MiTos 190nm delivery trip from Athens to Volos

vas

Well-known member
Joined
21 Jun 2011
Messages
8,091
Location
Volos-Athens
Visit site
Due to having to cross the tram line in Glyfada (elect. lines at 2.5m have to be opened to get the boat through) an appointment was fixed for 10:00am. Boat was lifted and was moved with no problems
onthemove.jpg


After checking insurance, boat ownership document and paying the 20euro fee to the marina master, boat was floating by 10:10am. I was instructed to moor (med way) in a reasonably wide spot, but have to consider it was my first go in her and the fb controls behaved very badly. Well, things didn't work exactly as planned with a sticking stbrd engine lever not wanting to move from reverse to neutral! and ended up scrapping (a wee bit) the air intakes on the stbrd side of a 1999 beautiful Cantieri di Pisa 80+ft mobo :( Skipper was very helpful, explained to me that they are going to paint the whole hull again in April when she's out and the owner most likely wont ask for compensation.
Secured the boat nicely and that's when beaurocracy hit us trice at the port office:

VHF licence was late to be issued (due to previous owner never having a VHF licence for the craft although there were two functional units in there :eek: ).
Certificate of boat safety (a 4yr examination in and out of water thing) was valid but invalidated by issue date. OK, bear with me on this one, certificate was issued by the only eligible company in Greece, BUT during the 8month period that their licence was retrospectively withdrawn by the naval ministry (for some odd and stupid reason I didn't bother to fully understand)
So, my mate had to visit the Pireaus central offices of the company, pay the reissue fee (120 odd euro) and get another doc issued that has the same expiry date, but has a (bogus) issue date that is after May 2011 when they were re-initiated...
finally, the 6th set of bl**dy ownership doc was still at old owners name (don't ask me why...) and had to wait for the only person in the office to issue a new one. Problem was that she was working evening shift so had to wait till 15:30 for her to arrive and do the paperwork.

Whilst my mate Giannis was driving around Athens to pick up and correct docs I was quite busy sorting out bilge pumps... Had already setup two, one at the aft lazarette and one at the engine bay. The first one behaved nicely, the second one was soon blocked from some sh*t found in there and had to replace it with a new one just to be on the safe side.
againinthebilges.jpg

There were leaks from the sea filter covers, quite annoying as mechanic had just serviced the engines and opened them up, cleaned them and resealed them. Ended up opening the one up, cleaning the rubber flange, realising that I was better off discarding it and using rubber silikone seal on the clean surfaces. 3/4 of an hour later, all was fine. Other filter was okayish on first day after a lot of tightening up the bolts, eventually stopped leaking on third day.
Futher, the dodgy patch (remember it's a plywood hull) done on the port side of the hull was leaking enough to worry me at the begining. Once I spend over an hour sorting out this pipework mess I had an emergency pump emptying the lot in 4-5 mins every half an hour or so. Also find the time to spray some lithium grease on the stbrd engine fb lever with no success.

Time of departure was important as I wanted to do the whole trip in two days which meant that the first 85nm had to be completed before 1:00am Wed morning in order to cross the Chalkis bridge.

Plan of trip from OpenCPN [really love this sw!]
overview:
opencpn_tripoverview.jpg


day1:
opencpn_day1.jpg


day2:
opencpn_day2.jpg


day3:
opencpn_day3.jpg



DAY1:
Eventually we left Glyfada port (with all docs in order, mighty impressed!) quarter to four in the afternoon (compared to 10:30 planned...). Wind had already picked up more than I'd hoped and soon after we left port was an increasingly uncomfortable NNE F5.
To make matters worse after running for a while and having the engines nice and warm travelling at 8kn 1200rpm I tried to get her up to plane unsuccessfully. Port engine wouldn't rev over 1800, strbrd was happily and swiftly up to 2400. Speed up to 15kn, rudders offset to compensate but wasn't much point. Enough black smoke from port engine had us back to displacement speed and wind picking further up.
By 18:30 it was dark but clear skies and just before full moon meant we could spot nasties and helm from the flybridge, still not the ideal situation on a new (to me) craft with various teething problems.
Passing Sounion and the temple of Poseidon was rather dark and had my only go at taking a photo which looks rather interesting and prooves it was indeed very bumpy :)
sounion.jpg


Turning north towards Marathon, things became even worse with a F6+ NNE, spray was regularly hitting us up there and it was rather wobbly and bumpy. Eventually dropped speed and after a good four hours it was obvious there was no way we'll make it to Chalkis in time. Checking on my laptop with OpenCPN (no dedicated gps plotter onboard) spotted and remembered the nicely protected bay of Marathon (from the famous battle, run, etc) and ended up anchoring there, couple of kms from the start of the annual classic Marathon.
marathon1.jpg

Second problem hit when dropping the anchor. Felt that not enough chain was out, I tried to get some more out and heard the windlass motor spining freely and not engaging! So, midnight come both of us trying to figure out what happened and I realised why most ppl lay out all anchor chain to clean and untangle it :rolleyes:. Anyway, for some reason it was badly twisted and there's probably no thermal cut/protection on the relays feeding the windlass, hence something fcked up in there. Got more chain out, settled securely and spend our first and well deserved hours sleep on board.


