Domestic Improvements

We’re currently sitting in the ‘conservatory’ or cockpit tent to give it its proper name, J knitting furiously and me writing the blog. The weather has taken a turn for the worse, with heavy clouds appearing from the south and a spattering of rain, after several days of lovely sunny weather.

The last post left you as we were looking at the second night of high winds and stormy weather; it arrived as predicted and dumped another small sea of rain on the place, joining the lot that arrived the day before and creating an inland sea in places as the rain water failed to run off in time, leaving us to paddle to the loos.

Rampage in her new berth and minus her sails

We’ve met up with another couple, Alan and Bern, who also have a Bavaria 38, although theirs is the 2 cabin version. After a couple of evenings out drinking together and meals on each other’s boats, we decided to move berths so as to be closer together, as Bern and Alan were going to be going home over Christmas whilst we are going home in the new year – we could therefore look after one another’s boats. So we moved over onto M pontoon, away from the centre of the marina and we’re now facing north/south, with the stern to the south. This means we get the sun all through the day, a great bonus at this time of year, as it make the conservatory nice and warm.

Initially, we expected to be able to share Alan and Bern’s company for a few weeks but they had to change their plans as Alan’s Dad was not well and they needed to return to UK to help the family resolve care issues. They left on Saturday morning, dragging us from our sleep (well, beds) somewhat earlier than usual to say farewell.

Now, we need to bring you up to date on a few things. Firstly, the cooker on board Rampage has died of old age and general decrepitude. The final straw came when I nudged one of the rings and the screw holding it all together disintegrated; no matter what I did, it wouldn’t stay lit after that (the rings have a flame failure device, which stops the flow of gas when they cool down, thus preventing a buildup of gas in the boat, which would lead rapidly to an explosion). J and I conducted a lot of research into a replacement cooker, expecting to put off buying one until we were in UK in the new year, as boaty things tend to be a lot more expensive out here.

A hole where the cooker ought to be...

I asked for advice about the type of cooker as a replacement on the liveaboard forum on the internet and the answer that came back was to buy an Eno cooker (it’s French but I can just about live with that). As it happens, Alan had just replaced his cooker with an Eno, so we could have a good look at one already in situ in the same sized hole on their boat. So we priced them in UK and then trotted off to the local chandlers, expecting to pay 25 – 50% more over here. To our enormous surprise, the cooker was actually cheaper out here by about £200. Needless to say, we ordered one on the spot! Delivery was promised within a couple of days, so we sat back to await the call from the chandlers announcing its arrival.

In the meantime, as well as moving on to M pontoon, we’d taken the sails down from Rampage. This is partly to prepare for the winter and partly so as to be able to measure the sails up for replacement. The current suit is the originals supplied with the boat and they’re getting a bit long in the tooth. Rampage is now looking a little bare without any sail bent on to her rigging. We’ve asked a number of sail lofts to quote for the supply of a new set and we’re now sorting through the replies before deciding on which one to go for. One thing we have discovered is that there isn’t any such thing as a simple ‘suit of sails’. There are more options than you could get with a new car and the spread of costs is astounding: quotes have varied from an all singing set that Ellen McArthur would have been proud of to a more pedestrian set which will suit us!

Anyhow, back to Saturday and our disturbed lie in. We popped out to the shops to get bread and stuff for breakfast and called in at the chandlers to see if the cooker would appear that day; we were assured it would, so after breakfast, I removed the old cooker and dumped it on the pontoon. J has been trying to persuade me to fix the immersion heater in our water system for some time now (like, ever since we got Rampage….) so on Saturday, I finally gave in to the repeated suggestions and started to work on the thing.

The first thing we had to do was to clear all the ‘stuff’ out of the port cabin, so I could get at the water heater after which I had to remove some pipes and tilt the cylinder up a bit so I could get at the heater element. I then had a great time actually extracting the thing; as it came out, all the water in the cylinder (about 20 litres) came with it! With no real hope, I then trailed off to the chandlers, hoping that they might have a replacement: to my delight that had one, which I then brought home and fitted, restored all the pipe work to its original state, refilled the water system and turned the immersion on. Now, the thing is only 500 watts (the one in your domestic system is in the order of 2,000 – 3,000 watts) so it takes time to warm up about 40 litres of water and a nervous time was had waiting to see if I got it right or if I would need to do anything else to the thing. Needn’t have worried as ½ an hour later, we had water that was hot enough to scald yourself coming from the taps. Result.

The cooker, however, was another matter, as it didn’t turn up before the chandlers shut on Saturday, so we wound up going out to eat that evening as we only had a camping gaz type burner to cook on. On Sunday, we made a bean stew with a pack of dried beans we’d bought in Gibraltar last September!

J admires the new cooker

Monday finally saw the arrival of the cooker; it had arrived on Saturday but just as the shop was closing. It took me about ½ an hour to fit it: it is such a close match in size that it needed no work on the mounts at all, just a new gas connection hose. J is thrilled to bits with it, as it has electronic ignition and is all lovely and new…..

