A Week of Sailing

Sorry that we have not blogged much this past week.

Being on the sailboat, a 46 foot Beneteau, has been both a blast and also a busy time working out the systems and kinks. Also, on the boat we seem to have less access to the internet.

The boat sails well, but with all sailing, there is a lot of problem solving.

The main problem is with an intermittent windlass remote. The windlass raises and lowers the anchor, and it has been misbehaving.

It has not slowed the trip, but has literally made us stronger, since we have been raising it often. Had someone fix it, but didn't really correct the problem. We would go up, test it before using, and it would work fine, but at the moment to raise or lower, it wouldn't work.

We finally determined a work around and determined the problem was the remote. With a insulated wire with to bare ends we can insert one end into the power and the other into the the up or down slot, we could make it work without the remote.

Anyway, we are figuring things out, eating great Greek food, sleeping well and overall enjoying ourselves.

The Ionian Islands are quite large and all we are really getting is a taste of them. They have high mountains on almost all of them. Kefalonia for example has 5,000+ foot high mountains.

(We are currently at an bar/cafe and at a table four young boys, probably 12 to 15 years old, are having orange drinks, cokes and playing tabli, also known as backgammon. Nice to see it is being played by the young as well as the old.)

We are amazed at how well google maps on my blackberry works for GPS locating. We do use the GPS unit on the boat and the charts, but google maps is usually within 3 meters of our location and provides a satellite photo of where we are, as well. In addition, we are able to get hourly weather forcasts for weather during the day and night.

The problem solving with the boat allows for interaction with others, both Greeks and other sailors.