vas
Well-known member
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
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
).
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was issued by the only eligible company in Greece, BUT during the 8month period that their licence was retrospectively withdrawn by the naval ministry (for some odd and stupid reason I didn't bother to fully understand)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.
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:
day1:
day2:
day3:
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
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.
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
. 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...]

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
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
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.

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:

day1:

day2:

day3:

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

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.

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