Living and working the Greek way

Amazingly we’ve been here 9 weeks already. I don’t know where the time has gone, it seems such a short time since we arrived. The weather is warming up nicely, the days are lengthening and it’s a time for lots of polishing on the boat – groan – my arms have been worked to their limits!

As we settled into a work pattern the first thing we learnt was GMT – Greek Maybe Time! Arranging to meet tradesmen/women seems a simple enough exercise but the execution is extremely elaaaaaastic. Turning up ½ hour to an hour late or even days later is not unusual. As Mark has settled into a work pattern and tried to get the joinery and upholstery organised this has caused some frustration.

On the positive side we’ve found local suppliers of plumbing (there’s lots of new plumbing in this job), stainless steel, wood etc to be very good, once we’ve managed to track them down.

The Cheley team hard at work

We had a few days away with our first visitor, Andy. He arrived looking pasty faced and stressed and I think we sent him home with colour in his cheeks and looking much happier.

Captain for a day

We had a relaxed trip down to Meganissi then north up to Vliho Bay. Very pleasant it was too, considering we’d been waiting 3 days for the rain to stop. It doesn’t rain much here but when it does it really rains, with much accompanying lighting and thunder, quite spectacular when it gets going.

Carnival Time

We also went to the local carnival that signifies the beginning of Lent. The locals party all weekend and have a very noisy parade on Sunday to bring in ‘Clean Monday’. Those who still follow the traditional ways will not eat meat from Clean Monday until Easter weekend. Then apparently is a complete meat fest. We’ll let you know!

On Monday everyone goes out to the beach and flies an amazing aray of colourful kites. Quite a site.

Kite flying on Lefkas beach

All and all, living the Greek way beats the hell out of the UK ratrace!!

Lefkas our current home

The island of Levkas is situated just off the mainland west coast in the middle of the Ionian sea. It is so close to the shore that it only just qualifies as an island. It was the Corinthians who cut a canal through sandbanks in 600 BC to separate it from the mainland. Like many places in Europe the land has been fought over continually by the Roman, Turks, French and English until as recently as the mid 1800's.

Today access to the island is via a floating bridge. Levkas town is on the northernmost tip of the island and still very much a Greek town, not a tourist town. A little smaller than Skipton, with a population of just over 20,000 with some English spoken but not by everyone.

It has suffered it's fair share of earthquakes over the years, the last major one in 2000. As a result of earthquakes it has a quaint, if odd archetectual style of brightly painted houses, often topped with wood and corrugated iron to mitigate any more seismic shocks. Its narrow, traffic free lanes and its small size give it a village atmosphere, though the richly decorated Venetian churches packed with fine works of art, add a cosmopolitan touch.

Eating out is simple and cheap, with a plentiful variety of Tavernas. The one shown here is run by the 'New York Greek'.

The supermarkets, fruit and fish markets are plentiful and very good quality. The bakeries here, unlike many places in Europe, bake the delicious array of beautiful breads. Opening hours are somewhat suspect at this time of the year, official opening is about 8am till 1.30 - 2.00 then again from about 4ish till 8ish, but many places seem to close at 2ish and don't open again. If you're a local no doubt you just know these things but as a new comer it gives some frustration until you're used to it. As it gets closer to May and visitors start arriving I guess it'll fall into more the normal opening hours with siesta. Most things we need are within walking or pushbike ride from the Marina.

My Greek is still limited to Yes (Ne), No (Ochi), thankyou (efharisto), hello (yasas), please (parakalor) and of course dio bira!! I have learnt the alphabet in terms of what the letters are called and what their sounds are and can write all the characters, however that's still along way off being able to look at what's written and try and say it :-(

Tune in next month to find out what's it's like working here, so far it's very frustrating but lets hope that improves.

More pictures of our Greek town here

Sardinia to Levkas

We're finally here - journey's end for a while and I'm pleased, we've done just short of 3,000 miles since end of September and it's nice to know we can stay put for a while. Only down side is joining the working class again and having to get back into the discipline of working every day.

