Tag Archives | Nordhavn

Envoy is currently anchored off Yiyhion on the mainland Greek southern coast with our friends Kevin and Diane aboard.

After leaving Lefkas Marina we cruise south to Argostoli, the port capital of Cephalonia, and anchor in the harbour seeing turtles for the first time this season as they pop their heads out of the water, take a look around and dive back to the depths. It’s a quaint town that suffered considerable damage during an earthquake in 1953 and was then largely rebuilt in its original Venetian style.

Vista of Argostoli from Envoy at anchor

Chris and Laurie enjoy ice cold Mythos beers at Argostoli – someones gotta do this!

For the first time we visit the island of Zakynthos and anchor one night off a great beach at Alykanas before going into Zakynthos harbour so that Envoy will be safe while we hire a car to look around the island. The marina cost is a reasonable 35 Euros (about NZ$58) per night including power and water.

Envoy in Zakynthos Marina

Alykanas is a great settled weather anchorage

In Zakynthos we have a rare bad dining experience with poor quality and over-priced food costing 100 Euros (about NZ$167) for the three of us. To be fair this is partially our fault for not checking the price of off-menu specials so that we end up paying 50 Euros (about NZ$83) for a small snapper that we’d throw back in New Zealand. After Chris makes our complaints known on behalf of all of us, they offer free meals for the following night although get off lightly as we don’t take up their offer.

We loved this rustic old stone building

On the south side of Zakynthos is a marine reserve where turtles return to sandy beaches to nest and breed. Understandably boats are not allowed in most of this area but are allowed at nearby Ormos Keri where we spend two nights and we’re able to replenish our fresh water supplies from a tap at the local small boat harbour.

Gathering fresh water is a regular activity

Ormos Keri and its local boat harbour

Two miles off the anchorage the island of Marathonisi has numerous sea caves that we are able to explore taking our RHIB completely inside.

Marathonisi Island looks like a giant turtle

The sea caves of Marathonisi have exceptionally clear water

We are inside the cave looking out at Envoy

From here it’s about 50 miles east to the mainland Peloponnese coast where we ‘ll spend the next several weeks, so we break the journey about halfway at the remote and lonely Nisidhos Strofadhes Islands. We are the only vessel here and the cruising guide says gales from any direction cause the seas to be like a giant washing machine swirling around.
We don’t encounter a gale but even the 15 knot winds causes an uncomfortable swell to enter our anchorage making our flopper-stoppers necessary. The islands are inhabited by a solitary monk who looks after the 13th century Ay Panayis monastery, built like a fortress to withstand historic pirate attacks.

The fortress-like 13th century monastery

TECHNICAL
All fuel used by Envoy is filtered (or “polished”) using a 7 litres/min !2 volt pump feeding a 2 micron Racor filter and a magnetic DeBug unit into our in-use fuel tank before being used by any of the engines. Before if gets to the engine it then goes through a Racor primary filter and secondary on-engine filter. Shorty after leaving Lefkas Marina the 12V polishing pump fails, emitting just a faint clicking noise, so we replace it with our on-board spare – a simple exercise except for the time required to remove the pipe fittings from the failed pump and refit them to the new pump. As a new pump costs about US$500 and there was nothing to loose we decide to utilise Chris’s expertise and attempt to repair the failed pump, which consists of three separate parts – a rotary vane pump, a 12V DC motor and an electronic controller – any one of which could be at fault.

Chris fixing the failed polishing pump motor in Envoy’s pilothouse

Envoy is now in the marina at Kalamata – famous for olives!

In Gouvia Marina we berth next to a 59ft wooden ketch called Acco built in 1938.
Dave and Gwen Nicholson have owned her since 1968 and spent the past 20 years or so living an alternative lifestyle aboard with their son John, mostly in Corfu. They’d just finished maintenance of the wooden masts and we were able to observe the interesting process of hoisting them up again using blocks and tackles plus plenty of eager volunteers.

Acco is a real traditional vessel. The green cover is to protect the wooden hull from the sun

Of course we made plenty of time to visit Corfu Old Town’s labyrinth of cobbled lanes and quirky shops.

Envoy in Gouvia Marina

Leaving Gouvia Marina on 13 May we cruise to nearby Kalami Bay and have our first swim in coolish 18dC water and since then have swum most days.
Our first night at anchor with Chris aboard results in a rare unplanned 0630 hrs departure the following morning as an onshore windshift places Envoy too close to some mooring buoys which could potentially have fouled our propeller. At this stage we’re mostly re-visiting places we’ve been to before but enjoying them nonetheless.

