The time we spent in Nova Scotia went by in a flash, with a hugely successful 80th birthday party for my Mom at the centre point. I had worried that Rick might feel at loose ends while we were at home, since the reality of his "retirement" (a word he now occasionally says out loud) hadn't really hit home while we were sailing. Instead, he seemed visibly, expansively happy...humming to himself as he made the coffee each morning, tackling a few odd jobs around the house, planning the next phase of our summer sailing and spending some time with his parents each day. Unfortunately, his mother had a bad fall shortly after we arrived home. Although she was recovering well by the day of our departure, it was hard to say goodbye. Practically speaking, we were ready to leave; mentally, not at all.

Our spirits quickly lifted when we arrived to Kilada's bright sunshine and azure waters on Thursday afternoon. After a multi-stop flight and a three-hour drive from Athens, the bed in the tiny apartment we'd rented from "Madame Zizi" in the village looked pretty tempting, but we knew that taking a nap would only prolong our jet lag. As we sat looking out at the view of the Franchthi caves from our favourite waterfront cafe and watching the sun drop in a fiery ball at the mouth of the harbor, any worries about our lives in Halifax quickly retreated into the distance.

There had been some tiny changes in Kilada since we'd left. Although the same elderly man sat sipping his coffee at the corner table of the café, the kittens scampering underneath the trees at "10 Euro Douglas's" restaurant had become gangly adolescents and the olives on the trees had almost doubled in size. The oleanders were past their prime, with only a few straggling pink blooms remaining. The blade that had been missing from one of the propellers at the wind farm on the mountaintop across the water had been replaced, and we wondered how on earth they had managed to carry the huge blade up the treacherously narrow roads to the summit.

At Douglas's restaurant, the food seemed just a little less delicious than we'd remembered. Perhaps we'd blown it up too much in our minds, or perhaps it was because we had arrived back during the peak holiday week in Greece. Assumption Day (August 15th) has a slightly different theological interpretation in the Orthodox Church, but this day, which marks the passing of the Virgin Mary into the after-life, is celebrated just as enthusiastically here as it is in Italy. Many businesses in Greece shut down entirely during the last two weeks of August. The waiter at Douglas's seemed to be wishing he was on holiday too, because he took our order even more slowly than his usual snail's pace.

After consuming a large array of Douglas's small plates, we were rewarded with the site of a huge meteorite streaking through the sky overhead. It would have been the perfect end to a perfect night if I had not managed to tip my large Director's-style chair over backwards when the legs stuck in the grass as I pushed it back from the table. Once my feet left the ground, I was powerless to stop the momentum. My elbow hit the ground with a resounding thwack and I lay there with my legs in the air, as helpless as one of the loggerhead turtles that swim in Kilada bay. Could there be a more humiliating experience? Over the next few days, my elbow displayed a gruesome and ever-changing array of purple and red hues. The bruises to my pride were less visible, but more painful.

The next morning, we woke early and headed down the road to Lapisa to have breakfast in the restaurant of the "Lapisa Sunrise" hotel. It was a lovely spot and clearly a step up from Madame Zizi's (but we'd stayed there, we would have been 2 km from the boatyard and the price for an apartment would have been double the 40 euros a night we were paying Madame).

After breakfast, we dropped in to see Evangelos in the boatyard office, who advised us to head immediately for Nafplio (a one-hour drive away) to reclaim our cruising permit from the Customs office. In yet another example of the irritatingly officious Greek bureaucracy, we had had to surrender our cruising permit to the Kilada Port Police when the boat was hauled. The Port Police had in turn submitted it to the Customs Office. The Customs office would close at 2 p.m. that afternoon (Friday) and would not open again until Monday morning. "You'd better go now" Evangelos said, "they sometimes close early on Fridays. And before we can launch you, you also need to go back to the Port Police and buy a launching permit." By 2 p.m., we were back at the boatyard with all our paperwork in order.

