Windup Bird

 I sit down to write today and I don't know where to start. 

I am a ball of nerves, raw in every way, exhausted from having to think the simplest thought and yet I am putting every bit of what remains into slowly packing things away, throwing things away, earmarking things to be put in its rightful place as we prep the boat for leaving her on the hard for anywhere between nine to twelve months!

Long story short, our engine has failed, we are now in the process of assessing what is wrong before we go about assessing how we get that righted. 

Let me try to start somewhere that could be considered a beginning. 

My brother came to Chania, Crete to spend time with us as we anchored in a beautiful and sheltered bay off Marathi beach. He had a wonderful short visit with us and then left two days later. Our goal was to leave shortly after he flew out to Athens. We always check to see the engine is good to go before we depart anywhere, this entails turning it on, running it for 20 mins, checking the oil and then we know we are good to go. 

This time, we turned the ignition key and nothing happened. 

Just a low "thunk" sound and nothing. 

We went about doing the usual assessment, if this isn't working, try this, if that doesn't work it means this, now try this...if this also doesn't work it means this...and so on. Its like a step by step, working through a flow diagram in your head until you get to a place where all roads lead to - "I think now we need to call in a professional".

Well, we asked the guy who was renting boats out on the shore, he was helpful enough, he recommended a friend who is an electrician, that guy came to the boat and said it was a starter issue...he took the starter with him that day, did whatever he did, returned the next day and then found there was still a problem. He then calls in two of his friends who are diesel mechanics on Caterpillars (not boat engines) and they do some snooping about, open stuff up, find water in the oil, try to remove it, try to start the engine again, no dice. 

We come right back to the conclusion neither of us had wanted to admit to ourselves, the engine hydraulics likely have water in them, salt water that is used to cool the engine has also become the thing that has flooded it. For three non-boat engine workers to tell us that we need to have the engine looked at, it cost us a tidy Euro 550. There is a slight feeling of having been robbed, but what can you do, right? Boat rental guy hooks his electrician buddy up with a gig, electrician guy hooks his two mechanic friends with a gig, and in the end we are nowhere closer to a solution that has us moving from point A to point B, but for sure, our bank balance has gone down. 

There is something about how people view a boat owner. Sailing a yacht, must have money. 

So they screw you every which way they can. 

They don't ask you whether you have a job, what school your kids go to, or how you manage to sail without hiring a crew!

Own a boat, must have money. 

Goes without saying...it is a fact and an assumption all wrapped up in one, depending on who is perceiving the life of a sailing family. 

After the three guys left the boat, Jeroen and I sat down in silence, pondering the unknown and what lay ahead of us. We were meant to be sailing the Aegean, we were meant to sail to Turkey, we were meant to winter in Turkey for 3-6 months...but now we had to contend with how we would even make it to the nearest marina that had a Volvo Penta service centre that could look at our engine. We now had to contend with making it the nearly 100 nautical miles to Agios Nikolaos, on the south western end of Crete, completely under sail and therefore dependent on the unpredictable and fickle winds here in Greek waters. 

A 100 NM journey would normally take us 16 hours if we were purely under motor. If we had no motor but were under sails alone, with the winds being predicted being actually what is delivered, we estimated the journey would take us 24 hours. The reality was, of course, not what was predicted. It took us almost 40 hours before we made it to our berth against the wall in the marina. We were told we would be charged 10% more for being "against the wall"...and let me tell you, they ought to be deducting 10% for that berth because the winds blow from the north all day long and we get pushed up against the concrete wall so hard that we've had to put all our fenders on that one side just to avoid slamming into it! Let me not bore you with the fact that the toilets and showers are also all the way at the other side of the marina, so how they thought this spot deserves to have extra charges is beyond me. 

Woosaaa...

I know, I am just doing everything I can not to lose my shit right now, its been a long couple of days...

The sail from Marathi, Crete to Agios Nikolaos, Crete was in and of itself an adventure of a lifetime. We have never been this dependent on the elements before. It was slow going, the winds weren't in our favour for most of the journey, so we inched along at anywhere between 1-4 knots an hour, sometimes simply stuck in one place, as if the wind was everywhere but where we were. I am proud of us for being as patient as we have learned to be, even the kids...just...its a lesson we've learned, a badge hard earned from the moment we sailed away from the Netherlands. 

