As I type this we are just rounding the Southernmost point of the Greek mainland. According to Greek mythology this was the end of the world and the start of the underworld. This morning it is however all sunny and calm.
You can see our real-time location on NoForeignLand.com here:
https://www.noforeignland.com/map/boat/nakee
A few days ago we stopped in Kalamata, my first time there. Walking around the marina and port there, I confirmed what had I read, it is not very sheltered against Southerly winter storms, also indicated by most of the yachts in the marina having double stern lines with big metal springs in them.
Pitcha has been cooking up a storm, last night was steamed sea bass and Tom Yum Gai soup, very delicious.
Ship’s cat Leya seems to be getting used to the sailing. When we are beating upwind in 25 kts she tends to find a small space in the bunk bed cabin to squeeze herself into, so she does not slide around every time we tack while she is sleeping. During the days she finds shadows to sleep in and at around sunset, she patrols the decks and tries to spot fish in the water.
Today we are doing about 23 nautilus miles North to Kotronas to anchor for the night and to do some boat maintenance tasks like grease the in-mast furling mechanism and repair a hinge on a cabinet door.
When we reach Nafplio, where we plan to send a few weeks, I hope to be able to receive a replacement GPS antenna for the Vesper Cortex VHF / AIS system, as the original has failed, most likely due water ingress resulting from a cracked plastic housing.
Since the original part is no longer sold after Garmin acquired Vesper, I will try to mount the new (and unfortunately larger) replacement GPS unit that Garmin sells inside the “dashboard” on the coach roof so it is better protected. Fingers crossed that I don’t need to re-run a new 20 meter antenna cable through the inside of Nakee!
In the meantime, we are lucky that the Axiom 2 Pro chart plotter at the inside helm is equipped with an internal GPS, so I was able to reconfigure the Raymarine electronics to use that as the GPS source instead of the failed Vesper Cortex source. In the meantime however, we can’t broadcast our position over AIS. Thankfully as we are away from the overcrowded charter boat scene around Lefkada and here there is very little boat traffic.
