Fri 5 Jul and Sat 6 Jul – Finishing the repairs and we’re back in the water!

Friday

Friday was going to be the big day. Bini’s forestay should be put back up and the GRP repairs should be finished. We had an early start in eager anticipation of the things to come, but managed to wait until around 10:00 to call George who was repairing the forestay. When we finally gave him a ring to figure out when to meet in the boat yard we were surprised to learn that he’d almost finished the work already – wow! We hopped on the scooter and went to the yard, and indeed – the swivel was repaired, the forestay went back up and the rig got a tune. Amazing! The GRP repairs looked fantastic as well, we were extremely happy. The only thing left to do was to give Bini a clean as she was absolutely filthy from weeks on the hard. We would do that next morning, just before launching her. 

We checked into what would be our last hotel room on Syros, and what a beautiful room it was. Very appropriate for our last night being land locked! Making use of the electricity coming out of the wall Camilla managed to give me another cruisers haircut, not an easy feat squeezing a chair and myself into the shower and her hovering around with the clippers. She did an amazing job though!

This being our last night in Ermoupoli we went for another long walk and found a nice restaurant up on the hillside, overseeing the bay as the sun came down. We were both thankful for the amazing time we had here, yet at the same time ready to go back to cruising life.

Saturday

We both woke up a bit tired after not having slept too well, I think mostly in anticipation of Bini going back into the water (and maybe a few too many vino’s!). We went to the boat yard early to give Bini a clean and to mount our boarding ladder back onto the sugar scoop. Putting the ladder back in place shouldn’t have been a big deal but as we know by now, nothing on a boat ever goes as planned. Just as I finished bedding the brackets I realised that they were still bent too much to hold the ladder. Luckily Stavros hopped on the scooter and managed to get them bent into shape on a Saturday morning. How he managed that is still a bit of a mystery, but disaster was averted and soon enough it was time to get Bini back in the water. She was driven into the water on her somewhat rickety trailer, and we got instructions to not move the rudder under any circumstance as we reversed her off the trailer. Of course, as we started the engine and started reversing we slid off the trailer at a bit of an angle and the wind caught the stern of the boat, and we went a little sideways – resulting in the keel bumping either on the trailer or the concrete ramp. Not ideal, but not that big a deal either – at least we were back on the water!

The wind started building and we used the massive tankers in the boat yard as a windshield to hoist the Genoa. George had done a fantastic job, and the sail went up and furled in without any issues. We decided to stay one more night on Syros, and sailed all the way down to Finikas to spend the night at anchor there.

We dropped the hook and went for a swim, just to realise that one of the screws holding the newly installed boarding ladder did not hold. To fix that Camilla had to empty the aft locker and squeeze through a tiny maintenance hatch while I was re-bedding the screw from the other side. Quite a project, but eventually we managed and the repairs were officially done! We spend a quiet night at anchor, both exhausted from the excitement of the last few days.