24th April to the 27th April 2018

Living in a Greek boatyard:   

It wasn't too bad at all in fact it was really okay, Kiri Maia was like a very nice apartment with amazing sea views. Of course, there are a few downsides to living in a boatyard.

• From 8 am to 5 pm the yard was a hive of activity with contractors & owners getting the boats ready for the season very noisy & the yard became very dirty.
• We found out our hot water cylinder didn't work onshore power (something to sort out at a later date) as the yard had interesting showers the water was heated by solar panels it didn't take long to figure out the best time to shower was late afternoon before the hot water ran out at the end of the day.
• The novelty soon wore off climbing up & down the ladder to get on & off Kiri Maia.
• Each night security dogs roamed the yard which meant we either stayed on the boat or it was a quick dash to the car if we wanted to go out for the evening.                                                                                                           

A condition of buying this particular boat was we had to rename her

Yes everyone thinks it is bad luck to change a boat's name but sometimes it just has to be done. Once we got used to the idea and had decided on the new name “Kiri Maia” we were quite happy as it really felt like it was our boat.
With help from Google, we carried out the purging ceremony in the yard, removing all traces of the old name, then addressing Poseidon & sharing champagne with him this we had to do twice as our first bottle of what we thought was champagne turned out to be sparkling water. It was good fun & we enjoyed both the sparkling water & the champagne.

Compliance, lucky we are patient & can control our emotions:

Before setting sail in Greece all boats are required to have a Transit Log, according to all the information we had been told we would have to go to Pireas to get the required documents for sailing. The quickest way to get to Pireas is on the flying dolphin a very fast hydrofoil ferry top speed 31.5kn. We were prepared for it to take up to 3 hours and lots of tricky questions, but not the first question being where is the old transit log, of course, we didn't know. In the end, we were told to go back to Aegnia and get it sorted at the customs office there. Fortunately, the old transit log was at the customs office in Aegnia & Vicky was able to edit it so it was valid for us to use.
Splashdown thanks to new friends John & Jenny it was a breeze.

What a buzz watching Kiri Maia being loaded onto the trailer, towed across the yard & placed very carefully into the water, after a quick check the engines were good to go by the mechanic we were finally on our way.
What a day we had everything went perfectly, from leaving the yard to doing our first med mooring in Aegnia. On our way across John got us to do a man overboard exercise with a plastic bottle, good practice for Marcel to learn how to handle a cat (remembering all the cat sailing we had done was by watching YouTube) before we came in we stopped and checked the anchor all good. We were very lucky we took Jenny's advice and arrived at the Agenia town wall early there were no other boats to squeeze between, this made our first med mooring a lot easier, It was fantastic to be out of the yard, and finally starting the sailing part of our journey.

After one final shopping trip to Pireas to purchase 100mtrs of floating rope, the entire 100mtrs was squished into our trusty shopping trolley. Floating rope is essential for when we anchor and tie the stern to the rocks. This is done by someone swimming to the rocks (probably me) and looping the rope around the rocks, another challenge for us to look forward to.

It was then time to set sail for Turkey.