The last 500 miles have taken some time due to multiple storms. After waiting 10 days for good weather in Cagliari, thankfully we had two calm, but cold, nights at sea to get to Milazzo, Sicilly. We thought we would only be there one night then the final push to Greece. But like so much of the latter part of this trip it was not to be. We waited four days for the next weather window to get as far as Messina (east coast of Sicilly), 5 hours away. We met a couple of guys in Messina who attempted to get across to Greece a couple of days before we got to Messina. They'd got out 100 miles into their journey, at shortest it's 250 miles to Greece, and had to turn back due to severe gales.

Next day we set out for our final leg with a seemingly reasonable forecast however when we got around the toe of Italy we had winds up to 25 knots which gave us a very uncomfortable, long, cold first night at sea, and by midday the next day we had forecasts of F9 (severe) gale warnings. When your average speed is only 5 – 6 miles per hour, 250 miles is a long way and we just moored up at the fuel dock in Levkas at 4am the next morning before the big winds started. Time for a bit of shut eye.

That wasn’t to last though, a couple of hours later someone was knocking on the boat and up we got and moved to our berth. Time for more shut eye!!

Next morning we got a shock, looking from where we are berthed across to mainland Greece there's SNOW on the hills!! So much for being somewhere warm for winter. It's not too bad during the day in the sun, but the wind is cold and it's really cold at night, all the warmest bedding on now. Hopefully it should start warming up a bit in another 4 weeks, so I guess I can cope (she said manfully through gritted teeth) hahaha.

We've got free wifi on the boat thanks to our new wifi toys. There's paying wifi in the Marina but it's really expensive - long live free wifi!!

I also have to find somewhere to do my Pilates, which isn't going to be easy, it's too cold to do it outside right now. There is a walking club here for the live aboards so I think I'll slink along to that and see where they go. Mark will have to do without me for a couple of mornings a week, my social life has to start somewhere!!

Next blog will be describing living and working in a foreign country where the written language resembles nothing we’ve had to deal with so far. Learnt my first Greek word today in the barbecue chicken shop, the guy spoke really good English so I said to him “you speak good English” quick as lightening he said “so do you”!! Anyway he told me how to say thankyou in Greek which phonetically is ‘ef-har-ris-to’ now I can go around saying thankyou to everyone. There’s also spoken Greek classes here at the marina so I’ll be a regular there over the next few weeks so I should have some basics pretty quickly – time will tell. Till next time 'ya-sou'.

Marina checking in procedures

Checking procedures into marinas varies greatly from all your paperwork checked in minute detail, photocopied, entered onto paper forms, then entered onto computer to someone handing over a paper form for you to fill in yourself and nothing else even looked at and you never know which it will be until you begin. My question is though, what do they do with all this information, does it et sent somewhere, does anyone actually look at it and if they do what are they looking for and what will they do about it if they find it because by the time they do the boat has moved on. This part of our sailing life is the only remnant of daily bureaucracy that we’ve left behind and reminds me constantly of how quickly our view on life has changed. Our priorities now are provisioning, laundry, where shall I run today or is the wind in the right direction to get where we want to go next. The only conformity we need to worry about is what we set for ourselves. The memory of the stressful lives we led is slowly dimishing.

