Silent Waters
My brother got here on the 30th and he stayed with us for two nights before leaving for Athens on the 2nd of July. It was after he left that we decided to run the engine just to make sure everything was good, plus, running the engine charges the batteries some. The last time we'd run the engine was just a day or so before my brother arrived, when we moved our anchorage to a little bit further out so we were in deeper water as we knew the winds would be picking up and being in 3-5 meters on the depth gauge was a bit too close for comfort for a boat that has a 2.3 meter keel.
Well, short story long, when we turned the ignition, there was a slight hiccup of a sound and nothing. No engine revving up, no ignition kicking in, nothing. So here we are, on anchor, winds howling through the day and night, and the engine won't start.
We've had this problem before, and once again, we are hoping this is just a starter issue. We finally managed to get someone who knows engines to come by the boat yesterday after we picked him up at the shore. He hopped into the engine "room" and asked us to turn the ignition key and immediately said its an ignition problem. Thing is, the starter we have is brand new, we replaced the previous one when we found that there was a problem with that. In order to discover that the starter needed to be replaced, back then, we had spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was wrong with the engine only to discover there was nothing wrong with the engine.
So here we are again, starter problem with the new starter. Honestly there is something wrong with how the starter connects to the engine, its a faulty wiring issue, it has to be. The engineer who came by yesterday is confident its a wiring issue within the starter so he's gone back to his workshop with the starter. We've also burnt through our last fuse for the engine, which leaves us in need of replacement fuses as the only working one we have left is a 200 Amp vs the 250 Amp we need that we also blew through our final spare of.
We had hoped to depart here yesterday but now its kinda become an open ended stay. Hoping doesn't even begin to describe what is going through our minds right now. Yesterday I spent the greater part of the morning doing inventory of everything in the kitchen so that I could keep my mind off the very real concern that if we have an engine issue and not a starter issue...we need to find a way to haul up anchor manually and also to be towed to some place other than where we are, so that we can get some proper service from a Volvo Penta engineer. The time we lose is the least of our problems, its the not knowing how much it will all cost...that is the kicker.
The upside is that Greece has people who are genuinely happy to help and hard working by nature. In Sicily it was almost the opposite. It seemed to us, in Sicily, that people were not really that work orientated or at least they didn't seem hungry for work as they are here in Greece. My brother said the average income for people in Greece is somewhere between 600-1000 Euro a month. That seems a bit insane to me because its not like inflation hasn't hit here much the same as it has everywhere else in the world.
One thing is for certain, the basic things like whole foods and bread are always very affordable here in Greece, I could even go so far as to say they are cheap. So if someone ate home all the time and avoided eating out, its possible to live on a little less, but if you had a family, it would be tight. Reality is that I am still constantly comparing life to how much it cost in Hong Kong and I need to be considering everything from the perspective of someone completely jobless with nothing coming in and every expense being one that is taking money out the money jar that is simply not getting refilled anytime soon.
This has been the challenge for both of us, I guess. Its not like we are crap with money management, its just that our biggest expenses have been ones we hadn't anticipated. People dream of sailing the world, throwing the towel in, going on an adventure, and I still believe more people ought to consider it. We were thrust into this life, don't get me wrong, we are loving it, but when we fast tracked this life of sailing nomads it was purely because there was no other viable option but to wait on the world to change and for the industry in which my husband is specialized to see a turn around. I am a capable Chef, but it wasn't like the F&B industry was singing through the Pandemic and anyone who has worked in F&B knows that its hardly going to be what makes you rich. We could never support our family on my income, no shame in admitting it. The one thing that I wish people are aware of is that as with the upkeep of buying a house, boats cost money. If you have a good boat, it should and it will retain its value as long as you maintain it well, but unlike a house, you are unlikely to see the value of your boat increase, so maintain, maintain, maintain. Its why we are always the first ones on top of a problem before it becomes a fiscal bleeder.
