SERENITY NOW

  29th July 2019 (Leros) Well we’re tantalizingly close to having the boat repair completed. There’s been many a false dawn, and lots of costly setbacks, but fingers crossed the mast is going up tomorrow, with our new rigging attached. The keel was finished last week, and our saloon is no longer a fibreglass infested building site. It’s been a long, boring and frustrating few months for both of us. The dusty yard has been hot and sweaty for the last week - and both now looking forward to swimming off the back of the boat again... It really doesn’t seem real yet, we’ve been here so long - I’ve joked that we’ve developed Stockholm Syndrome towards our ‘captors’ - who bizarrely are mainly called George! Entertainment recently has been white wine, chocolate and Survivor South Africa - which sets me off doing silly accents... Anyway, it appears I’m rambling, so I’ll call it day there.  Fingers crossed for launch in 3 days!! As I finish typing the yard dogs are going crazy barking at

  9th July 2019 (Samos) Awoke in one of our favourite ports; Pythagoria on Samos. We’ve been staying as guests on Jaxon (Dave and  Shirl’s Moody) whilst Serenity Now continues to slowly dry out. The sun is shining, the breeze is gentle and we’re heading off this morning. Prepped the boat for departure, with me taking care of one of the most important jobs: picking up pies from the exceptional baker on the corner - yum.  Left the quay without issue around 9:30, filled up at the marina around the corner, then headed towards the little bay at Posedonia (where we’d stayed last year with Paul & Jill, and Peter, Yvonne and Woozle. Wind was light and head on, so motored all the way. After a couple of unsuccessful attempts to set the anchor in the crowded bay, we decided against it, instead opting for the previous bay we’d seen Klima (..and been recommended by Paul and Marina (Swiss couple from Ag Nik) who we’d seen at Pyrhagoria).  We struggled (in a very calm way) to set the anchor

   5th July 2019 (Leros - Samos) Still stuck in Leros on the hard. Awoke in the boatyard just before the alarm at 6:20am. Both happy and glad to be heading off from our island home for a few days ( we’re going to Samos to spend a few days on Jaxon with Dave and Shirl ) We’d done the majority of the prepping and packing last night, so only the bucket to empty and a few other little jobs before we hopped on the bike and headed off. Stopped briefly just before the yard gate to say goodbye to the yard dogs - they’re good puppers.  Then we hit a roadblock (we’ve been watching a lot of Amazing race recently)... We couldn’t find the panel to punch in the unlock code for the gate. I thought it would be a good idea to trace the wires back, then realised there were no wires, it was just a push shut gate that had been double padlocked - shit.  That was at 7:10, the ferry left at 7:40 from Lakki at the other end of the island. We did a frantic look around to see if anyone was around.. they w