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Being unable to cruise during 2015 we sure had plenty of time to think about this subject and here’s what we’ve come up with.
We’ll get back to Lefkas Marina early April and hope to have Envoy back in the water mid April. ASAP after that we’ll leave the marina for a 3-4 day shakedown cruise and if all is well head towards Corfu.
We’ll clear out of Greece at Corfu and cross to Albania for about 2 weeks. Apart from wanting to spend some more time in this fascinating and by European standards very basic area this will give Envoy a spell out of EU waters avoiding any requirement to pay VAT.
We’ll clear back into Greece at Corfu and head south through the magnificent Ionian islands to the east coast and then south coast of Peloponnisos (mainland Greece). From there we’ll cruise east via the southern Cyclades Islands of Milos, Kimolos, Folefandros, Sikinos and Ios to Santorini.
Then we’ll cruise south to the central north coast of Crete and work our westwards before cruising back to the Peloponnisos coast by way of Antikithera and Kithera Islands.
Then we’ll be retracing our steps back up the Ionian Sea to Corfu before concluding our 2016 cruise at Lefkas Marina late October.

So now finally this doesn’t seem like something way ahead in the future and our excitement is building!

Envoy Tech-talk
While we’ve been away from the boat things have still been happening recently on the technical front (apart from the various works completed up to mid last year and detailed in previous blogs):
-One of our bow thruster’s 24V battery bank batteries was damaged due to a short circuit caused by loose connections. Batteries in a bank should always be replaced together so we’ve got two new Deka batteries en route from a dealer in Italy to replace these.
-The hydraulic rams on our Naiad stabilisers have been leaking a small amount of oil and the “knuckles” on these rams have been worn. Parts are coming in from USA to replace these and at the same time the fluid and filter will be replaced.
-The windlass’s electric motor is being removed to be cleaned and checked. When you anchor hundreds of times in a year windlasses are subject to much more wear than normal – carbon dust collects in the back of the motor and can cause a short.
-Envoy’s hull and running gear are being cleaned off and prepared for anti fouling so this can be done within days of our arrival and we can launch quickly.
-Envoy’s large RHIB is having some maintenance done and the Yamaha 25hp outboard fully serviced so we can sea trial it on our arrival.

There’s a very long list of technicalities to be performed before we can start cruising and we expect this to take about 2-3 weeks based on previous experience. We’ll talk about this during April and hope there’s no nasty surprises!