Ian has been ‘planning’ our stainless steel work in his head for the last eighteen months ever since he saw a gantry on the back of Kendipi. Bernard, an Austrian engineering Professor, told Ian about this stainless guy in Vlieho, Steel Marine, aka Stainless Phil, who had done an excellent job on his boat. Since then, ‘…when we get to Vlieho…’ has been our mantra and the solar panels have been waiting on the top bunk for nine months.
Well, finally, we are here! Phil has measured and on our return to Nidri the first fitting began. In order to have the work done more easily we have moored on the Neilson pontoon, where our yachting holidays began with training and a flotilla in 1999! So weird to be back here in our own boat, a feeling that we have been having ever since we got to the Ionian.
After two nights we were able to leave while Phil fabricated the other parts, now accurately measured from the first fitting. So we shot over to Meganisi and Abelike Bay. It wasn’t until we got there that we realised we would need to do a med mooring manoeuvre, but this time we needed to take shorelines and tie them to the trees to prevent Max swinging into her neighbours. Another new procedure, which took us ages to plan out and prepare, but you know what they say about poor preparation…..
Three nights here were idyllic, Ian had his first swim of the season and we even stirred ourselves to row to the beach and walk over the hill into Little Vathi, which has developed considerably since our last visit, but is still a pretty harbour.
Sunday lunch found us anchored in Sivota , another old favourite, all of five miles away, where we had another quiet night before returning to the Neilson pontoon on Monday morning ready for work to begin again.
The Neilson pontoon is full at the weekends with their boats all in, ready for the changeover with Sunday’s incoming flights from the UK. However, when they all leave, around Monday lunchtime, the pontoon space can be used by private boats for a fee of 10euros a night, water and electricity included. Finding a space after Monday can be tricky as people tend to stay for the week! As indeed we did as our stainless work grew, piece by piece, into the finished article by Saturday lunchtime, which was the deadline to leave again!
We really enjoyed working with Phil, who turned out to be as much of a perfectionist as Ian, thank goodness, and between Ian’s ideas and Phil’s ability to make it reality with a few tweaks; we are very pleased with the end result. Thank goodness Phil more than lived up to his reputation for quality of work and also turned out to be good fun, I have the photos to prove this, particularly the ones of him doing chin ups on our new outboard hoist, in response to my question about how strong it was !
During our week on the pontoon we were delighted to spot Nimrod coming into Tranquil Bay, friends from M Di R, and also to catch up with Maggie and John on Lazy Pelican at last. Will and Carole, on Muskrat, have also been in Vlieho for some work while we have been here so it has been a very sociable week.
Saturday night saw us anchored back in Vlieho, maybe you can see why the cruisers call it Velcro, as Ian now needed to fit the solar panels and we had visitors arriving on Tuesday!