12 July 06 - In Athens

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We arrived in Athens July 8. Unfortunately noone decided to work during the weekend, which meant that we couldnt see what was going on in the Dimitris. Thus we chose to roam around looking for stuff we needed.

As always, going somewhere, one always forget something... and so did we. I packed the powersupply, the cradle, the data cable for our Casio digital camera... but ofcourse forgot the camera itself :)

So one of the things to go shopping for was a new camera which we bought yesterday.

We have now seen the work in progress in the boat. The brand new water tanks which was more than a week delayed, arrived Monday and was installed then. They are quite large, and the two of them can hold about 800l of water. They are welded in 2.2mm stainless steel and are very rigid.

All the fresh water plumbing has been moved from their original position as that part of the vessel will be unaccessible when the toilet floor is made. The toilet floor will cast in fiberglas to be 100% water tight.

Today 5-6 men are working on the vessel under my and Panos supervision (Panos is the brain responsible for the design and rebuild).

We are also in frequent contact with the broker as the deletion certificate from the Greek authorities is still missing. Things dont always go as fast as they could have done.

All in all, we have a good story and a bad story to tell.

The good one (for us at least) is that the vessel is very sound, and whats to point fingers on are cosmetic details only. The work being done on it, is also being done with some good thoughts and seemingly good craftmanship. In any case Im looking over their shoulders just to be on the safe side :)

The bad story is that the departure is going to be delayed 6 days... this is very unfortunate as it obviously will affect hour whole sailplan. However as we have calculated in some 2 days stops, they can be shortened to one day stops (in which case we gain 2 days). We can also choose to skip some stops, for example one in Greece which will give us another day.

Finally as the current is almost equal to zero most places in the Mediterranien and that there seemingly is going to be good winds, we can quite safely assume that our trip to Gibraltar will go faster than the rather conservative estimate originally made.

The end story I guess, is that we probably will be a couple of days delayed in the end, unless other unforseen things happen.

Ive just talked with Oluf on the mobile phone and confirmed with him that I will pick him up from the airport tomorrow at 11:40 local time.

Later (around midnight) its the plan to make another pick up.

The weather here is quite hot (35C or so), sunny, relatively humid, and quite windy.

Here are the daily dose of pictures. Most of the pictures were made using a mobile phone except from the one of Katharina which was shot using our new digital camera.

 

Our salon in a complete building mess	The new watertanks installed	This was a toilet. Its gonna be a wardrobe.	One of two of the aircondition units	The mast saddle
The mast resealed in the roof	The raw roof inside the mastercabin	More raw roof inside the master cabin	The old captains cabin, seen from the master cabin	New wiring for 24V and 220V
One of the bulkheads fore.	The hull strenghteners can be seen	Inside the master cabin	Inside the master cabin 2	The old place for the freshwater pipes and valves
Some transformer for the stereo next to the mast	Mast and roof sealing other side	Our new top loaded washer and dryer combo	Lots of crap on our kitchen table	The saloon
The saloon 2	The manual bilge and waste pumps	Katharina in the hotels whirlpool at 7th floor