Doing hard time in Leros (Leros)

 

25th June 2019 (Leros)

Another ‘on the hard’ installment I’m afraid.. 

We’re now into our 7th week out of the water. 

We moved back into the boat last week, unable to justify the expense of staying at ‘Maison de Coleurs’ any longer.

The current hold up stalling our repair is the ‘dampness’ of the GRP (fibreglass) in the bilge drain. Until that is sufficiently dry, the repair cannot proceed. 

We have all the windows shut and two dehumidifiers are running 24/7 in the cabin. This makes going below into the main cabin close to unbearable with the outside temps nudging close to 30.

The yard itself is dusty and airless, the surrounds have a baked scrubby feel reminiscent of a scene from The Good the Bad and the Ugly.

Days are pretty lazy, there’s boat jobs that we’re chipping away at, but time is a commodity which we have an excess of, so not much urgency for anything.

Highlights of the day are:

Bugle call to wake up the local barracks at around 7:30, a bakers van beeps at 10ish bringing fresh bread, goat bells tinkle throughout the day. Sometimes someone works on the hull, sometimes not. The daily plane, from the next door neighbour airport, takes off along the short runway around lunchtime. The boys in the barrack’s lunch is then signalled by the second bugling of the day. 

At 5:30 ish the horse in the field behind the boat starts happily neighing as it hears the familiar sound of the podgy part time farmer’s moped coming to feed him. The farmer chats happily to; the horse, the horse’s constant companion - a lovely little brown donkey, and the numerous goats, who run from all points to swarm the farmer as doles out their feed.

The rest of the afternoon proceeds fairly slowly, matching pace with the with the slow setting of the hot sun, third bugle around 7:30pm. 

Then a bit of dinner, followed by An episode or two of The Amazing Race or something similar on the laptop until bed.

On the good news front: zero mozzies thus far :)