[to be continued as I hit the 10k characters limit...]
 
Last edited:

vas

Well-known member
Joined
21 Jun 2011
Messages
8,091
Location
Volos-Athens
Visit site
prt2

[continued]

DAY2:
Morning in Marathon bay, next pic pointing straight onto the start of the classic marathon just south of the village.
marathon.jpg


Was an early morning as I was worried with the hull leak amidships. After an hours work, rewired and repiped this mess to a decent setup with a float switch and a 900gph pump leading to the shower through hull outlet (so no shower for now - but rather be stinking than sinking!).
bilge_mess.jpg

Next job on the list was connecting my sony vaio running OpenCPN to the Cetrek 727 autopilot and secure the digital compass of said unit (easily done..) Having all the right manuals and diagrams looked like a dead easy job. However Cetrek used some never seen by me custom sockets to wire new systems onto the pcb, hence project was a nonstarter as I wasn't willing to solder plain wires in there. Will do it over the winter on the bench with decent lighting and proper care.
After further cleaning and checking, we set off in beautiful sunshine and calm waters to Chalkis.
cruising1.jpg

Passing through well known places (as I've spent most of my summers in Oropos and Varnavas in our seaside small house), relaxing under the sun and regularly retreating to the lower helm for protection against the sun (there's only a bimini frame left on the flybridge..).
varnavas1.jpg

varnavas2.jpg


There are some shallow waters in the channel leading to the bridge and a 6kn limit. First clouds of the day appeared, rather dramatic...
burgi.jpg

Passed under the new high bridge
chalkis_high_bridge.jpg

and 20 minutes later we reached the bridge and city centre.
chalkis.jpg

No windlass means we had to either anchor and lift manually (not happy about it) or find a side mooring in the marina to the east of the canal. Luckily I managed to find a spot and moor with both aft lines but no anchor! Yep, that's a patented med mooring, only saved by the exceptionally calm waters in the marina and me staying on board while Giannis went for the paperwork, souvlaki&beer and some food supplies for next day.
Crossing cost 18euro and we were informed that the bridge will open at 1:30am! Chalkis is the only place in Greece where one can see and feel the tide. Actually waters in the canal and under the bridge change 3-4 times a day depending on moon phase. FWIW, water speed under the bridge can reach inx 8knots so the time where the bridge opens is governed by the time tide changes and we get half to one hour of calm waters. Since we'd finish eating by 8pm and were rather knackered, we decided to sleep till 1:00 with the vhf on ch12 waiting for instructions.
Mind, fb port engine control was ripped off it's base on the mooring manoeuvres in Chalkis and my attempts to fix it with new screws revealed that the old detroit engine controls were wider to the vetus controls used now in the IVECOs and someone thought it was smart to use a 4mm ply to bring the size down. So 3mm dia wood screws keep a orthogonal frame over the larger hole and other 3.5mm screws "secure" the vetus controls on the 4mm ply. Well guess what, this mess was ripped off completely and ended up having to press tightly the assembly down with my left hand whilst moving the lever. Hence all difficult manoeuvering tasks had to be carried out from the lower helm...

DAY3:
Anyway, start of the third day at 2:00am under a full moon sky clearing after an hour or so and flat seas with only currents and couple of dozen fishing boats to worry about.

Couple of hours on the fly taking turns and having collected enough cold, moved to lower helm and continued for another two hours before dawn.
cruising3.jpg

Spend the next hour busy taking photos (some rather arty and very pleased with them) and eventually decided to have a go at fine tuning the autopilot.
dawn0.jpg

dawn1.jpg

dawn2.jpg

Someone had maxed rudder setting and soon after engaging the AP ship would oscillate off track. Figured how to change values and dropped it to 4 (out of 20) and we had a decent AP setup. This changed our life dramatically as we now started enjoying the trip, cleaning helm windows, cooking (err almost) without having to worry at where we were heading.
cruising5.jpg

Giannis prepared a v. tasty tuna salad and together with an almost greek salad (as in cucamber and tomato but no onions...), a kilo of some special bread and a few beers kept us busy for over an hour.
firstlunch.jpg

firstlunch1.jpg

By noon we reached Trikeri a small and very ondulated (in plan) island featuring a dozen or so bays, some protected from northerly winds that prevail and some from sw.
trikeri_village.jpg

