Captain Crash and the Cauldron!

Hi everyone. As usual I have left it far too long to blog and thus have way too much news to impart, therefore rendering me confused as to where to start!
I think I will start with a little 'boat bollocks' which those of the maritime persuasion may find a little amusing (and maybe useful!). This incident in our lives has given Craig ammunition that women should definately not wear bras on boats.
To cut a long story short, we had been searching for our flux gate compass on the boat for 7 months. Our commissioning agent had been unable to find it and subsequent searchings by ourselves had had a similar outcome. A flux gate compass is made up of coils of wire that provides a reading in electronic form which can be digitised and used by the ships autopilot for course correction. We had noticed some wild variations between our flux gate output and our normal compass and were concerned that wherever it was positioned it may have some metal objects nearby causing the discrepancies. If only we could find it!
To be honest, I wasn't really sure what I was looking for so wasn't much help. Our friend Steve (who conveniently comes packaged with oodles of experience and is currently the skipper of Zanetia) got in on the act and we were still scratching our heads. We started to think that the occassional wild swingings of the autopilot were a raymarine fault which we would have to have corrected. Kathleen, however, came to the rescue when she located a small black box in one of the cupboards in the forward cabin! We had found the offending flux gate!
All metal objects in the cupboard were removed and things seem to have improved. When the girls left the boat, I duly returned all my underwear to their home, making sure of course to not place any metal items into the cupboard.
A few days later I was rummaging around in the cupboard trying to find something and the autopilot started to swing wildly again. Craig reported a 60 degree discrepancy between the compasses and starting to adopt that patronising voice. You know the one..... "What have you done now!!!" and words to that effect. It turns out that the wires in my bras had been responsible for the problems all along! Ah well, looks like saggy boobs coming on..... That's a new one for the manuals, isn't it? Along with checking that pots and pans, electronic equipment, cockpit speakers, beer cans etc etc have to be kept away from compasses, Shirley Valentine can now add bras!
Back to our trip. We had an enjoyable but busy time with Kathleen and Helen. The day we picked them up from the airport at Athens we headed to the Acropolis in Athens by bus from our hotel. Although it was very hot and sticky, the girls coped very well as we trecked around the ruins. We returned to Shirley Valentine in Messolonghi that night in our hire car amidst a few raised eyebrows from the girls about the driving in Greece. One memorable character was 'hat man' who was travelling along on his motorcycle at about 130 kms with a straw 'pork pie' style hat on. We could not believe that it would stay on! He did occassionally adjust it but it stayed put. The funniest part was when a policeman on a motor cycle overtook him and took no notice of the lack of helmet! (There is a 400 euro fine for not wearing a motor cycle helmet in Greece but no-one seems to police it! I think that they could solve all their economic problems just by policeing this one small part of humanities failings).
The following day we still had the hire car and decided to head to Delphi to consult the oracle. We had a lovely drive up the mountain and lunched in Delphi town before heading to the archeological site. We wandered around making it right to the stadium at the top and had a gander at the area where the oracle is reported to have been positioned.
After our meanderings we headed for the museum which houses a multitude of ancient relics found at the site. One such item was a massive bronze cauldron on a metal tripod (about 2700 years old!). This was situated on a platform in between two large glass cabinets, also full of ancient bronze relics. Craig was standing between Kathleen and Helen gazing in awe and was so overcome that he stumbled on the platform when he turned and fell, heading straight for the bronze cauldron. Remember that this article has survived for 2700 years! Craig hit the cauldron and it toppled, in turn heading for one of the glass cabinets. I could feel a Mr Bean moment coming on. I am now convinced that Craig has missed his calling as a world cup goal keeper as he somehow managed to catch the cauldron before it hit anything else! He pulled it roughly back into place and stumbled away with a VERY red face. I pretended that I wasn't with him and so did the girls. Poor Craig. Every tourist in the place was staring at him and one guy came over and whispered 'Just keep walking mate!' into his ear. I thought Kathleen was going to have an accident she was laughing so much. I am sure that if you visit Delphi the cauldron will now be safely ensconsed in a glass cabinet! We christened Craig 'Captain Crash' and this title lasted for a good few days.
After returning to Shirley Valentine we recommenced our travels and visited some old favourites and some new ports of call. One place of interest was Sami on Cephalonia which is very close to where parts of Captain Corelli's Mandolin was filmed. We visited some caves (Mellisani and Drogarati) which were very pretty, but not the most impressive caves we have visited with Drogarati in particular having been seriously altered to facilitate tourists. We lunched between Sami and Eufemia in a restaurant where the cast and crew of the movie used to hang out and saw many photos of Penelope Cruze etc looking very normal and relaxed in the beautiful surroundings. Our waiter (George) was incredibly helpful and filled us in on the history of the area. Most of Cephalonia was destroyed by the earthquake in 1953 with only Fiskardo remaining mostly intact, apparently due to the clay / rock bed that it is built on.
