Tuesday 28th May

Sam with the tow engineers who fixed the oil light problem

George arrived Monday and tested the boat, it appears to be charging alright from the dynamo but the battery was shot, just died of old age so Sam had to buy a new one. George couldn't find anything wrong with the electrics so it looked like we had an oil problem. George phoned Nidri Marine Engineers who turned up an hour later and traced the problem to a faulty gasket on the oil pump, removed the pump, cleaned it and fixed the gasket. They and George were very reasonable and efficient so would recommend them again.

Once fixed we slipped anchor and motored out into the channel towards Maganissi where we played with the Spinnaker for an hour or so until the wind died. Then we motored across to Spartakhori on Maganissi for the night.

Babis the restaurant owner was his usual self direction yachts in to berth and then sitting in his bar watching the bay. It was nice that he remembered me from when Viv and I had sailed here 2 years ago and asked where the boat was now.

After quaffing a few ice cold Methos on the beach we retired to the boat and cooked tea over a nice bottle of luke warm local rose that Sam thought was red when he picked it up! He looks pleased with himself not sure if it was the rose wine or no massive bill for the boat.

Babis and me the following morning.

We decided we would head for Corfu as I haven't been there before and there looks to be interesting places to explore. It's about 60 miles north so will take a day or two to get there. We had a decent wind heading towards the Lefkas canal as can be seen from the picture below, nice and relaxing!

We didn't tack through the canal though like Viv and I did last time and managed to catch the 3.00 pm opening of the bridge.

Once through the bridge the wind picked up with a decent swell and white caps so we reefed the main and genoa and set off across open water heading north. Unfortunately about 4 miles north of Preveza the sacraficial strip on the back edge of the genoa started to peel off where the thread has rotted in the sun. So we turned around and headed back to Preveza to fix it.

We are currently in a bar across the bay from Cleopatra Marina where Viv and I started our adventures and where Sam and I were due to start ours, small world!