Place of Two Halves

Karavos was a strange little place to stop, as you can see it was a place of two halves. The beautiful little harbour lined with bars and tavernas on the one side and the massive power station and cement factory on the other. Also strangely a place without any useful shops, a furniture shop, a boat brokerage, two kiosks and a bakery with no power, so no bread.

To add to the pleasant strangeness the evening saw a parade of possibly 100 youngsters, ageing from 4 to 16, parade through the streets, with candle lights, in celebration of the local swimming clubs 50th anniversary, singing rounds of "Go baby! Go baby! Go".

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Launch Day!

Yesterday Grace got wet. Four boats went in yesterday: Cloud 9, Iona, Gabriella, and Grace of Lefkas. All were launched using a traditional method involving smoking, hammers, occasional shouting, and impressive skill. Kyriakos, who runs the operation, knows the dimensions of all the boats in his yard and adjusts the launch sledge by eye. Launch Day! Considering the amount of standing around, it was an exciting and exhausting day.

Meltemi

Common wisdom is that its a bad idea to go North up the Cyclades in July or August, due to the regular northerly wind called the "Meltemi". Here's the weather forecast for today, typical Meltemi stuff: SOUTHEAST AEGEAN IKARIO WEST OF 26.00 NORTH NORTHWEST 5 LOCALLY 6 OVER NORTH PART 6 LOCALLY 7 AND EAST OF 26.00 NORTH NORTHWEST 5 LOCALLY 6. MODERATE We wanted to go fifteen miles to the North. "Fine", we thought, "We'll reef and put in a couple of long tacks. We'll end up going 25 miles through the water, but that will only take 4-5 hours". We set off, reefed down, ready for a good sail. To start off we were storming along at 6 knots in the right direction, but about a mile out of the bay, the wind died. The sea state was very confused, with large swells coming from several directions and many white horses. It certainly looked as though there was wind, but there was only 6-7 knots, changing direction through 100 degrees every ten minutes....

The drainage in the lower field

What could you do with three cans of green gunk, a tub of Vaseline, gaffer tape, some cling film, bin bags, cardboard, and a power drill? We insulated our fridge. Right now, it looks like a Complete Bloody Mess. Today we learned that Bavaria insulate the sides and the bottoms of the fridge boxes with similar polyurethane gunk. Who'd have thought? Of course, we'd removed the compressor and drilled a couple of holes before we discovered this. Anyway, we're now convinced that the heat mostly was escaping through the wafer-thin top of the fridge, which makes sense as there's often sunlight directly onto the dark work surface. Tomorrow, Sara will attack the gunk with a bread knife and some sandpaper and it should come up nicely.

Grace Notes

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