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WHY SO MANY KIWIS AND AUSSIES CRUISE THE MED

By on January 15, 2019 in Envoy
This is an edited version of our article recently published in Pacific PowerBoat magazine
Travel not to escape life but so life doesn’t escape you
You don’t have to cruise far in the Med to come across a yacht flying the Silver Fern or Boxing Kangaroo flag from its yardarm. I say “yacht” deliberately because the vast majority of Australasian Med cruisers are found aboard sailing yachts (including many catamarans) and rarely aboard motor vessels. Most of the cruisers we meet are retired couples aged in their 50s on who’ve bought their new or pre-owned boats in Europe. 
Here there are many more boats for sale and consequently more choice and cheaper prices. 
Some cruisers plan to ship or sail their boats home, although if you are planning this you need to consider the total cost of getting your boat back to Australasia including GST and duty. 
There’s also a far smaller number of cruisers who’ve sailed their boats to the Med either as their destination or as part of a circumnavigation. There used to be many more circumnavigators but the piracy issues on Africa’s north-east coast have considerably reduced their numbers.
In the Med you come across many other nationalities – in no special order mainly Americans, Canadians, British, French, Germans, Italians, Greeks, Dutch, Danish and Swedish, but over the years we’ve found Australians the friendliest.
New Zealand has some fantastic accessible cruising areas, particularly the North Island’s north-east coast and the South Island’s Marlborough Sounds (Blog posting coming soon on the Sounds). However the total area of these destinations is quite limited and while it’s great to cruise back to favourite haunts you soon run out of new and varied cruising destinations.
Australia undoubtably has a very strong boating community, but quality cruising (as opposed to day or weekend boating) seems to be pretty much restricted to the east coast, particularly Queensland. 
In this tropical area the sea is nicely tepid, but unlike the Med swimming opportunities can be limited by the dangers of sharks, crocodiles and poisonous jelly fish.
Adventure and diversity
So the first thing the Med offers is adventure, the ability to explore a huge cruising area about 2,500 miles from west to east and 500 miles north to south, with an area of 970,000 square miles containing about 3,300 islands and a coastline of 29,000 miles. 
The Med’s large enough that it’s divided into seven smaller seas: from west to east the Alboran, Balearic, Ligurian, Tyrrhenian, Ionian, Adriatic and Aegean and each one offers months of cruising possibilities.
Twenty one European, African and Middle-Eastern countries border the Med and this fascinating diversity of cultures offers more cruising variety and historical interest than anywhere else on our planet. Here you can anchor in the same bay where at different times Persians, Phoenecians, Greeks, Romans, Venetians, Crusaders and Ottomans have anchored and many areas famous battles have been fought from ancient times right up to WW 2.
If natural scenery is your thing you can anchor near Santorini’s Caldina and ponder on one of the world’s largest volcanic eruptions that caused a massive tsunami, ending Crete’s Minoan civilisation.
To put the Med’s cruising possibilities in perspective during nine seasons we’ve spent 1,442 days aboard Envoy, cruised 16,300 miles through Italy, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Montenegro and Croatia, visited about 100 islands and still only covered about 20 per cent of the Med.
Great weather
The Med’s subtropical weather is the next appeal, particularly as its summer coincides with Australasian winter. Although some cruisers live aboard all-year-round spending the relatively mild Med winter in a marina most choose to cruise from about May to September when you can expect stable sunny weather without clouds or rain. Although it can be hot with temperatures often reaching the mid 30s or more, there’s little humidity and the sun doesn’t have the searing ultra-violet levels we encounter. Predominantly northerly winds can be strong often reaching mid-20 knots during afternoons, but then mostly dying away overnight. In some areas like Croatia there are notorious katabatic winds that cruisers need to be aware of as well as thunderstorms throughout the Med, mostly from September on that cause squalls and wind direction changes.
Stunning scenery
The Med largely has stunning coastal scenery and many spectacular beaches with mostly clean and clear waters with that famous turquoise colour and nothing in the warm water that’s going to hurt you. Yes many beaches are quite crowded (as many are here) in the July to August high season, but you can generally find your own quiet hideaway. With some notable exceptions when cruising in Australia or New Zealand there’s not much of huge interest to see ashore whereas scattered along the Med coast are countless interesting villages and towns each contributing their own piece of history and unique points of interest. Additionally you will find rustic beach-side tavernas, often thrown up just for the summer in a way that would have our health and safety inspectors pulling their hair out, but never lacking frosty glasses full of ice-cold local beer.
Reasonable cost
Cruising in the Med can be surprisingly economical as putting boat-related costs aside (you would have those at home anyway) the costs of most foods as well as eating out are significantly cheaper than found at home. You also have the bonus of visiting interesting markets to buy many of your fresh provisions. The ladies will soon discover that shopping isn’t restricted to the necessities of life with plenty of retail therapy opportunities to explore. 
Marinas for wintering over are a similar cost to Australasia although summer casual marina prices can be very expensive, typically NZ$80-180 per night. To keep costs down it’s best to anchor wherever possible or moor stern-to to a town quayside being far cheaper and more atmospheric than marinas. The eastern Med is generally cheaper than the western.
Safety
There’s no piracy in the Med and ashore is generally safe except in some of the countries on the African and Middle-Eastern coast. Only in the larger Italian and Spanish cities do visitors need to be aware of pickpockets and theft from vehicles.
You could cruise the Med for a lifetime and not see it all, but it’s certainly fun trying.