Anyhow, the weather on Monday was so nice we decided to cycle into Corfu town and have lunch there and do a bit of window shopping. Off we set at about 1.30, got to town in about 30 minutes and had a very tasty gyros for lunch. Things were beginning to shut for the afternoon break by this time, so we strolled back to the bikes, only to find that J’s had a puncture. I therefore cycled back to Gouvia (5 miles), picked up the repair kit, cycled back to town and fixed the puncture and then cycled back again to Gouvia. I’m feeling a little stiff today after all that unaccustomed exercise! J used the time while I was gone, to further explore Corfu town. Everywhere was shut but she was delighted to find a “Christmas shop” and also that the M&S here sell crackers. Christmas is far more low key here and we certainly won’t be attempting to roast a turkey in our new cooker but she is keen to have a few seasonal decorations and bits of food.

Right, that brings us pretty well up to date – watch out for the next “exciting” episode!

Preparing for Winter

I know that this will surprise some people, but here we have a second entry on the blog within a couple of days of a previous post. The reason is pretty simple – once J had finally put finger to keyboard and caught up with her trip back to UK and Ireland, there was a still week’s worth of news to let you know about since her return to Rampage, so here goes:

J got back to Gouvia on Friday 29th October at about 11pm, after a boring but on-time flight on an almost empty plane. It was great to have her back and she didn’t do an immediate inspection of Rampage to see if she’d been kept up to scratch in her absence. The one thing that J did spot immediately was that I had washed one of the seat covers whilst she was away and the difference between that one and the others was amazing.

The net result of this was that we decided to take all the covers off and get them washed and dried in the laundry. The resulting return to a proper blue set of upholstery was great and a complete surprise to us both – we had thought they were faded and stained and had been expecting to have to replace them all this winter but the trip to the washing machine had resolved the matter for at least the next year or so. Result!

The pontoon with the flotilla boat's tenders being cleaned before being put away for the winter.

J returned to a marina that was a positive hive of activity. The final charter holidays of the season finish with a race around the islands just off Gouvia Bay. All the charter boats were gathered in the marina so it was very full and there was great excitement. After the race, there was a big, noisy party in one of the marina bars. As we weren’t invited, we stuck our noses in the air and went off to “Zorba’s” for supper with Andy and Sue from “Curly Sue.” Next day all the holiday makers had gone – flying home on virtually the last Sleazy Jet flights of the year out of Corfu. It was then that the army of workers sprang into action, cleaning and prepping the vast fleet of charter boats before they are lifted out of the water. At one point there must have been 80 to 100 boats with their sails out drying in the sunshine prior to being taken down and stowed. I really regret not getting a photo as it was quite a sight to behold.

Although the weather forecast was good for the next few days, we had decided not to go anywhere as James and Chrissie from Bear Necessity were hoping to come out to put their boat ashore for the winter and I’d agreed to help them do the preparation work. We didn’t know when to expect them but were happy to await developments. In the interim, we cycled into Corfu town and did a bit of shopping for a picture frame – turned out that the local supermarket had some so we needn’t have bothered – and visited the local hardware shop to buy some more floor mats for the winter.

James and Chrissie as Bear Necessity heads for the fuel berth.

Tuesday brought James and Chrissie, so we cracked on with the job list to get their boat ready to hibernate through the winter. I spent most of the next couple of days working with James to take down the sails, get the engine serviced, the holding tank flushed through and countless other tasks sorted before Bear Necessity was lifted out of the water on Wednesday afternoon in a fairly horrid downpour.

On Thursday evening, we gave James and Chrissie fajitas for supper and next day joined them for a trip round the north of the island in their hire car. They flew back to UK the following morning, whilst we set off to spend a couple of days out of the marina, as the weather forecast was good for a couple of days.

James meets a fajita for the first time.......

Initially, we were going to go to Gaios on the island of Paxos but we were a bit late leaving so went back to Platerias instead. We moored up there on the quay and were all settled in for a pleasant evening when the boat suddenly started to shake in a very worrying manner. Dashing up on deck the cause became obvious; a large motor boat was attempting to leave and had fouled our anchor. I don’t think the skipper realised what he’d done and was trying to free himself by using the power of his motors; the result of this was that he was trying to pull Rampage off after him. Thankfully, the mooring lines held and he eventually realised what had happened and was able to free his anchor and leave us in peace. However, his efforts had broken our anchor out of the bottom and left us insecure, so we had to cast off, lift the anchor and reset it. This didn’t take long but it did break into our peaceful evening.

Rampage in Platerias - note natty new Blue Ensign.

The following morning we set sail back to Gouvia into threatening clouds and a nice wind, which enabled us to sail just about the whole way from Platerias to Gouvia, which was a great feeling. The new compass fitted to the autopilot also worked once it had been properly calibrated, so that we had a nice leisurely sail without needing to steer all the time.

