May 2008 Update

Today is Mayday (1st May) here in Greece. Birdsong fills the air from all around the anchorage. Alexina is in a delightful little bay at the North Aegean Island of Lesvos in the company of many friends. However the start to the month was not so auspicious...........

It's 3 o'clock in the afternoon on 9th April and things are not good. Symi harbour has a swell rolling into it, pinning Alexina to the wall and making her buck up and down alarmingly. Tiger and I are both feeling sea sick. In Harbour? Never a good sign. One of stanchions has just broken due to the force of the fenders rubbing up and down the quay wall and our forward cleat has pulled clean out of the deck! Peter announces that it's time to leave.

Nich 38's are not easy to manoeuvre off a wall with the wind blowing you on but we had a trick up our sleeves. By placing a large fender right up forward and keeping the forward mooring rope tight the act of motoring forward pushes her stern out. We can then reverse off with ease. But where to go in such stormy weather and so late in the day? Find some calm water and go around in circles till the wind dies a little! Boring, tiring but safe. Then back to the quay again. Within a day handyman Peter had mended everything and we had glorious Symi Harbour to ourselves and the fishermen. Tiger became a pavement artist while we sorted ourselves out.

The boating community is a pretty small world. Last year, a chance conversation between two boats led to our reunion on Leros with old Brighton friends. Somehow we had lost contact with "No Limits"for 5 years. Thank you Sunset Sam for linking our common Shoreham origins and helping them get in touch with us. We spent two heavenly evenings talking 'old times'. The photo is of Elly and Mia from "No Limits" with Tiger in the middle.

We kept moving North through the wonderful Dodecanese but hurry on as this is old ground. At Patmos we met up with our old friends on "Maritea" and new French friends on "RM1200" (I bet you can just imagine me trying to call RM1200 on the VHF in French!) RM1200 had entered a sailing magazine competition and won. The prize was a brand new fully equipped boat for a year and a chance to live out their dream cruise. The crew was Christoph and Florence with their two children, Flora and Thomas. So now Tiger had 4 French children to play with. From time to time she found it a bit daunting but her French has improved enormously. She now talks in her sleep in French! We were to remain with Maritea and RM12200 as a little flotilla for the next two weeks as we travelled North , meeting up each evening for the compulsary 'Ouzo Hour'.

Fournoi, just north of Patmos, was our first new island this year. No sooner had our anchor touched ground then a port policeman began frantically blowing his whistle at us. Please could we move and anchor in the shallows for half an hour? Around the corner came a ferry almost as big as the small town it was servicing. Phew! Glad we moved so quickly. The ferry only comes in once a week. What timing!

The passage to Chios was interesting, to say the least. Before leaving harbour I checked the Poseidon weather forecast charts and saw only blue (meaning little or no wind.) Ha! The gale warning came too late and I had my first experience of sailing with near bare poles as wind speeds hit 45 knots and the waves grew to the size of double decker buses (or at least that's what they looked like to me!) . Our 40 year old auto-pilot decided he was far too old for this sort of game, so I steered with white knuckles for 8 hours and tried very hard not to look backwards! Alexina loved it, especially surfing down the waves at 12 knots!

The tiny island of Inoussa has been birth place to more than it's fair share of Shipping Magnates so we decided to try our luck mixing with the super rich. The harbour offered great protection, free electricity and water and the biggest ouzos ever served at the local bar. But no multi-millionaires to be seen. All the ladies on the quay saw in Greek Easter at the midnight mass along with the entire female population of the island. Where were the men? Outside the church throwing fireworks, bangers and perhaps the odd bit of dynamite that made the walls of the church shake. Happy Easter, Greek Style.

Here in the photo Thomas and Flora from RM1200 and Juliette, Celine and Leo (ship's dog) from Maritea explore the sea shore.

So May Day finds us still in our little Flotilla, planning to explore Lesvos inside and out.

April 2008 Update

It is 9.45 on the 7th April. My hands shake and my eyes are filled with tears. In front of me the pontoon is full of people, banging saucepans, shouting and waving. The mooring ropes are slipping off and it's time to leave Yacht Marine, Marmaris. We had tried to make our get away low profile but there was no escaping this one.

This has got to be the hardest departure yet. Yacht Marine has been a home from home with friends made that I hope to keep for a lifetime. OK, so the job list never seemed to go down much. Too many distractions, but we are not complaining.

The hardest goodbye of all was to Hobie Cat. We had looked after him for the winter and loved him as our own. Now his owners on the Catamaran Zia had returned and it was time to hand him back. How can a creature so small and furry fill the boat with so much life? Alexina seems empty now. We'll miss you, Hobie.

Every morning, like in other busy marinas, there is a morning net – a question and answer session held on the VHF radio to a set format. Peter was able to legitimise his obsession with the weather by taking on the weatherman slot all winter long. If there was a hint of rain not forecast, then our VHF would come alive with requests for how to get rain spots out of varnish!

The marina was fair bursting at the seams with children and the burden of school was shared out amongst a few willing boats. I did maths and had lots of fun thinking up new and weird games for them to play. Tiger loved her English on Storm Dodger and I don't think Tiger will ever forget Karen from Nisroc's time machine as she used drama to take them back to Celtic, Roman and Viking times in Britain. Kevin from Nisroc did a fair impersonation of the mad scientist for Science. Caroline from Meander thought she was teaching Tiger her French verbs but it was me that learnt the most!. In the afternoon the children ran around the marina like wild animals, making weapons, dens and generally ruining the gardener's day.