WE MEET THE OWNERS OF STARLET

By on January 9, 2019 in Envoy
A couple of weeks back we had the huge pleasure of meeting Mark and Jennifer, the American owners of N46 Starlet, currently in Auckland’s Westhaven marina. 
They purchased Starlet in the States then cruised across the Atlantic to explore the Med, cruised back across the Atlantic to the States, then across the Pacific to New Zealand.
Being very keen scuba divers they had a very leisurely cruise across the Pacific stopping not only at some of the well-known islands but also at many remote reefs to dive.
Built about ten years after Envoy, Starlet is a magnificent vessel and a credit to her owners. She has a different layout to Envoy, the main variations being her forward main stateroom (Envoy’s is amidships), wider galley layout, a flybridge above the pilothouse and a boarding platform (making diving a lot easier). 
Starlet also has no stair access from the pilothouse to the the forward stateroom, making for more space in the pilothouse. We also liked her carpeted saloon and stairway up to the pilothouse. 
Starlet uses passive stabilisers (ie paravane type) and Mark commented that often deploying one is sufficient for comfort. She also carries a dive compressor.
It never ceases to amaze me how these remarkable and comparatively small (46ft or 14m) vessels safely transverse oceans, bearing in mind that many “superyachts” don’t cross the major oceans on their own hulls.
Mark and Jennifer mentioned they’d missed visiting Fiji on the way here so they plan to cruise up to Fiji and back to rectify that. This was said in the same casual way a local might talk about cruising to Great Barrier Island for the weekend!
It seems Starlet’s future plans also include visiting the South Island, crossing to Australia and visiting S E Asia. Wishing Mark and Jennifer continued great adventures and safe cruising.

Next Post – why so many Kiwis and Aussies cruise the Med.

OUR LAST DAYS ABOARD ENVOY

By on December 15, 2018 in Envoy
Envoy is in winter storage in Lefkas Marina, Greece and we are home in Auckland.
In late October we cruise back into Greece’s Lefkas Marina with my brother Charles still aboard.
The weather is still great and totally suitable for cruising, though it generally deteriorates rapidly during November.
Although we had our smaller “spare” Raymarine radar serviced in August and the fluorescent back lighting replaced with LEDs the screen is still too hard to see, even at night. So we take it back to Dieter at Metronix and he tells us what we expected to hear; that the unit is from the early 2000s and old not only in years but in technology, being an LCD screen. The latest similar-sized units have a GPS/Plotter included so will solve the problem of replacing our failed Northstar GPS too. Also they support AIS which neither of our present radars do. So Dieter visits Envoy to check installation costs and quotes us for an Axiom 7 Display unit, Quantum Q24C Radar, Navionics charts for the plotter function and installation so that we can discuss this with our prospective buyer.