Nice waters, calm with olive trees down to few meters from the sea. That's going to be one of the main areas we'll be spending a lot of time over the summer (and only 15-18nm from home port). Decided to have a good nose around, been there treking, camping but not boating as yet, and spotted a few lovely anchorages.
trikeri1.jpg

Eventually set route for Volos port where we arrived in time for late lunch.
arriving.jpg


Another friend (also named Giannis...) was called to sort out mooring and ended up side mooring near his P410 to avoid hand deploying the anchor. Marina is under reorganization and being off season it's first come first served, iow moor where ever you like sort of thing that suits me right.
mooredinVolos.jpg


Fuel consumption with engine speeds ranging from 1100 to 1250 (bar a few hours on restricted speed and the couple of hours on the F6 head wind on the first day) was a rather low 340-350lt for the 185-190nm trip, or less than 2lt/nm for displacement speeds.
Will report consumption figures for planning speeds once I figure out what's bodged on my port engine.

Conclusion, lovely experience, BUT you should never assume things work or whoever touched them had a fcking clue or could be bothered to get them up to scratch, expect for the worse, check everything one by one with great care and enjoy - if there's any energy left that is ;)
We finally were quite lucky with the weather, as Friday onwards temps dropped to 8C and this morning snow is predicted for the mount Pelion (half an hour drive north of Volos).
Will keep her in the sea till the end of the month, clean the bilges and spot leaks and other nasties, try to test LS1 and the other guys' suggestions on the port engine performance and then get her out and start the 6month refurbishment/refiting/layout altering/etc work

Would like to sincerely thank you lot that've being extremely helpful and clearly proving the power and the raison d'etre of such forums! Seriously I'd be having a very hard time alone on this project.

cheers

Vassilis
 
Last edited:

BartW

Well-known member
Joined
9 Oct 2007
Messages
5,236
Location
Belgium
www.amptec.be
thanks Vassilis, for this fine and détailed report,
I love to read these honest real live and challenging adventures.
When you show as much pictures from your refurbishment, I'm convinced you will get loads of advice here from the specialists, :)
good luck with the project !
and keep us posted.
 

sarabande

Well-known member
Joined
6 May 2005
Messages
36,065
Visit site
excellent post. I guess hlb will be pleased to see that ! A really good read; hope you have lots of (more) peaceful times in future.
 

MystereMarcus

Member
Joined
9 Feb 2010
Messages
253
Visit site
Vassilis,
great post and congratulations on your first trip (always fun!).
Did you have any work done on the hull repair before she was launched, I know you said you were going to get it fixed properly but you have also said she was taking on some water.
Keep us updated with the refit.
 

vas

Well-known member
Joined
21 Jun 2011
Messages
8,091
Location
Volos-Athens
Visit site
thanks for the kind comments

There's definitely going to be a looong thread on refitting/alterations/et al starting in Dec ;)
Story and photos is the least I can do to show what it felt like and looking now back, it was a really good experience albeit stressing at the beginning with water coming in from various places and dodgy fb controls... MM, only primed some bits that I'd scrapped, hadn't actually done any sealing as I assumed that she was only taking a little water and I could manage that for a couple of weeks.
Turns out the 900gph bilge pump operates every 15-20mins for 30odd secs at 30cm head. I visit the boat daily, check batteries voltage and amp consumption just to be safe.
Tomorrow will spend the day there with a large sponge, bucket and strong inspection light to clean one by one the sections of the bilges and spot leaks. Remember being a wooden hull means I have trusses/crossmembers every 35-40cm and each one can keep it's own water until it overflows 20cm up to the neighbouring compartments. Hope it wont take more than 2-3 hours to spot where exactly I have problems (although tbh I think I know pretty well, just not sure if there's something extra I'm missing)
Also being reading operation/service manuals for the Lofrans Tigres windlass and looks like my problem may only be a slack clutch and just a matter of tightening the wingnut although el windlasses are new to me and maybe missing something...

Weather is freezing cold over the last two days (now down to 5C) but forecast for the w/e is good with temps reaching 18C and sunshine so I'm taking the wife and kids plus some v.good friends out for a round the whole bay tour (so 40-50nm day trip), lunch on board and return by the evening. Just to whet their appetite for next year. Then come Tue I'll move her to the hard.

cheers

Vassilis
 

BartW

Well-known member
Joined
9 Oct 2007
Messages
5,236
Location
Belgium
www.amptec.be
Vassilis,
How long has the boat been on the dry ?

my experienced Italian Surveyor told me , that wooden boat hulls suffer a lot from being out of water (GRP is the opposite, need to dry ones a year...)

could this be one of the reasons for leaks ?
perhaps when the boat is in the water after a while, there will be less leaks ?
 
Top