Back up to Levkas

We're picking up Marion and Hugh at Levkas on the 27th of September and have a couple of chores to do while we're there so we've come up in just 3 hops - Nissos Petalas, Spartahori and Levkas. It should have been pretty simple, we had fair winds (Easterlies and Southerlies). Nothing strong amd mostly not too light either.
In the event - our old friend - cooling water failure has surfaced again. Coming through the canals, we had several mysterious episodes where the engine cooling water suddenly stopped - only to clear again if I disturbed the pipes. In Paris, and several times since, I stripped and flushed everything I could find but it still kept happeneing. Then suddenly it stopped and we've had no more trouble for 18 months. Last week, for no apparent reason, it started again.
We ended up doing the last 4 miles to Petalas at 1.5Knots under sail so as not to use the engine and we anchored under sail - just to prove we still could. Actually it was rather nice - but would have been better if we didn't have the stress of not knowing when the engine would fail again.
It went again on the way to Spartahori - but again the winds played nicely and we had a gorgeous sail up around Meganissi.

We had never been to Spartahori before although several people have said it's lovely. So we decided to give it a try. The village on the hill is truly beautiful with tiny winding paved streets running between pastel-painted houses often covered in Vines and creepers with brilliant pink flowers.
The village was rather odd though - there were almost no people and certainly no smiles to be seen. The only people seemed to be black-clad ancient widdows creeping silently about their business. It seemed like a "local village for local people". Most un-Greek.
Mooring was strange and not all that pleasant too. We were met and directed to a place by a chap on the quay who we took to be official. He shouted streams of orders and got us in bows-to with a lot of stress and hurry and definitely not how we would have done it ourselves. It all got a bit fraught in the end and he took umbrage as we didn't quite want all of his help.
It later turned out that he isn't official - just officious - he's the local taverna owner. After going up to the town we came back and had a beer in the taverna but the staff were surly and it wasn't a pleasant experience. We won't go back there again.

The final journey up to Levkas went without a hitch and we moored exactly where we wanted to after waiting 1/2 hour for a boat to leave. Most of it was under Spinaker although, discretion being the best part of valour, we motored up the canal.

We had one incident 1/2 way between Petalas and Meganissi which could have been a disaster but which we got away with by the skin our teeth. There was a chain of small islands in our path which are aurrounded by extensive fish farms. We set course for the largest gap and sailed gently towards it for an hour. As we got to about 1/2 hour away, a substantial vessel with a crane on it and two small speedboats started working on the farm closest to where we would pass. They completely ignored us but as we got level with them, the vessel gave two toots. Several people were working or wacthing us as we gave 150M berth. We thought they were being friendly and gave a cheery wave. Nobody waved back.
Suddenly, I spotted a large submerged rope right across our path and about 20 yards ahead. There was no time to react and we went straight over it. I expected any second to feel it tightening around the keel or the rudders but somehow we carried straight on. I think the keel - which slants backwards at 45 degrees - must have pushed it down far enough that the rudders managed to clear it by inches. You expect to have nets and fishing gear around fishing boats and to give them a wide berth - you don't expect fish-farms to have huge un-marked nets stretching out 300 meters away from them. A very scary experience!

On the way up, I had noticed what I thought was an oil leak - so we reported it to CYS who had done the service two weeks before. They sent an engineer and it turned out to be a fuel leak from a badly fitted filter. Not too impressive - but they did make good and 'Pip' the second engineer was excellent. I'll happily have him on Rosa again if we're near Levkas when the next service is due.