The same day that the Internaftiki engineer arrives to work on our noisy stabilisers (see last Post) our buyer arrives with his two friends, Graham and Andrew for their first look at Envoy. 
I’m not using the buyer’s name as he prefers to remain anonymous at this point. 
The initial inspection all goes well and they are totally satisfied that Envoy is in fact in better condition than they expected. We’d not met our buyer previously but all get on extremely well and enjoy a sociable dinner that evening.
The next day we do a sea trial and again all goes well – however I’m not satisfied with the Naiad stabilisers and later contact Internaftiki again. But the season is running out of time and there’s no chance for them to visit Lefkas before our departure for NZ, so we agree they will visit to solve the problem during preparation for Envoy’s next cruise, whenever that may be.
We have always needed to flake the anchor chain into its locker because there’s a large spare anchor stowed in the bottom of the anchor locker and this reduces the vertical space available to stow the chain. We’ve never used this spare anchor (having two other spares) and in fact it’s so heavy I would not be able to lift it out of the locker anyway. I discuss this with our buyer and suggest we remove this anchor to eliminate the need for someone to flake the chain. During our sea trial we lay out 80 metres of chain to expose the spare anchor in the bottom locker and Graham and Andrew lift it out. Then we retrieve the chain and as expected find that it doesn’t need flaking. As a result we remove this anchor from the boat. In retrospect we could have done this a lot earlier and avoided the need for Di to flake the anchor chain many hundreds of times over all those years.
Next day we lift Envoy out of the water for a hull survey. Again all goes well and subsequently the deal is finalised. We then spend a few days with the buyer explaining Envoy’s operation and systems as well as introducing him to some of the key people around the marina.
Charles heads back to Scotland on Sunday 28 October, known as Ochi Day in Greece, celebrating Greece’s refusal to allow Italian troops to occupy Greece in World War 2. The Italians consequently attacked Greece but were routed by Greek troops until battle-hardened Germans came to aide Italy and turned the tide of battle. Ochi Day is treated very seriously like our own Anzac Day and masses of people turned out in a sea of waving blue and white Greek flags to watch their parade.
Next day out buyer and his friends leave and we’re by ourselves again.

Our last “cruise” is a few hundred metres to the refueling jetty where we load 1,800 litres of diesel from a tanker to top up Envoy’s tanks – boats should always be left with fairly full tanks to reduce moisture ingress through condensation. The tanker driver tells us this diesel is imported and unlike local diesel has no bio-diesel content. This is good because while bio-diesel may be good for the environment (although this is highly debatable) it it more hygroscopic and not so good for long term storage stability.

We spend the last few days packing our personal effects and preparing Envoy for winter storage including fitting her winter storage cover.
On our last Saturday night we go out for dinner with Vassilis from Sailand and his English wife Judy.
It was Vasillis who arranged our accommodation last year while Envoy’s fire damage was being repaired. They take us to a small village high in the hills behind Lefkas where there’s a small and rustic family-owned taverna. There’s no menu and after a brief discussion between Vassilis and the owner we’re inundated with delicious Greek dishes including local sausages, grilled eggplant with balsamic drizzle, moussaka, grilled lamb, Greek salad and white wine made from their own grapes. As often happens we’re surrounded by local cats – in fact six of them. One kitten looks particularly frail and Judy decides to take it home to care for it. The kitten is happy to oblige and nestles contentedly in Judy’s arms. Sadly we later learn that it only survived a few days.
On Wednesday 7thwe leave Envoy to spend our last night in Lefkada ashore in the marina’s hotel.
This is the end of a major era in our lives – 12 years of owning Envoy and two years of prior research. During those 12 years we spent the substantial parts of eight years cruising plus the much shorter time this year totaling 1,442 days spent aboard, cruising 16,297nm and logging 3,220 engine hours.
Not only have we enjoyed this immensely ourselves but shared special times with 35 family members and close friends. Now we hand the mantle to Envoy’s new Australian owners and hope they have as much adventure and enrichment of their lives as we’ve enjoyed.
Just this week I learned that the parts for our B&G wind speed gear, expected to arrive late August, have finally arrived!