When we had the catamaran in Hong Kong, we never had the life lessons we are aware of today. Hong Kong was a life of schedules and rushing from one place to the next. It wasn't until the pandemic hit and we had weeks to ourselves that we learned to slow down and sail out to outlying islands and anchor for a week...that was when we first had a taste of what its like to be this care free...back then the only concern was running out of water in the tanks. Now we have a water maker, so that concern is also no longer one we have to contend with. 

When we reached Agios Nikolaos the winds died yet again, as the sun set behind the rocky mountains and dusk began to blanket us, we bobbed about on the sea, 5+ nautical miles away from our destination, too far for someone to come out to tow us and so close we could see the waterfront lights sparkling in the distance. 

The winds picked up, died down, picked up, died down...and each time we painfully unfurled the genoa and furled it back...over and over as we slowly inched forward to our destination over the course of hours as dark enveloped us and the stars came out. When we finally gave up on trying to sail we rigged our 9.9 horsepower dingy to the side of our 25 tonne sailboat and we slowly motored along, grateful not to be fighting the wind from any other direction other than bang on the nose. Our speed over ground, 1 knot an hour!

When we made it to about 3 NM away from the marina we were finally able to get the assistance promised, a private dive boat that essentially was doing something not quite on the books, a slow tow back in to the marina. This tow cost us an additional Euro 300, cheap in comparison to what we had been quoted back in Marathi to be towed the same distance to a port that, in the end, couldn't actually manage a boat with our draught, they had quoted us Euro 500. 

We haven't really been off the boat except for the first day here when we were just excited to have arrived safe and sound...but now, I am just doing everything I can to prepare the boat for the winter. Summer has barely begun and I am preparing it as if winter was here. Man, this sucks, but hey, it is what it is. 

This is our first time putting the boat on the hard...so I have to wrap all the navigation books in plastic wrap to protect them from humidity so that we don't come back to shelves of mouldy books. I am cooking us meals on the boat so we can slowly empty the pantry and ensure nothing goes to waste. I am throwing out expired goods or long forgotten condiments that we never ended up using and now will ensure we never purchase again. When you begin sailing you get so many things because of the "what if's" and after a year you realize you could totally have done without it. 

I have to make sure everything is sorted before we move to an Airbnb home up in the mountains. We have to rent a car as well, that should be another challenge as its peak season. It was already a challenge finding an affordable Airbnb here because this place is a very sought after tourist destination...its why we are going for the old school, traditional Cretan experience and getting a home in the mountains. Its not easy finding a place that can house 2 adults, 2 kids AND a cat. 

Now we have to just wait on the verdict. The surveyor is coming out here tomorrow, he's from the insurance company, he will have it out with the engineer that came to see the engine today and they will together figure how much we can get covered and how much we will need to cover ourselves. 

Jeroen heads to Sweden for his new job by the 27th of August so I will try to get myself and the kids out of Crete, with the cat if possible, headed to India to return to my home town again. Feels weird to be heading back just 5 months after we left there. What I am waiting on now is to hear from pet relocation services in India to see how we can get Natale into India from out here in Crete. If that doesn't pan out we have to try to get Jeroen's mother to foster Natale until we are back to come back to Greece. As I mentioned before, Jeroen's mother, Lilia, lives in Ithaca and she already has 6 rescue cats. 

Its just so much that we have to try to sort out in a short time, its mentally draining. I struggle to get anything started each day and I find myself sometimes just sitting in one place, fixated on nothing, unable to dig deep enough to find something positive to latch onto. 

While all this is going on I also have to cancel our reservation for the apartment in Turkey and hope we get our deposit back. The kids homeschool is also needing a commitment for the subjects we will take the coming year and when we wish to commence. All I want to do is crawl under a rock and sleep until all this blows over. 

I feel like a malfunctioning windup bird, like I have been wound up but despite being set upon the ground I am going nowhere, pressure all built up but incapable of forward momentum. Tomorrow we find out more, possibly even this evening when the engineer comes back to the boat to have another look. 

For now I am just going to try not to worry about the amount of work the engine may need or the amount of money this is all going to cost. I will focus on what I can achieve once I get to India, its all I can do right now. I will hope all goes well and Natale can come with us or that Lilia can foster her until we come back to get her next year. Beyond that I have no real grasp on the future possibilities nor the current reality.