn’t being displayed. So Chris takes a look at this.
On pulling the spare computer from storage we find another more physical problem – it must have somehow got crushed by something heavy in storage, the hinges were damaged and the screen won’t open. So first Chris spends several hours pulling the case to pieces to remove the hinges. I confess there were so many pieces of the computer on the table I wondered if it would ever be in one piece again, but Chris’s patience and expertise together with Supa-Glue and epoxy prevails and he rebuilds the case. After a couple of attempts to resolve the icon issue Chris changes a setting to resolve it, so it’s now comforting to have a spare navigation computer that works properly.

Our dismantled Compaq laptop spread over the saloon table

One of our two engine room ventilation blowers had failed and while in Kalamata we remove it and Chris dismantles the motor and determines that one of the motor brushes was badly worn. Kalamata’s only chandler doesn’t have a replacement so I ask them to use their local knowledge to find an electrical shop to replace the faulty brush. “Oh no my friend you can’t repair these” is the answer (in Greece and Turkey conversations often start with the opening remark ‘my friend’). I say very politely something like, “my friend let me tell you that virtually every town of this size in the world has electrical repair shops that can replace brushes on electric motors, all we need to do is find one. Please help me by finding someone who services auto starter motors and alternators.”
A few days later the unit has been repaired for 30 Euros (about NZ$50) and the chandler is delighted he now has someone to use for marine electrical repair.