Welcome back to a new season of adventures
with the sailing catamaran Bisou and her hardy crew of Tad and Robin Foley.
When we left you at the end of last season,
Bisou was wrapped up in her cover and hunkered down in Cleopatra Marina’s
boatyard, Preveza, Greece. We had left
our cruising early last year as Robin’s eldest son was being married back in
Australia, but the weather had changed and we were seeing more thunderstorms
and cooler temperatures so we were ready.
A surprisingly long summer back in Oz sped
past with various visitors, building projects and a short trip to Bangkok for a
1st wedding anniversary celebration!
Before we knew it, we were boarding our Singapore Airlines flight to
Istanbul via Singapore and from Istanbul on to Athens. We had scheduled to arrive in Preveza the day
before Greek Orthodox Holy Friday so that we could avail ourselves of shops and
the chandlery before everything closed down on Saturday afternoon for a long
weekend.
The flights from Athens to Preveza (on
Aegean Airlines and Olympic Airlines) had not yet begun their seasonal
timetable (Fridays and Sundays) so we were forced to go by road. We had booked (on a friend’s recommendation)
a wonderful taxi driver to take us from the airport to the marina, little
knowning that the journey would be a long one.
We were collected punctually at the airport on arrival in Athens but
then spent an hour driving around Athens suburbs collecting other passengers
until we were a full minibus! By this
time the traffic had started building for the Easter long weekend and what
should have been a 6 hour drive ended up being 8 ½ hours! At times (from Corinth to Patras) we crawled
along at barely 10km/hr. Poor Tad had
cramps in his legs from not being able to stretch out – after 24 hours of
flying to be subjected to this long a drive was truly torturous!
We did arrive eventually, in the dark, but
had booked a room at the boatyard (Cleopatra Marina boatyard have ‘hotel-style’
rooms for rent at a reasonable rate; we had stayed here for a couple of nights
before leaving the marina last year and found it very convenient. The beds are
hard as a rock and the double bed barely fit the two of us, but they are clean
and we were tired so we had a quick bite to eat at the marina restaurant and
then went to bed.
The next day we began working on Bisou –
this year was different to the two previous years as 1. She had been stored in
a boatyard rather than the water and 2. We decided to make a few modifications
that we had been unable to do while Bisou was in the water. The first task at hand was to see how the
inside had fared during the winter and we were pleased to find that the cover
we had made in Tunisia certainly helped to keep Bisou both clean and dry. One small hiccup was that at some point they
had moved her from her initial ‘parking spot’ and in doing so, the door on the
forward locker (where we had stored all the cockpit cushions) had slammed shut
– this created condensation in the locker and consequently some mould and
mildew on the cushions. Disappointing,
but nothing that a good scrub with a mould and mildew remover couldn’t deal
with. Just annoying, really, as we had
plenty of other things that needed doing and could have done without an extra
job! Still, at least the weather was
sunny and warm so the cushions dried quickly and came out looking like new!
My job was the inside of the boat;
unpacking our clothes (both from the suitcases we had brought as well as those
we had left on the boat but put away), making up the bed (a priority!) and
cleaning to remove any traces of dust and dirt that might have squeezed in
through cracks and crevices. Tad,
meanwhile was preparing various items on the outside for work. We worked long hours every single day and
treated ourselves to dinners at a local tavern each night before collapsing
into bed exhausted.
Probably the messiest job was preparing the
hull for antifouling: we had chosen to wet sand Bisou’s bottom which involved
wetting a 3M scrubbing pad and gently exfoliating (sort of) her hull where the
antifouling paint still remained. It
didn’t take much as the existing paint was still in relatively good shape in
spite of not having been touched up for 2 years. We had tried to keep the hull clean during the
sailing seasons by regularly wiping any growth from the area while
snorkeling/swimming, and it seems to have helped. Staying in the water in Tunisia didn’t
produce excessive growth, and when we hauled her in Tunisia at the end of the
winter and pressure sprayed Bisou’s hull, it removed any remaining growth.
The propellers needed a fair bit of work as
there were barnacles and even some oysters growing inside the sail drives! These are areas that are filled with nooks
and crannies and particularly difficult to keep clean while in the water, but
also places where shellfish like to hide and grow. I found that a combination of soaking the
parts (we took the propellers apart) in vinegar and scrubbing with scratchy
pads, we had them shining like new again.
Greek Orthodox Easter came and went, and we
kept on working. I had wanted to cross
to Preveza town to buy a few provisions but the Monday was Easter Monday and
then Tuesday was also a public holiday (in lieu of May 1 falling on Easter
Sunday); so the Cleopatra Marina shuttle didn’t run until Wednesday, by which
time we were preparing to leave again.
Already? I hear you ask – where
to this time?
Tad’s youngest son was graduating from
university in Kansas City, Missouri (USA) mid-May and we had tried to work out
the best way to organize our travels so as to maximize our luggage allowance to
the boat and minimize our flying time.
It turns out that you can’t really do both – we are Gold Star Alliance
frequent flyers with Singapore Airlines which entitles us to considerable extra
baggage allowance, so of course it made sense for us to do our initial trip
with them as our carrier. To go around
the world would have been easier (less flying) but also more costly with less
checked baggage allowance. So, we chose
to go to Greece first, drop off our bags, do some work on Bisou, fly to the USA
and Canada for three weeks and then return to Greece to continue working on
Bisou and launch her for the 2016 season.
We flew from Aktion (Preveza) airport to
Athens on Thursday 6th May, overnighted at the Sofitel Athens
Airport and then on to the USA on Friday.
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