So far as this Blog is concerned – I still have some articles to complete for boating magazines and will put them on the Blog as well as any other boating related material that comes to mind.
Next Spring we plan to do some canal boating in France so will report on that too.

ENVOY HEADS SOUTH FROM CORFU

By on December 5, 2018 in Envoy
Envoy is berthed at Lefkas Marina, Greece and we are home in Auckland.
Beautiful gardens of beachside bar at Petriti on Corfu

Envoy anchored at Ormos Imerolia, northern Corfu with RHIB alongside jetty

This Selene trawler anchored nearby

This unusual “yellow submarine” came by with some tourists

Cruising around Corfu I hear a couple of knocking noises while under way and initially think the noise is caused by waves crashing against the hull. But it doesn’t sound right and we soon establish that the port side Naiad stabilisers are making a slight knocking noise when Envoy is in larger waves (much of the time it’s been too calm to need to use the stabilisers so we hadn’t noticed this issue). 

We send a brief audio-visual video clip of this to Internaftiki – the Naiad agents here. 
They ask us to do some further tests by disconnecting the arm from the potentiometer that controls the stabiliser fin movement so that we could move the arm and therefore the fins by hand. 
This replicates the issue without needing to go out into rough seas. Internaftiki soon advise that the problem is most likely one of the hydraulic valves and will come to Envoy, probably when we return to Lefkada. They also explain how to de-activate and lock the port side stabilisers while still using the starboard side. However we later find the knocking noise is still there, so it’s happening on both sides and we lock both fins in the central position and continue cruising in the reasonably calm conditions without our stabilisers.
We anchor off Corfu’s Gouvia Marina and early next morning go into the marina to lay alongside a jetty so that Angelos, the watermaker engineer, can fix our unit’s slight seawater leak. Angelos says you have to expect small water leaks from water makers, but I have to disagree. Anyway he fixes the leak in about an hour and after testing it we set off again heading south towards Preveza, a medium sized town on the mainland where my brother Charles will meet us.

Corfu has two huge castles known as the “old” (top) and the “new” (below), both viewed from Envoy


Passing Corfu’s wharves we spot an unusual looking aluminium naval ship – the USS Yuma. She’s a 103 metre catamaran fast transport ship for carrying troops – up to 312 of them at a speed of 43 knots – that’s 80 km/hr!

The sleek and fast USS Yuma

On the way to Preveza we spend two nights at Paxoi Island’s Lakka Bay. 
In season it’s often too crowded to anchor here but great at this time of year. 
Here we meet some old cruising acquaintances – Britons Graham and Linda from the yacht Obsession of Poole as well as meeting a bunch of Kiwis aboard Mike and Heather’s yacht, Delightful Lady. Ashore a band plays live traditional Greek music until the early hours of the next morning serenading us to sleep.
We make a point of finding delicious treats for morning tea – below apple pie with ice cream and yours’ truly with gigantic cream cornet

Preveza is calm as usual and we anchor off the town. This is a popular spot for fishermen to catch prawns and lots of small boats are active most of the time and setting nets quite close to anchored vessels. This can be a nuisance and their often very loud engines wake you early in the morning, however you have to remember this is their livelihood while we’re just here having fun. 

