January started out with a weigh in for three puppies, Lucy, Windy and Lucky. Luckily they all still just fitted in my Sainsbury shopping bag, and Marrianne managed to hold the bag scales long enough to get a reading. Lucy came in dead on 10 kgs, shes growing fast, but still the lightest between the three.

The weather in January has been fantastic, a lot more sunshine than wind and rain, and for me the temperatures were okay. The dehumidifer doing its job of keeping the inside of Nanjo dry and also providing enough heat to warm the boat. Life onboard was just a day to day of easy living.
I started to feel guilty after watching others cracking on with there jobs list. So, I decided that I would fit the wind indicator I brought out in April last year. My first big decision was that the wind pickup would not be mounted up the top of the mast as is tradition. I had met several owners last year who had the pickup mounted on the "A" frame on the stern. They all said that they were happy with the readings they had, so a no brainer for me then. A quick trip to my local metal shop and he found me a piece of alloy in his waste bin. A quick hacksaw/filing job and the pickup was mounted on the frame, the cable fed through my stern cabin and up to the hatch garage.
I had never been happy with the idea that to service/ access the gauges you had to remove the whole hatch garage. Plenty of screws and now I had the dinghy carrier bolted down as well. So, a solution quickly came to mind, and with the use of Peters multi tool, the gauges were cut out easily enough, and a trip to my metal shop for a piece of 3mm alloy plate, which cost 10 euros, and i was ready to make a card template up. My other decision was to remove the speed/distance log gauge, it's small paddle-wheel jams up everytime I stop for a few days. Needing a swim under the boat to free it off each time, despite putting on anti-fouling and every other trick i found on the net. I used the gps speed as a guide all the time anyway. The hole in the hull will be sealed up next year when Nanjos lifted out.
The plate was easily cut and shaped, three coats of primer and three coats of top coat and it looked okay. I then decided on the self tappers, at the time of choosing them and drilling the holes I was happy. It was only after finishing and having comments from others here that I realised that i had gone over the top a bit. 20 screws in such a small plate, is maybe overkill. But i'm happy in knowing it won't fall off and hopefully having the screws close together, means the butyl sealant will do its job! Time will tell I guess. I'm happy to say that once wired up and adjusted everything's working great and i can now see the wind speed and direction easily. It will be interesting to see just how much the wind backing off the main sail and wind gen will affect it. It was a job that took about 4 days to complete in the end, mostly removing cabin head linings and shaping the instrument plate.

All the dogs were weighed again on the 27th as they had all seemed to have grown so much. Lucy weighed in at 12.9 kgs and 46cm high. She's growing really fast now, and lifting her up out of the cabin to the cockpit can be fun if she wants to move about. God knows what it will be like when she's the vets 20 to 30kgs!!! I've been looking at getting a bigger boat with shorter steps at least. But so far, nothing in my price range.
The last week of January was simply gaugeous, plenty of sunshine. The Sunday bbqs were reinstated and we were all having a great time getting together.

When I had arrived at Messolonghi, one boat stood out and towered above all others. A large alluminium racing yacht called Sofi, her winches and fittings were huge, and we all heard that she was for sale at 105,000 euros. Cheap if you had big pockets to fix her up and crew her.
Well the second week of January, I was walking Lucy and noticed two guys climbing on Sofi. They turned out to be Gregory and Geoff, two great Americans who had just bought her, sight unseen apart from some photos. Over a long chat and a tour of the boat, they told me all about her. She was originally built by a multi millionaire and raced on the Great Lakes, called Sassy. She was built to the Maxi class and had a 4.5 mtr keel, weighed 40 tons and in her racing days had a crew of 25. Gregory used to race against her and had been following her life as she changed owners several times.
They planned to sail her back to the Lakes where she was built and restore her back to original spec. They had a lot of work to do and luckily had arranged for friends from the states to help them saill her home. After having her lifted out, the largest I've seen lifted here, and having some work done. She was ready to go. A bunch of us were hoping for a day sail while they tested her out, but because of the time wasted they just had to leave. Sofi (Sassy) sailed away from Messolonghi on Sunday 31st January, we were all having a bbq and were there to wave them all off, first stop Malta. She looked a sight as they motored up the channel. Fair winds and calm seas lads.