This year, we flew to Greece on Saturday, June 17th. Due to Aer Lingus schedule changes, the flight to Corfu now arrives at 23:20 (Local). In other words, too late to make it to Igoumenitsa. We spent Saturday night in the Hotel Atlantis, and Sunday morning, took a ferry to Iggy. Picked up our Avis rent-a-car which we had for the duration of the two weeks, and drove to Vliho to board Nikea.

When we passed through Lefkas, the usual supermarket was closed, so we decided to stay Sunday night in Vliho. I’ll insert a strong recommendation here for “The Office” restaurant in Vliho for both the cheapest food in Greece, but also some of the nicest. We generally try to get to visit at least once. The boat had been left on the launching dock for the yard, which was nice. Saved us having to search for the dinghy and row out to her. That is, apart from being woken at around 8:30 on Monday morning to tell us we had to get off there by 9AM. Our local guy said we should stern-to on his pontoon. As we’re backing up to the dock, Ruth took the lazy line and pulled on the end tied to the quay. I said “no, the other end….” To which she replied, “you mean this end?” as she lifted the working-end of the lazy line and the “weight” up off the bottom. The lazy line was attached to a 10kg paint can - not exactly going to keep the bow out to sea. We used the anchor instead!

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Excuse the slightly blurred picture of a damp bilge, but I have been trying to figure out the best way of installing an automatic bilge pump into the Achilles. I want to put a small pump and an automatic float switch as far down into the bilge as possible. Ideally, I’d screw it into the fibreglass, but that’s not a good idea for a number of reasons. Using epoxy to mount the housing means that I’m stuck using the same type of pump and float forever, or else I have to try and unglue the pump mount to replace it. One possibility is to mount an L-shaped aluminium plate on the mini bulkhead (which is plywood) and then attach the pump and float to the aluminium plate.

As it stands, I’m favouring the Occam’s Razor approach which just involves gluing the pump mounts to the cabin sole. Eventually, I’d like to install an Arduino to sense when the pump operates (that’s why I’m using a separate pump and float rather than a combined unit). I might even have it send me a text message when the pump operates.

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It is early August in Ireland, and the sea area forecast says this: “Fair in the south and east. Patchy rain, drizzle and fog elsewhere. More organised rain developing in the northwest tomorrow morning.” In other words, a typical Irish summer day.

I can remember the first time I sailed into the North Harbour of Cape Clear Island, in West Cork. I was on board Finesse, and we were delivering her to Ford Cork Week. Niall Quinn, owner and skipper, pointed out that you could easily miss the harbour when you approach from the West. It looks pretty obvious in the picture, but the harbour can’t be seen from the sea, and it’s only when you’re due North of the entrance that it reveals itself.

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We spent a few relaxing days enjoying the pool and the air conditioning in Nidri, before it came time to pick up the one-way rental car from Green Motion. The people in the Green Motion office in Nidri are always lovely, in contrast to the officious woman in the office in Igoumenitsa, who always seems to be trying to sell me additional insurance, or upsell something or other. We pick up a car in Nidri or Igoumenitsa, and drive it, one-way to the other location. We have the car for an average of three hours, and they charge us €70 for the privilege. It’s a great service, but I’m really starting to wonder if Avis might not be a better option, to avoid the hidden costs.

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We arrived in Sivota on Thursday, only to find that Stavros’s pontoon was full. Well, technically it wasn’t full at all, but it was booked out. I didn’t realise you could book a slot on the pontoon. We anchored in the middle of the bay for a bit, but the water was about 12 or 14 metres deep, which meant we dumped out a lot of the anchor chain (Tim says there’s 70 metres), which then meant we had a wide swing radius, and I wasn’t happy about it, as it’s a busy harbour. Apparently someone on the shore was shouting at us as we dropped the anchor, but I’m a man so I don’t do multitasking. I suspect they were either pointing out to us that they had an anchor down about 50 metres from where we were, or around 80 metres from where our anchor was. Either that, or they were politely letting us know we could have fit alongside them.

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