Seaclusion is Back on the Water 2022!

Having said our final goodbyes to our wonderful and adoring Daisy Doo, RIP, 2 weeks before our departure date for Seaclusion, we actually welcomed the distraction of having to put Casa Del Mar into her summer mode and doing the last minute prep for our trip.

Finally on the 20th June, we locked up the villa and headed to Malaga for our lovely night flight to Athens and then onto Kavala, arriving at 11am on the 21st, to collect our hire car… a new little Peugeot 108, a lot better than what we normally get in Greece and a lot more practical than the minibus we were offered last year!

We had actually booked a local hotel for a couple of nights rather than stay on Seaclusion whilst she was still on her stilts in the yard, to avoid any nasty accident such as falling off the ladder for the inevitable pee in the middle of the night, and in the hope there may be a little downtime in Seaclusion’s waking up process!

So we headed to check in before going to the boat, which probably set the scene for our emotional state that day, not helped by the lack of sleep! Hmmm….

We then headed to the Yard. To put you in the picture, the Yard only really had 2 authorised jobs to do over the winter, a complete overhaul of the engine and replacing a critical seal and, for those of you who remember our shenanigans with the dinghy last year, to repair and completely service it, and to keep it in their storage unit when completed for the winter, so we were expecting it to be immaculate. The engine bay did look amazing, like new, however the dinghy….

Seaclusion herself, well aside from the inevitable bird crap all over her, looked good too, having been polished without our instructions! Tired, upset about the dinghy, we decided to leave the conversation with Stathis, the yard owner until the following day, lest our tempers got the better of us, not a good thing when we needed him to put her back in the water! So we headed into Porto Lagos, the town people forgot, for a cold coffee before going back to the hotel for a siesta!. We did have a little chuckle at the toilet in the cafe, which helped to lift our spirits a bit…. Maybe that is the new them and they toilets..

That evening we headed over to Fanari for some life, souvlaki and 1/2 litre of cold red wine, cold to hide the quality, but also to take our minds off the bicycle stand!

The following morning, we headed back to the Yard to meet Stathis, who gave us some cock and bull about the dinghy only being put outside a couple of weeks ago… hmmm, not much more we could do on that front, except start the cleaning process, adding nanotech protection to the hull and start putting the safety gear etc back on. Now a cleanish dinghy, the fairy liquid came out to see if that appalling looking repair had actually worked… 😡😡😡, as the answer was no. with no time to fix it properly now, no doubt our blogs will have a few more shenanigans over the dinghy saga!

We did try to keep our sense of humour throughout, as you ca tell with David’s attempt at looking like a Samurai, with the benefit of our new fender ropes!

A couple of days later, we were as ready as we could be whilst on the hard, and it was launch day. A few hours later than agreed, caused by the discovery of a diesel leak into our bilges requiring a major flush through otherwise we would have spent the summer high on diesel fumes! Still we were happy to be afloat with no other issues , or so we thought!!

Next, the bill from the yard. Suffice to say we were there for 2 hours having a right old bun fight over the “additionals”, not surprisingly we wont be coming back here, despite the engineer, Christos, being great! We finally left the office at 6 to do the boat provisioning in Xanthi, and grab our first Gyros of the holiday! Shattered when we finally got back to the boat, we simply brought in the fresh food, leaving the heavy stuff till the morning, and climbed into bed.

The following morning we started unpacking the provisions, most important of which being the wine into our now spotlessly clean “cellar “, and firing up our immersion heater! Hmmm everything tripped at this point, so problems not quite over. At least we were still on one of the yard’s mooring, so a quick call to Christos brought him down to establish our element and sensor had corroded, thankfully they had a replacement available, so a few hours later we had hot water again! 🤪

So it is now the 26th and we were ready to leave Porto Lagos for one night in Fanari before the 34nm crossing to pastures new, the Island of Samothraki, and the proper start to our trip!

27th June 2022