Mile munching!.......

It’s two months since we turned around and headed westward; and we have now arrived in Gibraltar having covered around 2000 nautical miles to get to here.  

...from Kos to Gibraltar - 2000nm in 2 months!

We have largely been revisiting places we have been to before because the familiarity means we can go faster as we know where to anchor, we don’t spend time finding the supermarket and we know where the best repair facilities and engineers are to be found.  We spent a week with our favourite engineer, Juan Pedro in Cartagena, and we have invited him for a busman’s holiday to the Caribbean as we are bound to need him in the future – he said it was an interesting proposition 😊 

Strangely we are getting much more accustomed to travelling long distances without getting bored.  I remember the first time we crossed the English Channel to go to Cherbourg it seemed interminable and I kept saying ‘are we there yet?’ whereas now we are both content to be on line when we are near the coast and read and chat for hours when we aren’t. We arrive when we arrive and as long as no one is relying on us to pick them up, that feels like a pretty relaxed way to live in contrast with the stress of London and working life.    

It’s probably just as well we are acclimatising, because it is going to take three weeks to cross the Atlantic and we won’t have internet to entertain us. But we will have good company and people to play games with.

One of the most important things we have done whilst we have been returning is to have some solar panels fitted. Until now when we have been on anchor we have needed to run our generator for at least two hours per day to re-charge our batteries, which is noisy; expensive and not very ecologically friendly, so we have wanted solar panels for quite a while now. We decided to fit Solbian panels and found a dealer who could fit them in Lavrion near Athens, so our route West took us there - where we stayed for 3 weeks while the panels were manufactured and fitted. 

We are now officially off-grid

Lavrion is not the most exciting place in the world - one of the town’s top attractions on Trip Advisor is a disused conveyor belt. 

Rated on Trip Advisor

However, it was a bus ride away from Athens which we visited to see a wonderful performance of La Traviata at the Odeon of Herodes in the Acropolis.

We also visited some cool bars and ate some very good food whilst we were there.

Fabulous cured meats in Athens

A wonderful setting!....

Our route West took us through the Corinth Canal, which saved us several hundred miles of travel and we travelled in tandem with Mags and Steve on Silver Fox. It’s a pretty phenomenal piece of engineering but must be one of the most expensive stretches of water in the world. It cost us €280 for the 4 mile journey!

After the Corinth Canal we moved along the Gulf of Patras to the Ionian, making a slight detour to Preveza to meet Ed and his friends who were on holiday there before going to Fiskardo to meet our friends Liz and Simon. Not only were Liz and Simon celebrating the fact that they had just picked up their new 50ft catamaran, but it was also Liz’s 55^th birthday so we had a great time helping them party.

Liz had a great cake for her 55th birthday.

Our crew are taking their up and coming roles seriously.  Paul Haresign came out to help us move Viridian from Greece to Sardinia.  We met him in Argostoli in Kefalonia and sailed from there to Syracuse, where we stopped briefly for a couple of nights before moving on to Cagliari in Sardinia. It was a trip of over 600nm and several nights, so it was a good opportunity for him to get familiar with the boat, to get the spinnaker out and for us to practice our overnight watch system.  

It's so useful to have racing crew on board

Paul also got to sample my cooking and thankfully he is still coming! 

Pre-Atlantic training

One recent purchase for the boat has been a new fishing rod. We have decided that we will need to supplement our Atlantic diet with some fresh fish and since Greg rather carelessly allowed a fish to steal the previous one, we needed a replacement. He was trying out the new rod as we were sailing to Cagliari and no-one was more astonished than he, when he actually caught one! He is a bit too much of a sissy to take the fish off the hook, so I had to do that and then we had a debate about whether it was edible or not. In the end he threw it back because it was a bit small but we later discovered that it was a dorade or mahi-mahi and apparently very good eating.

Whilst in Majorca we had hoped to catch up with friends Ray and Cath on their yacht Cady but sadly we didn’t link up due to all of us being caught up in a terrible storm.  We were at sea and experienced a terrifying squall with 53knots of wind.  It was probably our most scary experience so far.  We survived it due to Greg’s skill and experience; he went into a higher level of awareness and command when I could see nothing and hadn’t a clue what to do. I didn’t take any photos of us actually in the midst of the storm as I was too busy hanging on for dear life but I did capture it approaching and us drying out everything when we got into Palma.

There may be trouble ahead!

Most things in the boat were wet...

Sadly, our friends’ yacht Cady anchor dragged and she ended up on the shore when three boats got anchors tangled in the storm.  She is still out of the water being repaired and we hope all will be well again for them soon.

So sad......

Lesley and Ian joined us in Majorca and sailed across to Ibiza with us.  Whilst we were in Majorca we decided to visit Nikki Beach because it is always a great fun place for people watching – we weren’t disappointed.

For my 65^th birthday I couldn’t resist one more night clubbing in Ibiza.  It may be a while before we are back here so wanted to make the most of the opportunity.  It was a great night.

Our dinghy motor wasn’t working again so we went out and bought a new Yamaha which Greg then said was my birthday present! ☹.  Greg seems very happy with my birthday present – his face lights up every time it starts.  Having received new sheets for the Genoa as my wedding anniversary present, I can’t wait to see what I get for Christmas!

My wedding anniversary present.....

.....and my birthday present - no cake, just an outboard motor!

After a lovely week, we waved goodbye to Lesley and Ian and then left Ibiza sailing overnight to Cartagena where Juan Pedro executed his magic on our electrics.  We then moved on to Almerimar, for a rig-check and then onto Malaga for some sail repairs. One of the great things about Malaga is that you can moor in the main harbour bang in the centre of the city - we always feel privileged.

A quite exclusive mooring. 

This is all part of our planning to get everything on the boat checked and repaired before we cross the Atlantic. It probably won’t last very long but at least we intend to start our Atlantic crossing with everything working……

We are staying here in La Linea next to Gibraltar for the next two weeks whilst Viridian has a facelift.  She is having her topsides painted in ‘Flag Blue’ and her tatty gold stripe will be restored to its former glory.  Thanks to Tim and Shane for their recommendation for the work after having Occo painted last year.  We are really looking forward to seeing Viridian sparkling in the sunshine as we continue the next phase of our travels down the Atlantic coast to the Canaries and we will post the before and after pictures on our next blog.