Wednesday, December 6, 2017
After arriving yesterday, washing the boat down and running our errands, we really needed some rest. We had a good night’s sleep in the calm waters at the Marina. Gouvia Marina kinda feels like home, as it is the longest time we have spent anywhere and we are pretty comfortable with all of the local stores and many restaurants.
We woke up this morning with many to-do items on our list and the day saw many accomplishments. Jinhee was focused on some domestic items (cleaning, laundry, shopping), while I focused on plumbing and preparing to leave this town. The night was capped by a nice dinner in Corfu old town.
After my success at resolving the water pump problems, I moved on to cleaning out the bathroom plumbing. On our sailboat, the plumbing was nearly impossible to access, and everything was highly specialized; overall not much fun. Home Free by contrast has a lot of plumbing and parts of it are very easy to access, and the system uses more common items so it is much easier to work on.
My first target was the shower drain. When showering, the drain did not work effectively and I suspected that there were balls of hair somewhere down the piping, so I gathered all the necessary tools and bits and began pulling things apart. This is not a fun job at any time, but I spent about three hours pulling the bits apart, cleaning and refitting everything. The end result is that our shower drain works marvelously now. In similar fashion, the bathroom sink needed help and it was cleaned out. By lunch time the master bathroom was working like it was new.
Jinhee had some work to do (not a sabbatical apparently) and so I took the time to go for a bike ride. After riding into town to run an errand, I climbed one of the hardest hills on the island, and felt great doing it. I have come to enjoy the hills here, the quiet roads, the amazing descents and for lack of a better reason, the sense of accomplishment.
My errand in town involves our passage making. Greece requires each boat to maintain a passage log. Essentially a log of where you go, recording your arrival and departure, so after riding into town yesterday to get my transit log and note our arrival, I rode back to the Corfu Port Police to sign us out of the island (we now have to leave within 24 hours of that event).
Tomorrow as soon as the sun is up, we will slip our lines again and head South, en-route to Athens, with our first stop being somewhere near Lefkas. We went there in September, and it was crazy busy, so we are hoping it is less busy this time, but we will likely anchor out and avoid the town. We have a lot of distance to cover before the next bit of foul weather comes through and have enough supplies on board that we can avoid paying fees to dock unless we are going to get hammered by the weather.
Finally, we were hoping to enjoy the local Indian restaurant this evening. It was on my route during my bike ride so I stopped to check their hours. They closed for the season yesterday!!!!! So we went to Corfu old town (a short bus ride) this evening looking for a nice place to eat and see if they had nice Christmas decorations up. It was not so Christmassy, and many of the restaurants were closed, but we enjoyed some Asian Fusion before heading back to the boat.