Typical Greek fishing boat retrieving net

We meet Charles at the bus station and set off through the Lefkas canal’s swing bridge for a few days cruising with him south of Lefkas.
In the last week of October we head into Lefkas Marina where Tassos, an engineer from Internaftiki meets us to check out our stabilisers. He advises our hydraulic system pressure is too low at 90 bar and installs a new valve that enables adjustment of the system pressure. After adjusting the pressure to 100 bar the stabilisers are much less noisy when worked at rest using the potentiometer arm and Tassos thinks the problem is solved. Charles and I are not so sure – if they’ve been working fine at 90 bar for the last 12 years, why would we now need to increase the pressure? We weren’t able to do a sea trial while Tassos was there (in retrospect a big mistake) and will do this shortly.

Next Post – our last days aboard Envoy.

ENVOY CONTINUES CRUISING NEAR CORFU

By on November 21, 2018 in Envoy
Photos are to be added in next few days.
Envoy is now safely tucked away under her storage cover in the Lefkas Marina while we have just arrived home in Auckland, NZ last week.
Our last Blog posting detailed Envoy’s sale. Now we’re going to backtrack to mid September.
I forgot to mention previously that since our exhaust system was reconditioned an exhaust vibration that we previously noticed at low rpm has gone, making for a much nicer exhaust sound right through the whole rpm range.
With our friend Chris still aboard we leave Gouvia marina in great weather and anchor in Kalami, made famous by being home to the English Durell family of authors in the 1930s and now featured in a popular British television series – The Durrells. The water here is perfectly clean and clear, ideal for a proper test of our newly repaired water maker and it works fine making about 90 litres an hour of pure fresh water, although we find there’s a very slight (250 ml per hour) sea water leak in the line – subsequently fixed.
Just a few hundred metres away is a bay called Agri where there are several excellent restaurants and next day we motor over there in our large RHIB for a stunning seafood lunch.
Next we cruise close to Albanian waters using just our Yanmar wing engine and anchor off the northern Greek coastal village of Sayiadha. The wing engine with its feathering Maxprop is designed as an emergency propulsion system providing about four knots, but it’s a good idea to use it regularly. Later we go ashore for a walk and and a cold beer.
Alone at anchor the next morning a Greek CoastGuard inflatable comes alongside and one of the crew politely asks to check our papers. We’re not stressed by this being confident that our documents are in order and the CoastGuard soon confirm this and leave us in peace once again.
Another coastal village further south called Myrtos is one of our favourites. Apart from having a choice of several great anchorages set along the coast and nearby islands there’s a bakery that sells fantastic cakes, my own favourite being chocolate cake while Di’s is lemon. We spend several nights anchored here until the weather forecast advises of a gale warning up to Force 8. 
This prompts us to move to a very sheltered anchorage called Igoumenitsa Creek, where few boats go and there’s plenty of swinging room. Although there are very strong winds offshore the gale doesn’t arrive at our location and the strongest winds we experience are gusts in the mid 20 knots. 
Soon the forecast is upgraded to Force 10 winds in some areas, although fortunately not ours. 
Winds this strong (a full-blown storm with winds of 55 knots and possibly reaching about 80 knots) is something we’ve never heard of previously during our Med cruising. The proximity of this bad weather causes a massive temperature drop to the low 20s and the sea also drops from around 27d C to around 23 in a matter of a few days, making swimming a little bit cooler.
All too soon Chris’s time with us comes to an end and we take him across to Corfu to catch a flight to Dubai. Chris has spent more time with us aboard Envoy than anyone and as always we’re appreciative of Chris’s excellent company and assistance with various projects.
After that we spend a few days around the northern part of Corfu – Ormos Ay Stefanou, Avalaki and Immerolia where a 48ft Selene brand trawler-style vessel called Pionero in similar colours to Envoy anchors alongside with its Dutch owners. 
The Selene range has been a very successful range of Nordhavn look-alikes.
In a bay called Ormos Ay Stefanou a 57ft German yacht anchors right in front of us, much too close for our peace of mind with its stern only about two metres from our bow. I ask them to move, which they do, but still anchor rather close off our port quarter. Other boats anchoring unnecessarily close is certainly an issue and because sailing yachts behave and swing differently to power boats at anchor this can cause problems.
Next posting Envoy heads south.

