First a loving tribute to my wife – On the 30th of June we celebrated being together for 15 years. It has to be the greatest test of any relationship to live together in a 40 foot floating box! We are now into our second year of living aboard Makarma and it would be untruthful to say that there are not the few “odd moments” (anchoring and docking?) when frustrations can bubble to the surface – but for the most part we have a very happy ship. I am a very lucky fellow to be sharing the adventure of a lifetime with such a lovely person.
WAITING ON PARTS, BEFORE WE HEAD SOUTH:
The picture below in NOT the inside of CERN’s Large Scale Hadron Collider… it is Makarma’s alternator in bits on my workbench. The idiot light that comes on when the alternator isn’t working had been glowing dimly for sometime. The alternator finally died but had the decency to do so after our visitors had departed.
We had a spare nineteen year old alternator onboard, but upon inspection I found its ceramic brush holder had fallen to bits and its carbon brushes were trashed. After several hours work, I managed to “make” two new brushes out of the old ones and had carefully super-glued the brush holder pieces back together; and reassembled the spare alternator – and did it work? YES! – for all of three minutes!
Luckily we knew of “George” the only alternator repair man in Nidri, so we packed both alternators into the dinghy and motored ashore to Nidri. George managed to fit us in to his busy schedule, parted us from 130 Euros, but was able to rebuild our main and spare alternator - so we are back in action.
THE ANCHOR WINDLASS:
We have a brilliant Maxwell electric anchor windlass on Makarma’s foredeck. It lowers and pulls up the anchor (plus several hundred pounds of chain!) every time we “sling the hook”.
The week before the family arrived, I was investigating oil leak from a small hole in the windlass gearbox. When we took the windlass apart, we discovered that the spiral worm gear (under the deck with the electric motor) had lost its middle “teeth” inside the gearbox and bits of metal had made a mess of the main gear. Cathy did a great job of cleaning out all the spare metal bits.
Maxwell windlasses were made in New Zealand. We discovered that Maxwell were no longer in business, but using the Internet we managed to locate all the parts we needed to repair the windlass – in Australia!
Two weeks ago, all the parts were dispatched “priority post” (six day delivery) from Australia.
One week ago, Greek truckers went on strike, so - no parcels are being delivered and “six day delivery” just became, “anyone’s guess.” No one knows anything and we are told, “We must just wait.”
If there is anything that causes my wife more stress than anchoring and a Force 8 gale – it has to be WAITING!
ANCHORED IN PARADISE:
We are not really marooned. We have a manual windlass – but we are pretty certain we will need someone with a ‘bench press’ to remove the old bearings (George the alternator man!) So we are hanging around for the parts to arrive and when they do, we will tie up on a pontoon in Nidri, near to George’s workshop, but also so we don’t need to use the anchor while we are repairing the windlass. That’s the plan.
There could be worst places to be stuck waiting! Most people would relish the thought of two weeks enforced idleness here. At the moment we are anchored in the shelter of Vlicho Bay about a mile from Nidri. A lovely swimming pool is just a short dinghy ride ashore and a quarter mile walk up a track through an olive grove. We have spent last week doing jobs on the boat, reading, writing, and exploring inland. Cathy bought a couple of small deck chairs that have greatly added to comfort on deck.
LEFKADA TOWN
We found that we could catch the local bus from Vlicho Bay the twelve kilometers up to Lefkada town for 1.50 Euros each way. Lefkada town is a manic place full of traffic (Cars, scooters, bicycles, buses!) and tourists.
We almost never eat junk food – but we have to make an exception for a lunchtime “Chicken Pita Gyro” at Dalton’s Grill House! You don’t want to know what all is in it – but with a cold beer, it's delicious! If the family run Dalton’s ever went international – McDonalds empire would be destroyed overnight.
ANYONE FOR SEA FOOD?
At the other end of town the local fishmonger has just taken deliver of a swordfish – it was too large to fit on his cutting table – so what does he do? He chops it up on the sidewalk! I am sure there would have been trouble if the Greek Food Health Inspector had seen him smoking that cigarette while he was cutting it up! Yuk!
NEXT INSTALMENT…
TIME TO GET OUT OF TOWN AND INTO THE COUNTRY
Lefkada town is…well, a town. Lots of shops, people, and bustle but we prefer the countryside. So we take to the hills on our hired motor scooter to explore the interior of the island – where the locals really know how to deal with cruelty to animals much better than in the city!
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