Nisos Leros - Lakki Marina
19 May 2022
Jane Paulson
"In, Out, Shake It All About "
We're back. Absolutely thrilled to see Stiletto still afloat and in relatively good shape. I say relatively - after we left, apparently, there were three weeks of unrelenting rain that brought with it the dreaded orange Saharan sand. She was absolutely covered and I can tell you that it is an absolute bugger to get rid of.
Before I go any further, I simply have to sing the praises of this marina. The staff are amazing. Very tuned in to the needs of us yachties. We can be very demanding and always want stuff fixed or delivered yesterday! There doesn't appear to be anything that can't be done by very professional engineers. The lovely girls in the office are extremely knowledgeable and so very helpful. 24 hour security and regular patrols by the marineros means that we don't fret about our old gel. We would recommend this marina to anyone wanting to either visit short term or look to stay long term either in or out of the water.
We had a problem with our fridge. It is after all 15 years old and has been used hard - especially last summer when the temperature in the cabin reached 90 deg C. The local fridge engineer (named Andreas - the best men are, don't you know!!) came in December and fitted a new thermostat and sensor. Re-gassed it and job done. (Or so we thought. It too wants to retire and a week or so after our return has decided to stop working properly so the Engineer Andreas is coming back - I fear a new one is needed)
The shower pump, also 15 years old and worked equally as hard decided to retire so a new one has been fitted by the lovely Marios.
The engine has been serviced also by Marios and George. Excellent job done. And a new bow navigation light has been fitted by Paniotis . All this work was done before we left in February with a few bits completed in our absence. We had absolutely no problem with any of the engineers having access to Stiletto while we were away.
So, on our return, the next job was to get her lifted out of the water, scrub off her bum, check the propeller and integral rope cutter, do a general eye ball inspection of the copper coat and re-mark the anchor chain. We had this booked in for the week after we got back. Stiletto hadn't been lifted out for two years. In the past we stay on board while she is 'on sticks' but now have decided that we just don't want to do that anymore so we booked ourselves into a local hotel which meant we didn't have to climb up and down a steep ladder each time we needed a pee during the night and we would eat out as cooking and washing up was simply impossible .
We booked into The Bianco Boutique Hotel here in Lakki, and enjoyed the luxury of a lovely hot shower at the end of the day as well as freshly fried eggs the next morning.
With everything in good order, the next task was to get her back in the water, and afterwards we had 3 weeks back on our pontoon to finalise deck cleaning, check the main sail and genoa, give cupboards and lockers a real good shake up and get EVEN MORE stuff that we do not need off her before we left our berth and anchored out in the Bay of Lakki where we will await the arrival of Jack who is the great-grandson of Andrea's late mum's best friend. Got it????
Jack is joining us for two weeks. He arrives on Leros, we sail and then drop him off in Athens for his flight back to the UK. Jack is 25 years old, a Fireman, 6'5" tall and a Karate Champion. Hey...... I'm off the clock......... he can do some (if not all) of the grunting and grinding!!! We're delighted to have him on board - a whole new adventure awaits.
Just to keep you in the loop....... from Athens, we go all the way up the East Coast of the mainland, to the Turkish Border, along the way, visiting lots of island groups and it will take us about 5 months to do this clockwise circuit before getting back to Leros by mid November.
Muse for this post: some of the best adventures haven't happened yet .........keep on sailing !!!!