There’s lots of interesting tavernas here where you can meet other cruisers, soak up some local atmosphere and enjoy an excellent cold draught Mythos (Greek beer) or three. The Greek taverna and restaurant staff make you feel very welcome and nearly always give you something for free, for example bar snacks, a dessert after dinner or a round of drinks.

Laurie and Chris enjoying coffee and cake ashore at Platarius

The weather is still unstable as shown in this image taken from Envoy at anchor in Mourtos

We’ve often been told by other cruisers about a great place to anchor called Two Rock Bay south of Parga on the mainland coast, so decide to check it out. Here we can see the anchor drop on the sandy bottom four metres beneath and Envoy is surrounded by small fish which eagerly eat small pieces of bread we throw into the water. We’re the only boat here and there are no buildings ashore so tranquility is complete – a far cry from the marina we’ve so recently left.

There’s a gentle swell rolling into the bay so we deploy our paravanes and flopper stoppers for the first time this season to reduce Envoy’s roll to barely discernible.

Envoy at anchor in Two Rock Bay with paravanes and flopper-stoppers deployed

Panorama of Two Rock Bay from Envoy

Lots of seaweed has been washed ashore by heavy seas

Di and Laurie at Two Rock Bay

This is a touch of paradise and we spend most of the following morning in our RHIB exploring the rocky shoreline and a sandy beach covered with flotsam – days like this are what it’s all about.

We’re going to spend the next night anchored off Lefkas marina and we time our arrival at the Lefkas Canal swing bridge perfectly for the on-the-hour opening at 1800hrs. Only problem is there’s no one here to operate the bridge. We carefully maneuver in the shallow confined area for another hour and fortunately the operator shows up at 1900hr to let us and other vessels through.

TECHNICAL
Since Sailand fitted our new throttle cable the Lugger engine has not achieved full rpm, so Panos comes aboard to adjust it and solve this issue. It’s not really important as we never cruise above about 1,800 rpm, but now we can achieve 2,150 if we want to.

Meanwhile we’re still monitoring our slight sea water leak to the forward bilge. We’re convinced it has something to do with our aircon unit, as that’s the only equipment in the area of the leak. But with the seacock closed we’re still getting a slight leak and we’re presuming it must be leaking from a hose or hose joint coming from the aircon’s sea water cooling discharge. We’ve eyeballed the aircon but unfortunately the hoses can’t be accessed as they disappear under some decking. This is work in progress and not a concern as we’re talking about less than half a litre a day – no need for life jackets yet!

I mentioned last posting that our close friend Chris, aka MacGyver, has been a huge help aboard Envoy undertaking both maintenance and improvement projects.
Here are some of the projects Chris has achieved so far on this visit:
-Prior to arriving he built a constant 19 volt DC voltage power supply device for Di’s computer that runs from Envoy’s nominal 12 volt power supply. This enables her computer to charge and run at any time regardless of the normal variations in nominal 12 volt output (depending on state of battery charge) and without needing to use our relatively current-hungry inverter to power the AC-driven charger.
-Installed a remote wireless temperature and humidity monitoring system measuring conditions inside the pilothouse, outside in the cockpit and in the engine room.
-Bought the components for and built a portable miniature bilge pump so we can more easily pump water out of the bilges below the water level that the main bilge pumps can pump from. Although our bilges are mostly dry some sea water and/or fresh water inevitably ends up there from spillages, rain and from the prop shaft gland.
-Bought the components for and built a system to pump fresh water from portable 25L water containers carried in the RHIB into Envoy’s water tanks. Although we have a water maker it’s very convenient to be able to get fresh water ashore in containers and the pump saves lifting the heavy containers aboard for decanting.

-Modified our boarding ladder to make it more rigid and the steps more stable.
-Modified and fixed our washing machine detergent supply drawer which had broken through wear and tear.
-Fine-tuned our stereo/DVD sound system to provide better quality sound.
-Fixed faulty wiring on our Yanmar wing engine’s tachometer.
-Repaired some cosmetic wooden laminate in our galley.
-Improved safety insulation around some heavy-duty engine room DC cable terminals.
-Replaced some failed silicone beading around our anchor pulpit.
-Improved our cockpit fresh water wash down system and forward sea water wash down system by sourcing and replacing old and leaking components.
-Fixed faulty switch on air circulation fan in guest cabin.

And it continues … more on this next posting.