Well the fridge could have stopped working in the middle of nowhere! And there’s nothing worse than warm beer after a good sail, so it was in a way fortuitous that it packed up in Preveza, more so on the day our neighbouring boat had had a fridge engineer on board. So on Friday we called him and he said he might be able to call by that afternoon or Saturday morning. In the end he arrived Saturday mid afternoon and after a couple of hours he and his mate had replaced the broken thermostat, cleared a blockage in a filter somewhere in the system and regassed it, leaving us with a working fridge and €170 lighter.
On the Thursday a 42ft boat squeezed in beside us, having just been launched at Cleopatra’s. As they started unrolling their bimini cover, they let out a horrified shriek as what looked like mouse droppings fell out, and as they gingerly unrolled a bit more, instead of a mouse jumping out, 4 bats emerged, flying off to find a new home in Preveza.
A visit to the swindlery to get a new gas cylinder revealed by chance that would take our expired flares free of charge. Now we won’t risk a fine for out of date flares.
Waiting around for the fridge man to visit, provided the opportunity to caulk a bit more of the teak deck, where it was falling out or about to. The end result of the bits done are surprisingly good and indistinguishable from the rest. Also stock up as one of the supermarkets offer free deliveries to boats.
Saturday evening, a friend we met last year, Harken walked past so he came on board for a (cold!) beer and a chat. Harken and his wife Eva, own a similar HR36 called Liv.
With a working fridge we upped anchor earlyish Sunday. However as we soon discovered, the batty boat had dropped it’s anchor across our chain (perhaps because our chain was a bit off!) and we lifted his anchor with ours. Now we have a chain hook device for such eventualities where you take the weight of the offending chain or anchor, drop your own anchor slightly to free it, and pull a second rope on the chain hook to release it and drop the snagged chain or anchor to the bottom. However as I discovered, it doesn’t work with anchors!, it just jams unable to free itself. I could have just let the chain hook go, losing it, instead used another rope to take the weight of the anchor, free the chain hook, and dropping the offending anchor back in its approximate position. Overall no damage done, no shouting, no swearing, instead a useful learning experience.
So off and around the corner to anchor in hospital bay for a day. Here Ann made use of the calm weather to mend some stitching on the bimini and make cherry scones! Delicious. We also enjoyed dolphins swimming around us all day, something we’ve not seen here before, plus a possible turtle sighting!
And, yes the beer is now very cold, but so is the weather! Only 18 degrees today. Still not shorts and tee shirt weather.
