Start of 2010 Cruising

We thought only a week to get Crazydream ready but in reality it took near on 3 weeks and then a further week socialising with friends who happened to be in the same area at the same time. Rassy Lady, Restless Lady, Vonasi and Marinerme were all happy to exchange sailing stories, technical problems with boats and generally put the world to rights, obviously over a few beers!
Now Beer was a problem, or rather lack of the right sort and size tins. Leros simply didn't have any we even had supplies brought in from Kos by Vonasi who had to make a visit there. So the need to move to an island that had the right stuff was needed.
Finally we managed to untie the lines and head north from Leros, we even persevered with the light wind and sailed the 17 miles to Lipso where funny enough Vonasi took our lines, oh dear, more drinking to be had! Its always difficult to tear yourselves away when you are with good friends but we did (after a few days) and sailed to Arki to celebrate our wedding anniversary in a taverna with great food and music. We had our first swim of the year here but really the water was not warm enough yet.
More sailing to the island of Fournoi, just outside the Dodecanese, a remote island where the wind notoriously howls. We choose light winds though getting there but when we left it was blowing 20 knots, we covered 30 miles in less than 6 hours which is good when you're sailing.
Finally we were able to replenish our beer supply on the island of Samos, 2 trolleys were loaded and the "beer cellar" on Crazydream filled. Samos is a good island to stock up from. We had toured the island last year with Matapan's crew, Geoff & Anne-Marie so we didn't explore again just dropped the hook in one of our favourite anchorages, Posidonion and stayed there 3 days.
With friends arriving in Kos in a few weeks we began to head south, sod's law the wind started to blow from the south, so a couple of sails to windward getting salt all over the foredeck had to be incurred, dropping in to the islands of Arki, Lipso and Leros, where we happened to have the first breakage of the year. The windlass (lets out and pulls in the anchor) jammed and thus broke the only non metal bit in it and Gordon had to then pull up 40 meters of chain with 20 knots of wind blowing - not easy! So we returned to Lakki Marina to carry out repairs to the windlass and complete a list of jobs that we had managed to come up with.

Still someone once said that "cruising is boat maintenance in beautiful places" - how true