Rain, wind and a little sunny interlude...

Sanny at Paleros Yacht Club

 Well Easter has been and gone, the weather has probably been the worst ever at Easter in the six years we have been out here.  We have had some bright spells but a lot of strong wind and rain as well and at times quite cold, in fact I've had to resort to long trousers and socks again some of the time.

The meal of the week was once again at Paleros, taj panorama takes a bit of beating as far as none Greek food is concerned and once again Demitri and Salim did not let us down.  Having said that we went to Ev Zyn (Ef Sin) last night and I had a wonderfully hot chicken curry the best I have had there yet.  May have it again on Saturday when we go again, yum.

Farewell Sea Symphony 

Dredging the channel, finding the odd yacht or two.

Last Saturday saw the departure of our fairly long term neighbour Dave who has sold his boat, Sea Symphony and is returning to Washington to his family.  A 51 foot boat is a lot for one man to handle especially when you get into your eighties.  It has been bought by Mike and Lesley and they headed off for Nidri on Sunday where they are going to start doing the work they intend doing to her.  Good luck to all and of course to Sea Symphony she's a classy bit of stuff.

Dredging seems to be continuing in the Lefkas channel and the boat you see keeled over was dragged out of the water by the crane team as they went along yesterday.  It looks like it's been on its side for some time but until they moved it I was not aware of it's existence, it is certainly not showing in the pics I took the day before of the same place.  Project anyone?

We still have no marina WiFi so internet is a slow old thing at the moment, I can get a couple of free connections from bars but they are dire to say the least.  I spoke to Spiros, the marina manager, a couple of days ago and he assured me that they were hoping to get it back this week but are changing broadband suppliers and having some new kit put in as a result to improve things.  However as these things come at a cost he says that the people who get it free now (annual contracts) will have to start paying for it and it may not be cheap.  I think we'll see how much and then investigate all the options.

Kalo Paska ....

Down under this lot...

 At the end of last week we had a problem with getting no hot water.  In a house this usually isn't that much of a problem as it's either a hot water tank heated by either an immersion heater, boiler or both, or a combi boiler any of which you can get at fairly easily.  On Lesanda however, it's a different kettle of fish so to speak, it's hidden away at the back of the heads (toilet) boxed away with the loo holding tank positioned directly above it.  So it requires some fairly intense dismantling in order to get at it and then some twists more suited to a contortionist then me, in order to establish what the problem is.  Anyway, our calorifier (water heater) has two thermostats, one for controlling the temperature and another as an emergency cut out which should trip before it boils (96 degrees).

There is the offending blue bit.

It also has a heating element any of which could have been the problem.  After about six hours of struggle we finally found out the offending part was the emergency stat which was cutting out at about 30 and then if you kept resetting it would go for a few more minutes before cutting out again.  Anyway to cut a very long story short we couldn't get a replacement part and so I have just wired it straight though without the offending bit in circuit.  I will replace it when a get back to the UK for the right bit.  After replacing a really stupid cover back after finishing and then testing we found there was a smell of burning, not a good sign.  The cover turned out to be so tight that putting it back partially removed one of the connectors which had then started to arc.  Good job we didn't just box it all back up!  Anyway we now have an ample supply of hot water again.

San and I at the "bub" restaurant last week.

The other major problem we have had over the past week is the lack of internet on the marina, I have connectivity through our dongle but that has it's limits and means it's harder to ring home and also it's a grand prix weekend this weekend and being early in the morning it will be a problem to get anywhere to watch it, if that where the greatest problem we had to deal with life would be so much simpler :-)  As it hasn't been repaired now chances are that it won't get repaired at the very earliest until Tuesday next week, this being Easter weekend so if we can't get in touch with folk at home that is the reason why!

Anyway Sandra and I wish all our family and friends chronia polla (many years) and kalo Paska (happy Easter).

Summer is a coming...

Parga on a lovely spring day.

Other than a really huge thunder storm on Sunday and a very windy day on Thursday it's been a stonking week weather wise.  We hired a car over the weekend and went for Saturday evening up to the Katoghi to have a super evening with our good friends Alison and Peter, who contrary to some reports are open for business, get yourselves there and have a treat.

Birds of paradise at the fish restaurant in Lygia. 

Looks like the dredging has finished.

 On Sunday we decided to have a ride out on the mainland a visit Parga which is one of our favourite places, it was surprisingly quite even though it's still early in the year, we have been many times earlier and found it buzzing but not on Sunday.  This didn't matter we still managed to sit and enjoy the place with a coffee - polly orao!  On the way home we stopped at Lygia to have a meal at a little known restaurant near the fishing harbour it was beautiful and very reasonably priced as it tends to be away from the tourist areas.

The Greeks watching footy in Taj Panorama.

Great buddies, Deb and Jez.

For a fairly long time now they have been dredging out the northern approach channel into Lefkas but it looks like this may now be complete as a couple of days ago I happened to spot the dredger being towed southwards by a tug boat, hopefully they may now dredge some parts of the channel in that direction which are getting very shallow in places.

Very kindly, Jez and Debbie took us to Taj Panorama, the Indian restaurant at Paleros on Wednesday night for a wonderful evening of food with real taste!  My fix completed for a few days.  They always seem really pleased to see us there and of course we had to have news and photo's of the latest addition to Salim, the chef's, family.  Later of course the locals start to arrive for the champions league footy!

Sorry for the late blog this week but there seems to be some problem with the marina's WiFi and I've had to dig out the dongle again this morning to do it but hey ho that's life.

Spring Clean...

After the wash gotta get a bit of polish on.

 It's been a trying time this week with Sandra being so ill.  I've had to take over the position of domestic goddess which as anyone who knows me will vouch I ain't no dab hand at!  Anyway San still insisted on doing the foody cooking bit, she has sampled my efforts before and obviously thought she was ill enough without adding food poisoning to the list of ailments.  Anyway she's finished her course of antibiotics today and the infection seems to be abating quickly now so she's almost functioning normally other than a persistent cough and a runny nose.

And of course I get so much water about San has to clean the windows

So I decided that we should make hay while the sun shines so to speak and get on with some jobs on the boat.  Starting with cleaning the winters grime from her and getting some shine back to the old lady.  So I got the dingy out and blown up and washed the hull down twice and then gave it a good polishing.  I then saw Tony with his pressure washer doing his decks so promptly thought I ought to borrow it and give mine a good do as although I had washed them they had ingrained muck on them.  The trouble is once you start with the pressure washer you start to realise how mucky it really is next to the pressure washed bits and you have to do it all.

And meanwhile Geoff does some horticulture.

Of course I had water all over the place and Sandra started to moan that the windows on the cockpit awning had water marks all over them, so she's out with a bowl and washing them all.  Anyway we have got all the cockpit and sugar scoop polished and a bit of gel-coat repair work done today and she's looking fine.

In the meantime back in dear old Blighty, Geoffrey had not been too well either he'd caught yet another cold and Sandra had said to him to stay in and warm.  The next thing we know we get a picture sent from her cousin Laura of Geoff and her working away in aunty Pauline's garden, you just can't keep a good ninety year old down can you!  

Thanks for being the spy in the camp Laura!