Peter spent the first few months building a brand new fibreglass watertank for Alexina under the floor in the saloon, as the old flexible tank had failed. The work went well, if slowly, until he had to fit supply pipes through the top. A quick discussion with my brother, the plumber, brought a solution. The technical term was a “running nipple”! This was fashioned out of a combination of a number of brass fittings and flexible hose and works well.

Our dinghy, Tommy Thumb, had been slowly melting under the Mediterranean sun. My challenge for the winter was to cover every inch of it with canvas. The job looked simple enough, but took months to achieve with the assistance of Claudia on Janette who knows everything there is to know about canvas work. Tommy Thumb now looks good as new.

OK, we have been pretty well based in the marina all winter. Last week we managed to escape and took an overnight bus ride to the middle of Turkey to visit the moon scape of Cappadocia, where soft volcanic tufa has been shaped by nature and man into spectacular “fairy chimneys”, “cathedrals” and huge underground cities. I had heard about the extreme weather conditions found there in spring and came prepared. Warm clothes for snow, waterproofs for rain, suntan lotion and sunglasses for heat. What did we get? A sand storm that turned the sky black and blinded us. This just added to the surreal feeling on the place.

So now we are back in Simi; as regular readers will know that we love it here. The normal vitalling of booze, diesel and bacon is required.

November Update

Hi all

A Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you all from the crew of Alexina.

STOP PRESS: A selection of our 2007 photos can be found at the following address: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/alexinaofshoreham/2007 Hit Slideshow to see our year in pictures and words.

Our autumn cruising ended with Alexina safely tucked up in her winter moorings at Yacht Marine in Marmaris, just in time for the annual Halloween Party. From the bric-a-brac of the bilges and lockers we created one ghost, one mad surfing surgeon and a vampire from St. Trinians. I’ll let you guess which crew member chose which costume.

The social life can be hectic here . Parties, language lessons, morning walks, salsa dancing! What a contrast to our month of October spent in perfect peace and quiet and splendid isolation. At least, it would have been peaceful except for those raucous kingfishers hanging out on our mooring ropes at every anchorage and calling joyously to each other. The title “The Kingfisher Cruise” was duly born.

Planned some eight months in advance, our October cruise was always going to be something special as normally we do not even know where tomorrow will take us. Our companions were to be the cruising family aboard the French yacht Maritea and October was the only month were we could be at the same place at the same time.

After the rigours of the EMYR we had a new set of rules.
No night passages.
Minimal long passages.
Idyllic anchorages with plenty of time to explore them.
A little school every non sailing day.
No Mayors or dignitaries - in fact almost no other people at all.

OK, I have to admit it, we were being unsociable wimps, and the Gokova Korfesi on the Turkish coast just north of Marmaris in October is the perfect place to be unsociable wimps. Plenty of interesting, quiet anchorages offering, in those words we love to read in the pilot book, “excellent all round shelter“. For October can be a stormy, thundery month with winds that can hit very quickly. Five miles away in the Datca peninsular they saw nights of up to 50 knot winds, but the Weather Gods smiled on us and we rarely saw our wind generator turn. We were helped along with some local knowledge after meeting a Turkish single handed sailor who knew the coast intimately.

I’m not the most superstitious of persons but find bad things often come in 3’s. So when Tiger managed to fall in to the sea, not once, but twice, I think a mild sense of foreboding would be natural. On the first occasion she lost a bicycle to the murky depths and was left hanging on to a mooring rope with one hand. Then an attempt to attract the attention of a jellyfish ended with Tiger swimming with it! However 4 year old Damian from Maritea would be number 3, falling head first down a hatch way and breaking his arm. Despite us being berthed in the busy Greek harbour on Simi Island, there were no x-ray facilities; the nearest being Rhodes or Marmaris. Damian is all mended now.

The final trip of the year was started with a synchronised team swim. Un, deux, trois, plouff! Brrrr. Time to get to the marina, hot showers and plug in electricity. In formation, we weighed anchors, and left under sail, just for the hell of it.

Back in Marmaris reality struck as Eric from Maritea headed back to his day job and we addressed the dreaded “TO DO” list. Some biggies are on the list this year, including rebuilding our main water tank, replacing solar panels and fixing a leaking gear box.

There are loads of children here this winter so Tiger will be kept busy with shared school lessons, French lessons and plenty of time to play. The children have been treated to special seminars on star gazing, pancake making, sewing and are in trouble with the marina’s gardener for some unauthorised work on his flowerbeds.

For the next 5 months the crew of Alexina has grown from 3 to 4. Hobie the Cat, from the American catamaran Zia, was looking for a foster home till the spring. He charmed us and has taken to life on board Alexina with gusto; sitting in our cockpit in the sun, out of the wind watching over his new Kingdom. Beware any cat who dares stroll over the decks of Alexina this winter!

Christmas this year will be a 3 week whirlwind trip toUK, so lock up those gin bottles. We will then enjoy the delights of Marmaris ‘till April. Next update will be in May 2008.

Lots of love
Helen, Peter, Tiger and Hobie
Crew of Alexina