Noodling around in Nidri
Aug. 4th, 2007 07:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylNot much of a sail today. After sitting with the sails up for an hour or so waiting for the wind to pick up, we gave up and motored down the Meganisi channel to Nidri. We found a spot on the key at Nidri next to a guy who had his kedge out a thirty degree angle and, despite trying to avoid it, we still managed to drop our anchor over it.
Just as we were preparing for lunch, the guy along side started to show signs that he was about to depart. After a brief discussion, we decided to clear the desks just in case we had to do something to get clear of the guy's anchor. When we mentioned the problem to him, he didn't seem all that bothered. He simply untied his kedge, asked us to pass it under our chain and back to him. He then started to move out very, very slowly, attempting to take up both his anchors as he did so. His lack of speed and the strength of the wind mean that as he moved out, he was gradually being pushed down on to us and was in serious danger of fouling himself on our chain. While pater and mater were standing in the bows gorping (pater claimed afterwards that mater had her feet on the anchor locker, further delaying any action), I fired up the engine and started pushing hard away from the quay. Realising what I'd done, pater dropped our chain just in time to prevent the departing guy from getting hideously tangled on us. Phew.
Once we'd tightened our chain back up and chomped down our lunch, we spent some time congratulating ourselves on the smooth way we'd handled things. As we were doing so, someone from the port authority came alone and told us we'd have to move because a load of tripper boats were going to arrive shortly and needed to make use of the quay (there was a no mooring sign, but it only appeared to apply to a short section of wall).
We quickly moved round and found a spot on the fishermans' quay a hundred metres further down and tied up as usual. Then, just as we finished tensioning the anchor line, the windlass stopped working. Pater and I spent the rest of the day checking the breakers, tracing the windlass circuits, testing the solenoid and the control lines, all of which appeared to be in perfect working order. When pater extracted the end cap from the windlass motor, we detected a suspicious smell of burning and found some flecks of ash. Investigating further, we found that the connection between the neutral and one of the brushes had burnt out and needed to be re-soldered.
Our initial attempts to fix the problem were not successful. Pater managed to screw the butane cylinder on to his blowtorch in such a way that immediately fell off again and started venting flammable gas all over the place. Once he'd found a replacement cylinder and failed to get the joint to solder correctly, he decided to disconnect the entire thing and take it to the electrician. Good thing he did because the insulation on the cable had started to go and the whole thing needed to be replaced.
When pater eventually got back from the electrician, we went to the Ionian for supper. It was very busy, probably because it's both very cheap and very good, so it took a while for the food to arrive. I had fasolakia, the nephew had spaghetti with cheese (he always does), pater had liver and onions, while mater had prawns.
I went back to the boat to pack my stuff almost as soon as we'd finished. The others wandered around Nidri and the nephew pronounced his opinion on the native american musicians who were playing an Andrew Lloyd Webber set.
Just as we were preparing for lunch, the guy along side started to show signs that he was about to depart. After a brief discussion, we decided to clear the desks just in case we had to do something to get clear of the guy's anchor. When we mentioned the problem to him, he didn't seem all that bothered. He simply untied his kedge, asked us to pass it under our chain and back to him. He then started to move out very, very slowly, attempting to take up both his anchors as he did so. His lack of speed and the strength of the wind mean that as he moved out, he was gradually being pushed down on to us and was in serious danger of fouling himself on our chain. While pater and mater were standing in the bows gorping (pater claimed afterwards that mater had her feet on the anchor locker, further delaying any action), I fired up the engine and started pushing hard away from the quay. Realising what I'd done, pater dropped our chain just in time to prevent the departing guy from getting hideously tangled on us. Phew.
Once we'd tightened our chain back up and chomped down our lunch, we spent some time congratulating ourselves on the smooth way we'd handled things. As we were doing so, someone from the port authority came alone and told us we'd have to move because a load of tripper boats were going to arrive shortly and needed to make use of the quay (there was a no mooring sign, but it only appeared to apply to a short section of wall).
We quickly moved round and found a spot on the fishermans' quay a hundred metres further down and tied up as usual. Then, just as we finished tensioning the anchor line, the windlass stopped working. Pater and I spent the rest of the day checking the breakers, tracing the windlass circuits, testing the solenoid and the control lines, all of which appeared to be in perfect working order. When pater extracted the end cap from the windlass motor, we detected a suspicious smell of burning and found some flecks of ash. Investigating further, we found that the connection between the neutral and one of the brushes had burnt out and needed to be re-soldered.
Our initial attempts to fix the problem were not successful. Pater managed to screw the butane cylinder on to his blowtorch in such a way that immediately fell off again and started venting flammable gas all over the place. Once he'd found a replacement cylinder and failed to get the joint to solder correctly, he decided to disconnect the entire thing and take it to the electrician. Good thing he did because the insulation on the cable had started to go and the whole thing needed to be replaced.
When pater eventually got back from the electrician, we went to the Ionian for supper. It was very busy, probably because it's both very cheap and very good, so it took a while for the food to arrive. I had fasolakia, the nephew had spaghetti with cheese (he always does), pater had liver and onions, while mater had prawns.
I went back to the boat to pack my stuff almost as soon as we'd finished. The others wandered around Nidri and the nephew pronounced his opinion on the native american musicians who were playing an Andrew Lloyd Webber set.
