No, not a list of kinky torture accessories! Just some of the items on our list of things to fix, install or replace in our first few days back on the boat.

The anchor chain (all 250 Kilos of it) was waiting for us in storage when we arrived. When the delivery guy brought it to the quay he left the box on the pallet and scarpered! Jacques and Charlie pulled it out of the box and then into the dingy to be brought to the bow to install! I’m still not sure how Jacques did it but we now have a gleaming new chain attached to the anchor and it works! That took the best part of 1 day and hot and sticky work it was! Spot the old and new chain!

Next on the list were the new batteries and the fixing of the fridge! The plan had always been to eventually replace the boat batteries with Lithium ones which charge up quicker and last longer. The demise of the existing ones whilst Marc & Claudia had the boat made this exercise a more pressing need. The batteries were being supplied and fitted by a specialist company in Athens and the lovely Dimitri worked for 12 hours over the course of 2 afternoons and evenings going up and down from the (incredibly hot) engine room to take out the old batteries (weighing a ton!) and installing the new ones.

The 6 old batteries were placed on the quay whilst we decided how to dispose of them or until the Rag and Bone man came along! The following day, not exactly the Rag and Bone man with his cart but the Greek equivalent on a moped came along and asked if he could take them! It took him 3 journeys to collect all of them and although it was a funny sight we were pleased that someone would be able to re-use them!

Next job, and in my opinion the most critical, was having the fridge fixed! It has given up the day before we arrived and Marc had put out a call to our booking agent to find us a fridge engineer! We have a small outside fridge which works pretty well but once you have my bottle of Gin and a few tonics stacked up there is sadly not much room for any food!!

The lovely engineers fixed the fridge and by the morning it was sufficiently cold to store food and beer again! Hooray!

Next DIY challenge was installing the Satellite dish! Having successfully smuggled it in to Europe in one of our many suitcases now the task of where to situate it given the limited options on the boat. Up on deck next to the seating area seemed the best bet – not an area where anyone (should) be treading and with no obvious obstacles. Dishy is now in place but this may not be his permanent home as being so close to the seats does present an obstacle which means service gets interrupted, albeit just for a few seconds, every 7-10 minutes so not ideal.

We had a little jump for joy as that concluded the list of things to get done before we left the marina and set sail! Just one more item to replace, a large camping cart on wheels useful for when we go get very heavy shopping, which had been blown into the sea off the quay a few weeks ago.

One of the wonderful delights of being in Athens is having the chance to see our old friends Georges and Christine. Christine is away but Georges came to see us on the boat, took us to a fabulous place for dinner and offered us any assistance we needed whilst in Athens. We took him up on that offer to help us source a new cart and lo and behold 2 hours later he arrived with one! On his motorbike!!!

We said Goodbye to Georges and at last we were ready to head off to the Islands and hopefully some slightly cooler weather, a breeze and clear waters to swim in!

We headed to Aegina, a small island 10 miles south west of Athens, just over 1 hour journey. On the way, Charlie had a particularly juicy nectarine and when he then went to wash his hands no water came out of the tap. Horror!!!

You would think after all these jobs having been finished in 4 very hot days in the marina that we (well mostly Jacques!) would get a break! How could we not have water? We had filled the 600 litre tank just before we left! And the water gauge (like a petrol gauge on a car) was saying we were full! It had to be the water pump we thought – another 2 hours for Jacques down in the engine room (by now over 40 degrees in there) and me at the electrics dashboard trying every combination of plugging and unplugging scenarios.

We have had a similar situation before when we ran out of water without using any and that was because a tap had been left on somewhere on the boat without anyone seeing it. Conscious of this, I checked all the taps including the outside deck shower (often the culprit) but it seemed fine! Had I pulled the whole hose out of it’s compartment I would have seen the hole in it and the 600 litres of water in the locker below!!!!!!!! We then had hours of fun bailing the water out of the locker – again, not at all a boiling hot endeavour!

After all the drama, Aegina was beautiful and we anchored just outside the harbour and had some fun in the water!

That’s all for now – hopefully that is our entire share of Boat DIY used up for a while – although still no sign of the winch!

Bye for now!