ENVOY’S SALE COMPLETED

By on October 26, 2018 in Envoy
Sorry about the delay since our last Blog posting – we’ve had an issue loading images, but I’ll do another Post shortly, even without pictures.
Our prospective buyer arrived from Australia last Tuesday with his surveyor friend and a boating friend from UK. The buyer and I had already exchanged dozens of emails and had several phone conversations, but had never met, so on a rainy Tuesday afternoon we had a quick tour of Envoy followed by a dinner so we could all get to know each other. This included my brother Charles, a qualified shipwright and very experienced yachtsman, who came over from Scotland where he works as a Harbour Master.
On the Wednesday the rain passed, the weather was great again and the buying team did a thorough inspection and sea trial. They were well pleased and commented that Envoy’s appearance surpassed their expectations and their impressions from photographs. On Thursday we lifted Envoy out of the water for a hull survey. On completion the surveyor said Envoy’s condition was better than another Nordhavn ten years newer that he saw out of the water recently.
On that afternoon after having a consultation with his colleagues, the buyer met with us and we concluded the sale arrangements. He and his team are staying on until Monday evening so we can impart as much knowledge about Envoy as possible.
Obviously there is some sadness in parting with Envoy – a major part of our lives for the last 12 years, but we’ll have many extremely happy memories of the many great times we’ve shared with family and close friends and we’re delighted to see Envoy going to caring new owners who plan to continue Med cruising based out of Lefkada.
We leave here 8 November and arrive home on the 12th.
New Post in next few days.

CRUISING WITH OUR FRIEND CHRIS

By on September 25, 2018 in Envoy
Envoy is currently under offer to an Australian couple who will visit Lefkas marina late October for an inspection and survey.

Envoy being launched at Lefkas Marina

Laurie enjoying a Greek Mythos beer and giant beans

After a few days cruising by ourselves we anchor off Lefkas Marina to pick up Chris who’s flown into Athens and caught the bus to Lefkas with just two minutes to spare after a super-fast taxi ride from the airport to the bus station. 
We visit some of our favourite local places, especially Sivota, before moving on to Cephalonia – Ay Eufemia and Ithica – N Ay Nikolau. Here we meet three kiwi farming couples from the Manwatu cruising aboard a 50 year-old 60ft displacement motor vessel with loads of character called Lochinvar. 

Laurie and Chris by dinghy at N Ay Nikolau


Chris and Di at N Ay Nikolau with mobile taverna in background. They store all their beer outside with no security overnight and it’s still there in the morning


Dog on waveski


At many of these places wasps are a bit of a problem and I get a sting on my hand. 

