Another year Begins

We arrived back to Polo who had been waiting patiently at her mooring in Kusadasi. We had removed all her sails and most of the running rigging at the end of last year and everything now had to be replaced with ropes we had brought from home. I had foolishly removed the reefing lines without working out how to fit the new ones but with two sail battens taped together and a little hook made of bent wire we managed get a cord through and fit the new ropes. Afraid of another, more drastic, mistake I got some help to replace the main halyard.

The antifoul was looking good at the end of last year so I had made no plans to redo it. We got back to the bottom of Polo looking like the Great Barrier Reef so I set to with a scraper to see what I could do. After two sessions leaning out from the dingy I had got the worst off from the waterline. My arms were like jelly and my fingers bleeding from the many scrapes with sharp shells but I had made some progress.

Before we left Kim decided I needed one last Turkish haircut so we found a barbers and while Kim was waiting she got talked into a foot massage and then some leech therapy to the area around her eyes. The blog is not long enough to do justice to the story and you will have to ask Kim for the details but she left the barber wearing a red bandana to hide the fact that she looked as if she had been shot in the head 5 times or possibly had the top of her head rather crudely sown on. My haircut was not great but I got off lightly by comparison.

We decided to leave Kusadasi a day early to get the best weather and to use it as our “shake down” to check everything was working, so paperwork sorted we had a trouble free sail to Pythagorio on Samos.

The next day we anchored as close to the beach as we could so I could stand in the water and, togged up in wetsuit and snorkel, I spent an exhausting hour cleaning the rest of Polo’s bottom, propellers etc pleased to have saved some money.

After two nights in Pythagorio and Sunday lunch we had a wild and furious sail round to a bay in the north, hitting 10knots. The next two days were pretty windy so after a rather chaotic time tying up in Kokkari we stayed there until the wind dropped, visiting our favourite Bar Goal! and relaxing. Today we headed south again to Samos Marina where we are leaving Polo to fly to Masie’s wedding in Rome.