Ouch - sailingholidays.com boats playing at being dominos.

The main reason we had come back to Gouvia was the poor weather forecast, which showed strong winds and rain due to come through during Sunday night/Monday morning. In the event, the winds were a good deal stronger than forecast and the rain was torrential. It hit about 5 am this morning, with winds gusting to 70 mph, sheet lightning and rain by the bucketful. We were kept awake by the winds and noise and by the motion of the boat as the winds battered away at the marina. This morning it became apparent that there had been some damage caused in the marina – apart from the usual lack of electricity. Some boats in the yard had been knocked down by the wind, some of the outer pontoons had broken their joints and some of the lazy lines had parted company from their mooring blocks. All in all, an entertaining time. And the winds are due to reappear tonight.

It's meant to be straight and level....

Anyhow, that’s us up to date and if there’s any further news after the wind tonight, we’ll put up another post!

.... so's this one as well!

Julia goes visiting!

Grand-daughter, Lily Byrne aged 7 months

 Well our ambition to produce short posts every few days has been spectacularly unsuccessful but not to worry. In view of the fact that I took a pop at the Skipper for being dilatory in posting anything up in my absence, I think it is my turn to write something now. I have been back in Corfu for just over a week after a wonderful trip to the UK and Ireland and will bring you up to date with what we’ve been doing since then in my next post. First though, a short resume of my trip:

The first few days were spent at the home of Duncan’s sister, Jinny. She had invited her daughter Anna, to come and stay with her little girl, Eleanor (just 1 year) and at the same time invited Naomi and her three: Charlie (nearly 6,) Jessie (4½) and Lily (7 months.) I felt that this was far too much fun to miss and therefore asked if I could come and join them. It was lovely to spend time with them all and Jinny’s husband, Charlie (aka Big Charlie) coped remarkably well with so many women and children invading his peace. It probably helped his sanity that he needed to be out working on the farm most of the time! The weather was beautiful for this first part of my trip – a real Indian summer and Naomi’s children loved the big rambling farmhouse and enormous supply of lego! On the Sunday Jinny and Duncan’s parents and their other brother, Mike and sister, Susie joined us for lunch and then most people went for a walk in the autumn sunshine. Sadly I have no pictures to share with you of my time at Bank Farm due to poor admin on my part (the memory card on my camera was full so I couldn’t take any pictures while I was there.)

As well as the time with the family, I also managed to see our great friends and former neighbours, Jean and Al Mossford, Sally and John Pollard and other “drinking friends” from the Red Lion in Malpas, some of the ladies from St Joseph’s UCM and my friend Paula from my days at M&S Money.

Jessie in her favourite "Sleeping Beauty" outfit

Naomi and I then travelled back to Ireland together with her three littles. The journey was longer than it need have been due to the fact that we managed to miss the train from Chester and as a consequence, also the ferry from Holyhead, but apart from that all went well. I spent nearly two weeks in Ashbourne, playing and looking after grandchildren, meeting some of Naomi’s friends and generally having a really lovely time. The house was decorated for Halloween and on several occasions so were the children! Lily learnt to blow raspberries while I was there, (an invaluable life skill,) Jessie and I decorated one another with face paints one day and Charlie managed to get into the most indescribable mess eating spaghetti, aided and abetted by Granny. It was fabulous.

Susie also had a trip to Ireland then and we were able to travel back together, stopping briefly to drop off baby things for my nephew Rob and his girlfriend Katie who are expecting a baby later this month.

Mr Spagetti Face!

The last part of my trip was spent staying with my dear friend, Maggie and her mother, Betty. Polly, bless her, drove all the way up from Cornwall to join us for a couple of days which was just fantastic. Mags’ brother, Richard, together with his wife and daughter came over for lunch one day and my last night, Maggie’s sister, Helen, came up from her home in South Wales so I saw most of the Williams family while I was there! As well as that I managed to spend an evening with other friends from M&S Money and Maggie and I even met up with our friend and fellow “Stunning Ruin” Kath. Kathryn lives outside Newcastle but came over with her daughter, Josie, to visit her parents who live in the Wirral, where we joined them all for lunch. On my last morning in UK, Maggie drove me over to Wrexham to visit Mike’s wife Jane who is recovering from an operation and then it was off to Manchester and the flight back to Gouvia. Packing to return had been quite a challenge as I had been doing a bit of shopping while home and in addition, D had been shopping online for the boat. Among other things I had to find space for 35 metres of rope to make new Genoa sheets which alone weighed 5 kilos! However I managed to get it all back safely and with no excess baggage charges and received a warm welcome from the Skipper on my return.

Lunch at "Clifton", the Williams' family home

I had a wonderful trip and it was just so great to see everyone. A very big thank you to everyone for their hospitality! My only regret is that Duncan was quite surprised that I had not spent more money while I was away. I’m sure I could have done better if only I’d known ….

Lunch with the Mannix family!