Alicante to Ibiza

New Years Day
New Years day dawned bright and sunny, a little chilly but the day would get warmer. Forecast for the next 2 – 3 days was light winds and smooth seas, perfect for an overnight run to Ibiza. Out of Alicante marina, dodge a big ship coming into the container port and out to the open sea. There’s always that tingle of excitement when setting off, whether you’re going 30 or 130 miles, perhaps because with the sea you can never know exactly what you’ll be faced with during the journey, and of course where ever we’re going we haven’t been there before, but today it’s lovely, for now anyway, and we begin this journey with the spinnaker up and sitting in the sunshine. We expect this trip to take around 23 hours, so we’ll get into Ibiza late tomorrow morning. As the day wore on the winds increased to the high teens, spinnaker came down, Genoa came out and our speed over the ground increased to over 7 knots (a knot is a bit less than a road mile), doesn’t sound fast but for our boat it’s a fast cruising speed and we plan our journey times on an average speed of 5 knots. As dusk arrived two things happened, first the winds increased further so we put a reef in the main and the Genoa, we were flying, at this rate we’ll be in Ibiza well ahead of 23 hours and second we had cause to radio a large ship and ask what his passing intentions were, if he continued on his course he would run us over. We would normally do all the changing of direction to keep out of their way but we were sailing on a run, see getting up so our manoeuvrability is restricted. After a quick discussion on the VHF, he agreed to alter his course to cross our bow with some sea room, even then he crossed only a couple of hundred meters off our bow, too close for my liking. A few hours later winds picked up a bit more and we put another reef in the main and Genoa and were hoping it wasn’t going to get up any further because what we were experiencing right then wasn’t forecast for another 2 days. It was going to be a slightly anxious night, for me anyway. I have great respect for the sea and how quickly things can change and we are sailing in the winter, even though the temperatures are nothing like the English winter, it’s still chilly at night and the winter storms can be fierce. But on top of that, it’s 14 hours of darkness every night and that is a long time in the dark. Around midnight we were getting gale warnings on the VHF and the SSB reports, great, that’s all we needed, however the speed we were sailing at we’d probably be in before it got too nasty. As it happened we rounded the bottom of Formentera at about 2am, 6 hours before we thought we would, so for the next 4 hours we did something we’ve NEVER done, we set the sails to spill as much wind as possible and I played with the Genoa for the next 3 hours trying to keep the boat under 5 knots. We didn’t want to go into Ibiza in the dark, it didn’t look a very friendly entry, even with that as we approached Mark turned around and went back out again for a couple of hours. The journey that should have taken us 23 hours, had we keep sailing at the speeds we could have would have only taken us around 18 hours. So we’re tucked up in Ibiza ahead of the gales and thankful for it.

Early New Year Wishes

We've spent Xmas in Cartagena because we needed some parts for the boat and everything was closed for a few days for the Xmas festivities. Xmas day dawned clear and sunny, temperature 18 degrees. We opened our presents then went for a walk before cooking Xmas dinner. We had to downsize from the usual turkey due to oven size restrictions, so we started with soup and hot rolls, local fresh chicken roasted with potatoes, pumpkin, carrots and steamed green beans. No sprouts to be had to Mark's disappointment and my delight. Living in confined spaces and eating sprouts don't really mix. Finished off with homemade sticky toffee pudding and custard, all washed down with wine. Our first Xmas aboard.

Cartagena Marina

Out for a stroll on Xmas day

We're moving on tomorrow, heading north for a couple of more days then east to Ibiza so not sure where we'll be on New Years Eve, might even be at sea so we're wishing everyone a great New Year a little early, we hope you all have a great evening and the hangovers are not too severe. Our next blog will be in 2008!!!

Cartagena

We've had a slow journey along the south and east Spanish coast, wind constantly directly on the nose which is the slowest and wetest sailing. We've also visited some places we wouldn't bother to go back to ie San Jose. It's a purpose built holiday town and at this time of year is a total ghost town. We had to sit out a gale there and we probably couldn't have been in a more dreary place. It's also the most expensive place we've been and we're sure we've been ripped off there.

Town Hall Cartagena

We're in Cartagena now, just south of Alicante and it's lovely. A very old naval town with, like many of these towns, a very colourful history. It's undergoing major updating and hopefully it will be in harmony with the beautiful old buildings already here. We haven't taken many photos yet but you can read more about the place at http://www.spain.info/TourSpain/Destinos/TipoII/MasInfo/0/Cartagena.htm?Language=en

It's also home to one of the earliest submarines built for naval purposes, launched in 1889. To look at it you wouldn't believe anyone would go under the water in it, if this type of thing interests you, you can read more about it here....http://historico.oepm.es/museovirtual/gi_plantilla.asp?acc=1&idioma=en&xml=Peral%20Caballero,%20Isaac.xml

In terms of value for money, this marina is pretty good, power, water and WIFI all included, it's the first time we've been online for a while.

The weather is cool today - some complicated weather systems fighting it out for control and we're in the middle of it. Having said that it's generally getting slowly colder as we go north. When I say colder, today it's only 13 - that's cold for us now!!! We've a few more degrees north to go before we head east again and I'm not looking forward to any more coldness.