Permission to depart

Apparently, the term “muscle memory” appeared in the English lexicon between 1885 and 1890, although I must admit I wasn’t aware of it until I was an adult. It refers to the brain’s ability to perform repetitive tasks with little or no conscious effort. Examples include riding a bike, or playing a musical. Interestingly, the examples don’t include commissioning Missy Bear, despite the fact that this is the sixth time that we (or at least Richard) have done this.

By commissioning, I chiefly mean threading the rigging lines, getting the sails up, setting up the sprayhood and Bimini, and also fixing on the solar panels. Ok, I’m being a little harsh. It does mostly go without mishap, but there are always a couple of things that make us scratch our heads, and wonder how we did it last time.

After arriving in Leros on the Saturday at 04:00, we drove to a nearby beach to get some rest (there are no 24-hour hotels on this island). It was cold, and Richard ran the engine every now and then, to get ignite the heater and seat-warmers.

By 07:00, it was light, and we drove around to Café Luigi for coffee, and possibly some of her mother’s home-made meat pies. That was our first surprise – Luigi’s was no more. We found out later that the female owner had sold it, to become front-of-house in her husband’s sail making shop. The cafe had been taken over by a group of young men, who cheerfully made us coffee, and came out to admire the car. We skipped the meat pies, though, and went to Marietta’s for bacon and eggs. Sometimes other memory muscles work well.

At 15:00, the marina guys got Missy Bear off her yard storage, and lowered her back into the water. We spent a couple of hours starting to get straight, and then headed to our hotel, via the infamous gyros shop in Lakki – ‘Sou V Lakki’.

On Sunday, the proper work started, and over the next few days we got both sails up. Getting the mainsail on is a fiddly job, that requires the correct wind strength and direction. Richard wanted to try a different way of getting the spray hood up, which seemed to work well, until it was fully erect, when it just didn’t seem to be high enough. I can normally stand underneath it without bending but this time I had to duck. Plus, there was a lot of fabric bunched at the sides. It just didn’t seem to fit properly.

We tried tightening straps, pulling fabric this way and that. Practical Rob, from a neighbouring boat, jumped aboard and had a look as well. He came to the conclusion that the stainless framework needed to be extended. But why? We’d never had this problem before. Rob suggested ideas of slotting longer metal tubing over the original, but Richard was still scratching his head, disbelievingly.

I said, “Let’s just take it all off and start again.” And by doing that, we discovered that the tube frame on each side had been pushed inside the supporting frame to make it shorter and easier to store. Skipper had forgotten he'd done this! All we had to do was pull it out, and click the sprung nipples into the next hole. “Ta daa”, we could now get the spray hood fully erect.

General messing around

The weather window for getting to Turkey was looking good later in the week. We’d already met up with Jonny and Amanda, and it would have been fun to spend Easter weekend on Leros, and to see Judith and Al who were arriving on Good Friday. But we wanted to explore some of the Turkish coast, before our friends Lynn and Tony arrived at the beginning of May. So, reluctantly, we decided to depart on Thursday.

In the summer months, Leros is a ‘Port of Entry” for Greece, i.e., you can sail into it, and get your boat and crew checked-in at customs, and your passport stamped. We drove over to Aga Marina on the other side of the island to visit the passport office. “No, sorry, only open from summer.” They kindly rang around to find out which islands were open. It was either north to Patmos, or South to Kos.

We opted for the latter and tried to get a marina berth in Kos, but it was full as usual. So, we would have to moor up in the old harbour of Mandraki, under the ruined castle of the Knights of Rhodes. Our agent reserved us a spot, and told us to park up where the pirate gulets moor in the summer. Richard asked if he needed to apply mascara, or to dress-up as Captain Jack Sparrow! There was silence from the agent on the other end of the phone...

Thursday morning dawned. The marina staff start work at 08:00, commencing with a daily briefing meeting, so work actually starts at about 08:30. You are not supposed to leave your mooring without a marinero to help you.

One of our neighbouring boats had had to wait over an hour the day before.

Now, the same was going to happen to us. We radioed at 08:35 for assistance. No response, so we tried again five minutes later, to be told wait for 15 minutes. Half an hour later, Richard is threatening to leave, but I didn’t’ want to incur the wrath of Irene. I put my foot down. “No”. Eventually, Richard rang the office. He got through to Maria. “Oh”, she said, “Georgis is busy. Just go!”

So, we just went.

MB commissioned

New logo cushions from Jane Mackay! x