Now we find out that the BandG wind indicator parts aren’t coming after all, so we decide to head up to Corfu and get another instrument technician to have a look.
On the way we anchor off Lefkada again and visit a local carpenter who’s making some mooring line rat guards for us. On some islands rats are a problem and these guards prevent rats from crawling along the mooring lines. I wasn’t able to buy these in NZ before we left and the carpenter charges a very reasonable 30 Euros for four. Later we take these ashore and spray them black.
Stopping in Preveza we meet Ross (a Kiwi) and Cindy from yacht Antares and visit a great restaurant ashore called Apagkio where I have one of the nicest ever pasta dishes together with the inevitable, predictable but delicious Greek salad. Di notices some tomatoes on display and asks if she can buy some, but the staff give them to us for free. Greek tomatoes are particularly tasty as well as being much cheaper than those in NZ. 
Ross is looking for some scuba gear. I won’t be needing mine again and it takes up quite a lot of room aboard Envoy so we come to an arrangement for Ross to take it.
On the way north we stop and anchor for the first time at the island of Andipaxoi, having a beautiful bay all to ourselves overnight. This brings the number of Greek islands where we’ve over-nighted to 65 (plenty more to go as there are about 227 inhabited Greek islands and more than 6,000 in total).
In the morning another Nordhavn called Moxie (from Florida) comes into our bay and of course we meet up for a chat. Bob from Moxie tells us they recently went to Montenegro and tried to clear-in but Bob doesn’t have any form of skipper’s qualification. Not only would the authorities not let Moxie enter, but wouldn’t let her leave until Bob hired a commercial captain to take them out of Montenegro’s waters. Sounds like a pretty tough policy.
We spend a couple of days anchored off Petriti and then head to Gouvia marina. On the way we pass a very strange looking yacht, like something out of a sci-fi movie, called “A”. Apparently A is owned by a wealthy Russian and the lowest deck has a transparent hull so those aboard can see under water.

Yacht “A”



Chris and Laurie getting water before the watermaker was running

Chris pumping water from the plastic containers into Envoy’s tanks

All of the time we’ve been here the temperature has been around 30d with light winds and smooth seas – definitely motor boat weather! The sea temperature at 26d makes swimming a real pleasure.
Ay Eufemia’s fire brigade

A classic looking motor boat at Agni

And a classic sailing ship

Mates enjoying a beer together

Technical
The main reason for our visit to Gouvia is for technician Angelos to install our watermaker’s reconditioned main pump. This is done and the watermaker works fine. We don’t want to run it too long in the impure marina waters but a few days later run it for three hours and all is OK.
Our Nautica RHIB has been losing some air, requiring a few pumps every 3 or 4 days, so A1 Yachting arrange for someone to check it over. A few days later it’s returned hard as a drum and has remained so since.
Our dual trumpet air horn has failed due to water ingress and electrician Leo orders and fits a new unit for us.
He also arranges for an instrument technician to look at our B&G wind gear. The mast’s sender unit has been removed and is still being looked at.
Envoy has a SeaFire heat activated engine room fire extinguishing system. Nordhavn recently contacted all owners advising that some units have an interlock that shuts down the engine in case of discharge. This is deemed not a desriable feature and they offered a solution to bypass this interlock. Leo has some experience with SeaFire and checked our system out, determining that we don’t have this interlock, so no problem.
Envoy has a vacuum gauge connected to the Lugger’s Racor primary fuel filters. As filters become clogged they create a vacuum, telling you that it’s time to think about changing them. We’ve never seen any movement in the vacuum gauge and wondered if it’s working. So with Leo we checked this out by gradually reducing the fuel supply to the Lugger while it’s running. Sure enough the gauge showed vacuum, confirming that it’s working. Because Envoy has a fuel polishing system and all fuel is filtered through a 2 micron filter even before going to the primary Racor filter, the filters just don’t get contaminated.
Our secondary GPS – a Northstar – has been working adequately, but not well for some time. Now it’s definitely not working to our satisfaction and will need repair or replacement. This unit dates from pre-2002 so we can’t complain. 

ENVOY IS CRUISING AGAIN

By on September 1, 2018 in Envoy

We departed Lefkas Marina on Friday morning and anchored in a bay off mainland Greece about 15 miles south. Weather is fine with temp in low 30s, little humidity and sea water a beautiful 28d. This was pretty fast progress seeing as we didn’t arrive he…

