Wednesday May 1, 2013
Had a more leisurely morning and enjoyed breakfast at the apartment before heading down to Necessity. Martin, our woodworker, arrived with questions about the wood we wanted. It will be 100 Euros for a piece of oak to fix the rubrail. We made arrangements to meet about 4:30 to review the other aspects of the job and then go to pay the wood guy. Rene and I finished up the last few jobs on board and with things looking good, went for a walk and lunch at a really nice restaurant high above the bottomless lake in Ag Nik. In spite of no octopus entre being on the menu, they indulged me with fabulous grilled tentacles and Rene enjoyed a risotto featuring shrimp with an ouzo pepper cream sauce.
Relaxed, we wandered around the town and then I took Rene back to the apartment and went to wait for Martin. As I waited, I stewed about the batteries. Last summer, even with the solar panels turned away from the sun, there was too much charging, leaving the batteries way over charged. The plan was to disconnect the solar panels altogether but there was some residual current draw which made this risky. So we will try to provide a load to use up most of the energy the panels create and I wondered how best to provide this. Martin finally arrived one hour late and we went over the worklist adding some repairs to the teak toerail and welding of some hairline cracks in the forward cleats. That finished, we went off to the chandlery (or swindlery, as he calls it) finding it closed and then on to the wood guy, who was not there either. Martin & I had a beer together while we waited and I learned that Martin was an engineer who had run large ships out of New Zealand for several years before retiring to his 50 yr. old 36’ racing yacht. He is also a diesel mechanic so if we cross paths again we will get him to have a look at the engine as well.
By the time I returned to Necessity the sun was going down and I started looking for a 12v plug to hook up a load for the solar panels. It took 3 plugs before finding one that worked with a bow light we had purchased some years back. Concerned I might miss the laundry pickup I scurried off collecting it and picked up Rene before going back to Necessity to finish up.
We had snacks at the apartment and finished some packing before bed.
Brian in Manos Apartments Ag Nik, Crete