Back onboard Aisling, we scampered quickly to hose the layers of dust off the decks, replace the speedometer impellor (almost forgot!) and tie on fenders and lines, By 4 p.m. Aisling was floating, even though everything was still in complete disarray below decks. Taking ten deep breaths and trying to ignore the sweat that was trickling down my back, I focused on sorting out our cabin and making up our berth. Meanwhile, since our mechanic Dimitris was on vacation in Crete, Rick checked out the new shaft seal with Dimitris' father, George. Although the new packing box looked great, the motor seemed to have a new vibration at low rpms. "It's not a problem" George insisted, "but you should check the damper plate next time you get hauled". As you might be guessing, there would be another chapter to that story.

That night, we drove back to Lapisa to have dinner at the "tharotaverna" (fish restaurant) on the beach. The waitress at the café had told us (with guilty-looking backward glances over her shoulder) that this was the best place in the area for seafood. Although it didn't seem to be noticeably better than the tharotaverna on the Kilada waterfront, it was an entertaining place to eat, with the patrons calling back and forth to each other among the tables and families arriving on the beach to fish from lawnchairs in the darkness.

We stayed at the Basimicoupolis dock until the next morning. After George had come aboard and completed a final check of the shaft alignment, we headed out to anchor in the bay. Getting away from the dock was easier said than done, with the wind gusting up over 30 knots in the puffs. The boatyard manager Lefteris mimed that we should wait for the lull between gusts before pulling away, looking like a cartoon sketch of the West Wind as he pursed his lips and puffed out his cheeks. "Now! Now! Now! Go fast! Fast!" he shouted, and we charged out at high speed, clearing a powerboat that was tied to starboard of us with only inches to spare. Within minutes, we had our anchor securely set in the mud near the fishing dock.


With a rental car at our disposal for two more days, we had thought we'd have a chance to do a little more sightseeing, but in the end our only excursions were to the Lidl store to buy groceries, to Porto Heli in search of water and to Ermione to return the car. Unfortunately, the grocery shopping wasn't as fruitful as it might have been, due to the fact that our freezer has mysteriously stopped working (which in turn means that we cannot get the fridge to cool down properly without running it for hours on end). We improvised by filling the freezer side with frozen water bottles from the supermarket and all was well, at least temporarily. Saturday night, we had our first meal aboard and watched the comings and goings from the compound on the private island in the bay, which reportedly is owned by the family that operates the "Flying Dolphin" inter-island hydrofoil ferries. Clearly a party was happening, with enough lights ablaze to illuminate a small town and guests being ferried back and forth from the Kilada dock in a constant parade. Late that night, we were treated to a sparkling display of fireworks that appeared magically from the direction of Lapisa.

After two days at anchor, Rick was ready to move on, but I begged for one more day in Kilada. I wanted to have just one more run along the dirt road that runs from the large church in the town to the tiny chapel on the point (a run that, if it were just a tiny bit longer, would be a contender for a Runner's World "Rave Run" designation). When we began our run at 0930, the day was already hot. Two elderly men sitting on a bench in the shade cheered us on in Greek, waving their fists, laughing and looking for all the world like the Statler and Waldorf characters from the Muppett Show. By the time we finished our run, a river of sweat was pouring off me. I waited outside our supermarket of choice, (where the owners by now know us as "the Canadians") while Rick went inside to buy water and ice. When he came back outside, he passed me a fistful of paper towels. "They said I should give you these", he said, "I think they find the idea of a woman running a bit strange". More likely they thought the idea of anyone running in this heat to be a bit strange!

The next morning, we finally motored out of the bay, snapping a few last-minute photos of the church and the island. I felt sad to be leaving, knowing that it was unlikely we would be back. Little did I know we would be back before sunset!

We had chosen Porto Heli as our first stop, since that seemed to offer the best possibility of finding someone to repair the fridge. Unfortunately, on the way to Porto Heli, Rick concluded that the maxprop has been set at the wrong pitch. (This probably also explained the new rattle at idle.) After phone calls to Dimitris in Crete, Bill LeBlanc in Halifax (who during the past four years has kindly provided long-distance advice on several occasions) and Evangelos in the yard, we decided we needed to return to Kilada and haul the boat to re-set the prop. The deal was that, if Rick was correct and the pitch had been set incorrectly, the haul-out would be free. If not...we would have to pay (520 Euros). "Are you sure?" I asked Rick nervously? "I'm sure", he said firmly. So back we went, arriving on time to watch one more Kilada sunset.