RETURN TO LEFKAS, GREECE

By on August 27, 2018 in Envoy
Our advertising of Envoy on this Blog has resulted in an offer to purchase from long time readers of the Blog. In fact not only have this Australian couple been following our Blog since its inception, but followed Envoy’s Atlantic Crossing by the previous owners in 2004. The potential buyer’s offer is naturally subject to their inspection and survey which will take place here in Lefkas late October. So Envoy is “under offer” and we won’t be considering any further offers unless this sale doesn’t proceed.
We’ve arrived in Lefkada after a good trip from Auckland spending one night in Dubai and one in Athens on the way. Emirates are a great airline and the nearly 17 hour flight passed quite quickly aided by a solid 8 hours sleep. We like Emirates 30kg luggage allowance, their lenient attitude towards cabin bags and the generous space between economy seat rows. Having a spare seat between us on both flights certainly helped too. Our hotel in Dubai was good and it’s a convenient place to break the trip.
We arived to find Envoy as expected on the hardstand under the care of our contractor – Sailand with everything looking good and more progress getting her ready for cruising than we expected.
Sailand completed a refurbishment of the Lugger’s exhaust system which included replacing some exhaust sections, building a new stainless steel muffler and replacing all heat insulation.
They had also completed Envoy’s anti fouling and attended to a small list of winter jobs:
-Re-sealing two acylic ventilation hatches into their aluminium frames because the sealant had failed
-Servicing the sea water circulating pumps on the generator and wing engine (we get this done annually)
-Checking the wing engine’s shaft seal, prop and prop shaft
-Checking the main prop shaft’s alignment, internal rubber sleeve and clamps, removing the stuffing box’s sealings for inspection and finding them in good condition, greasing and replacing them
-Changing the main gearbox oil and cleaning its oil strainer
-Replacing a leaking galley sink mixer/faucet with a new one
-Replacing the large Nautica RHIB’s start battery
Another contractor has also polished Envoy’s bootstripe and white topsides gelcoat areas while yet another has repaired a slow air leak in one of the pontoons of our smaller Valiant RHIB.
Today was quite a sight when a huge crane came alongside Envoy to lift our larger RHIB down onto a trailer for annual servicing of its 25HP Yamaha outboard. Also today I took four inflatable life jackets in for two-yearly servicing together with one fire extinguisher which has its gauge needle in the red when it should be in the green.
There’s a few more jobs being done on Tuesday such as filter replacements and then on Wednesday we expect to launch Envoy and do a short sea trial with Sailand’s engineer aboard. Then we hope to leave the marina by the weekend. Sorry no pictures in this posting.

PLANS FOR 2018 CRUISING

By on August 9, 2018 in Envoy
NOTE: ENVOY IS STILL FOR SALE – SEE DETAILS IN BLOG POST BELOW THIS ONE.
We are finally set to leave Auckland and return to Greece in about 10 days time to resume cruising.
The Ionian weather is generally fairly good to the end of October, so we’ll be able to enjoy two months cruising before going back into Lefkas Marina for the winter.
After launching we’ll spend a few days in the Lefkas area while we confirm everything aboard Envoy is working correctly and then head north to Corfu. Our watermaker’s main pump has been reconditioned in Athens during our absence and Angelos will install it in Corfu’s Gouvia Marina. Needless to say this will also be a good chance for Di to check out some of her favorite shopping haunts.
From there we’ll head around Corfu’s NW coast to check out a small island we’ve not visited previously – Nisos Mathraki and its village of Plakes. From here it’s only about 7 miles NW to the island of Nisis Othoni where we’ve anchored previously, but not been ashore to visit the village of Ammos.
After that we’ll cruise over to Italy’s NE coast and explore the Gulf of Taranto where there are several interesting places to check out. We’ll probably get a rental car here and explore a bit further afield too.
This plan is about all that time will allow this year, but we’re looking forward to being on and in the water, having some sunshine, enjoying Envoy and exploring some new places. This time of year is when tuna are caught too, so we’ll be trolling our lines.
Our great friend Chris, aka McGyver, will join us early September and we’ve got a few projects lined up to test his skills and keep him occupied.
Shortly I’ll do a further post talking technical.