Stern to Mooring Fails, a Rescue at Sea and a Visit to the Parthenon in Athens #019

In the last blog we left Woody to look after the boat in the Aegina and get on with maintenance work while we returned to England for a few weeks.

It’s great the kids are curious and want to learn about maintenance work on the boat, but obviously it slows things down a bit. So with the family out of the way Woody was able to work his way through the jobs list (we had a massive list to get through before we continued on from Aegina!)

Before we left the UK he bought a load of cordless tools from Powertoolworld – a grinder, jigsaw, and drill so he’s able to save so much money making and repairing things on the boat.

We got the generator sorted out when we arrived but there was still the engine to paint, bilge pipes and strum boxes to sort out and the pre-filter of the water maker to rebuild.

The grey water tank in the Amel is quite unique in that it’s housed in the keel and all waste water drains into this bilge ‘tank’ so it’s an important part of the boat to keep clean and maintain properly, so both automatic and manual bilge pipes were replaced.

The pre filter for the watermaker was quite corroded and although we’d ordered most parts from the UK we still had to source bits locally on Aegina (which was easier said than done with strikes and strange opening hours!).

Woody used to make industrial style furniture in the UK: https://www.ratandpallet.com/ so luckily he was used to working with pipes and fittings. We still haven’t got around to fully servicing in the watermaker yet but that’ll be on the next job list.

We’d noticed that the kids really enjoy watching the dolphins and other wildlife from the bow of the boat and occasionally enjoy the personal space there. But at the moment we’ve just got a pulpit framework to sit on, so Woody set too and designed and made a cool bow seat for the front of the boat too.

Mooring in the Mediterranean – particularly Greece – is mainly stern to parking, which means dropping an anchor three to five boat lengths out, reversing into the quayside and attaching stern lines to the dock. It sounds easy enough but crosswinds, prop walk and crossed anchors (and lack of experience) can turn it into an entertaining spectacle.

When Woody and I were flotilla skippers in Greece we used to raft up all the time, which is fine as long as you’ve got everybody’s consent and someone to coordinate it. But when boats just turn up and decide they’re going to raft up without anybody’s consent and no coordination, then it leads to a whole new level of chaos, as Woody experienced when Ukrainian business flotilla turned up and literally gave him sleepless nights!

Two weeks went by quickly and Woody headed to Athens to meet us off the plane. Fortunately we have friends in Athens – Aurie and Mariela – who let us crash in their Athens apartment which meant we had time to visit the Parthenon!

The Acropolis Museum is build on top the ruins of ancient Athens and is a great place to visit. However, the Acropolis and especially the Parthenon was very busy, like a lot of honey pot tourist attractions in Greece.

We took pictures of #legoericka – a lego toy we were given by our author friend Ericka Waller to take around the world and visit all the places she can’t because of her auto-immune disorder.

Our daughter gave us a Greek mythology lesson about the foundation of Athens and Athena while our youngest regretted it wasn’t named after his favourite Greek god – Poseidon.

After visiting the Parthenon we headed back to Aegina but there’s always drama in our life and on this occasion a woman was rescued by our ferry in the middle of the sea!

You can see the full footage from this incident on the link:

Back in Aegina the kids earned money for their ice-cream budget by busking which was a win-win, as it meant they put in lots of music practice too!

After reinstalling our VHF and AIS transceiver following an MMSI update we paid our fees and did a final shop. Our youngest was particularly keen to stock up on strawberries and cherries so we bought some from a local fruit and veg boat, cleaned the bugs off them and raised our new British ensign.

Finally it was ready to throw off the lines and leave the dock once again – heading for Poros and the Cyclades Islands.

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