Another highlight in Sami was Kathleen and I's water devining skills. We had been told that there was water on the quay which was littered with man hole covers but nothing obvious jumped out to meet us. Craig took off to the port office and Kathleen and I, equipped with any type of implement that we thought might act as a jemmie set off along the quay, prising up cover after cover. After about 5 attempts we struck gold!! We proudly filled the tanks and sat back feeling very proud of ourselves! Craig actually heard the news by despatch at the port office and after we were finished all the boats at our end of the quay took advantage of our find. Just shows that girls can accomplish 'blue jobs' quite effectively.
Kathleen took to the boat like a duck to water and was soon taking the helm and pulling ropes etc etc on cue! Pity she's looking at buying a motor home! She would make a great crew member.
We also had a very memorable road trip to Meteora where there are about 16 monasteries built on the top of limestone pillars, 5 of which are still 'working' monasteries. The only downside for me was how touristy everything was and the monasteries seemed to lack the quietness and solitude that you would imaging finding in these sorts of places. The lodgings that we found were adorable (the Koka Roka owned by Maria and Albert) and were situated right at the base of one of the columns. We met a lovely young lad called James who is an archeology / anthropology student from New Zealand who seemed quite happy to spend time pushing old ladies up the hill. He was great company and full of useful information. We really enjoyed our time with him. The walk up to Agios Stephanos was amazing and we then visited two more monasteries by car. The area is amazing and well worth a visit to anyone who happens to be in this part of the world.
After our return to Shirley Valentine, we had the priveledge of once again spending some time with Keith and Sue from Broke Aweigh. Many hours were spent discussing tactics for the 'big race'. The boys even tried to convince the pink people that maybe we should all sit on one of the boats doing our nails while they put in a 'real' attempt at winning the race, but Kathleen and I would not be put off. Well, we had bought the T shirts, hadn't we!
The day of the race dawned and after the blue people scraped Shirley Valentine's hull (thanks for the help Keith!) at Port Atheni on Meganisi, we headed for the start line. Let's not do a long post mortem of the race, but the short version is that about 35 boats got out of the Meganisi channel before the wind died. The fleet was split in two, with the frustration for us being that we were well up the fleet going over the starting line and were almost at the front of the masses of boats that were becalmed. Poor Kathleen was determined not to retire, but when we had spent over an hour looking at the same rock (and going backwards at one point) we had to call it quits. We didn't think they would keep the line open till midnight! We did have the pride of knowing that we were one of the last boats to retire however (Broke Aweigh and our friends, Chris, Hermione and family had retired hours before us), but this then left us with the problem of where we were going to moor in Sivota post race.
We had had a visit from Steve and Sarah from Zanetia during the race who came to snigger at us in their dinghy. As we pottered into Sivota we were amazed at the amount of boats crammed into the tiny harbour and our hearts sank. We then saw Steve waving at us and were soon snuggly tucked up alongside them on the quay. Isn't it great to have friends in high places. The highlight of the race for everyone was a 10 year boy in a topper dinghy who was one of only 35 boats to finish the race. He was given a standing ovation as he entered the harbour after about 5 hours of sailing. Please note that those who got wind had been out in about 30 knots so this little kid was one brave lad. I think if the committee had closed the line before he crossed they would have been lynched. We had a great party that night and had dinner ashore at our favourite 'No Problem' taverna.
We caught up with Steve and Sarah again in Nidri and spent a very special couple of days getting free tuition on many aspects of boat management and maintenance. Have lots of whipping to do now! Congratulations on your wedding plans guys and thanks for your time and expertise and your company!!!
Anyway, Maggie is now with us and we are winding down again. Our trip to Athens to do our crew change was uneventful this time around and everything went to plan. We stayed in the Holiday Inn near the airport again and managed to gate crash Maggie's room which saved us some dollars.
Are sitting snuggly in Fiskardo at the moment where we have once again had torrential rain and some minor storms. The weather this morning is more settled and we have our usual high class problem of whether to stay another day or move on. Most of our friends are now on their way home. Broke Aweigh is back in Messolonghi preparing for winter and Zanetia is heading back to Croatia. We are planning to head to Messolonghi to prepare for over wintering around the 25th of October. We are pulling Shirley out of the water and have had fun learning how to 'pickle' our water maker etc. If anyone knows where we can buy 'fids' in the Ionian we would be glad of this information. May even be a coldie in for the informant!
Being beckoned ashore for coffee so should probably make a move. So looking forward to catching up with everyone at home in November! Will be in touch soon....

xx
All on Shirley Valentine