Maintenance can be this big question mark sometimes. You never know what could happen or how much it will cost. For instance, the starter, when we replaced it, we had to order it online, we ended up waiting longer for it to arrive and in the end it cost us time as well as the 250 Euro for the replacement part. Some things can be surprisingly cheap, manpower included, depending on where in Europe you are. Other things are almost like you are paying for a superhero when all you get is a grease monkey who knows you can't do anything without his help, and he ends up charging you accordingly while not really solving a damn thing. So the advice I would also give someone who wants to sail, know your shit. Just know whatever you can about how engines work, the more you know, the less you will need someone else. For us the main reason we've had to call anyone at all is because we came to an impasse after a process of elimination as we worked through everything we know that is engine related. We'd tried to jump-start, we'd separated the starter from the engine, we'd replaced the fuse, we'd called everyone with engine know-how that could talk us through the possibilities. We've fixed many a problem on our own in the past, painstakingly learning the ins and outs of the boat and realizing how many problems we would have been able to side-step if only the previous owner had done all the maintenance himself vs paying some third party who would leave the unused wiring still in the boat instead of clearing it up.
Chania has been a very protected anchorage though, I have to say. Its been the most secure anchorage we've had since leaving Sicily and that is saying a lot. The winds here can get quite aggressive, and gusts can come out of nowhere that cause immense swells. Last night was the first night that I woke during the night feeling seasick. You know that feeling you get when your saliva pools in your mouth? You end up swallowing over and over and you feel that queasy feeling like you are going to throw up at any point and worry you may not make it to the loo in time? Yeah, that was me at 2:30am. I lay very still and just breathed through the nausea and eventually it subsided and my salivary glands took a rest. Unfortunately that point is also when my insomnia took over and I ended up laying in bed wide awake until 5:30am, scrolling through Instagram looking silently at the dimmed screen, watching cross-fitters do their thing while I did nothing.
The swells in the sea state are all because of winds somewhere else. The swells here have been intense for the last several days, sometimes rocking us from side to side almost like we were underway. For the most part I am used to it but its been getting to me the longer we remain through this experience day and night. Again, glad the anchor is holding perfectly, just not so grateful for the constant rocking from side to side, it tends to leave me with a mild headache and leave us all feeling rather sleepy, like a baby in a cradle that rocks.
The kids have been swimming daily, that has been the one respite from the heat. The other positive about this anchorage in Chania has been the clear blue waters, the Posidonian sea grass with all its rich diversity of fish hiding in and around it, and the fact that this bay is relatively free of marine traffic because most of the surrounding waters are restricted areas due to the military here designating those zones for military exercises.
The shore has a beach that seems very popular with the tourists looking for something secluded because other than a handful of restaurants and a boat rental stall, there is nothing there. The nearest supermarket is a good 15 minute taxi ride away and taxis are not easy to find. We have been able to get the number of a gentleman, an old retired Greek man names Christos, with his beat up old Mercedes, who is happy to take a fare to and from anywhere, for less than what conventional taxis may cost. I used his services when my brother came to visit, to go pick him up and to drop him off when he left. For a trip to the grocery store and back, along with the waiting for us to shop, he charged us 20 Euros. We've been once already and today we will go again, hoping against hope that all we have is a starter issue and that if all goes well and things are fixed we can leave tomorrow.
From here we head east towards Rhodos. We will anchor along the way, of course, but as it stands we know we have to be in Turkey by the end of the month. The winds are strong coming from the north, so any plans we'd had for going to Milos have had to be shelved because we'd be bashing into it and the stress on the boat and ourselves seems far from worthwhile. We can still get those more northern islands on our way out of the Mediterranean at some point next year, if that is still in the cards for us.
Who knows what the future will bring, we all hope for the aviation industry to realize that they cannot keep a stranglehold on the salaries of those who work tirelessly for them, from ground staff to baggage handlers, from airline crew to the pilots...as long as they keep trying to cut costs, as long as the pizzas you ordered for your family cost more than the flight you took to get to Italy, there will be no real confidence in things getting better for the aviation industry as a whole.
We've considered going back to Asia but even that is hugely dependent on location, salary and cost of living. Its simply not sustainable to consider an expensive city or country...the salaries simply do not meet the cost of living, and that is with us looking at living very frugally indeed. We've been living off grid for a year now, two years out of conventional life if you consider the point at which my husband lost his job as a pilot with Cathay, so we know how to live carefully when it comes to our spending, but the prospect of returning to a conventional life on land is only going to be attractive if it is worthwhile and we have the capacity to save for the future. As the global economy crumbles we can only spectate...none of us can truly predict what lies ahead. Our generation has really been the ones to see the most rapid change in the course of history, from the dawn of the internet to storing all our memories in a cloud...our children will live in a Pandemic ridden, post Roe vs Wade world, and that is barely scratching the surface of what is yet to come.
Before I get too melancholic, I best call it. There is always time to write when inspiration finds me. Until then, be well and I wish you wind in your sails.
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