The last few days have been a blur. I arrived in Athens on the Orthodox Easter Sunday, which meant that everything was closed in Kilada, even our favorite Taverna. So a new place had to be tried and tested - passed!

The boat looked great - the stainless parts were all rust free, the hull freshly polished - only the deck was a bit dirty. Inside, it still has the smell of a new boat - and the batteries were at 100% thanks to the solar panels. So all was good. But I only had 3 days to get Kincsem ready for launch, which is not a lot.

At least 50 points on the list of "have to do", things like removing all the winter covers from hatches, winches, masts, etc, and changing the zincs on the refrigerator plates on the hull. Surprisingly, everything went reasonably smoothly. I had ordered a significant number of items from Amazon.de, which always arrive in big boxes as we all know. Aris, the "storage guy" (last name Basimakopoulos) stored all those boxes (for a small fee) as well as spare and replacement parts that had arrived from Amel, a new Superwind 350 wind generator (to be installed) and a new Watt & Sea hydro generator (also to be installed). I had asked Aris to put all those boxes on the boat using their fork lift before the weekend, but no such luck. So I had to hand carry them all 5 Meters up the steep ladder or use the spare mizzen halyard to haul them up. Piece of cake! Storing all those goodies on board took many more hours.

On Wednesday, the key project was to drive to Nafplion and get our transit log back from customs. Without that piece of paper, no cruising in Greece. All went well, just took a bit longer to stamp all those pages and to make all those copies. Later in the day, Christoph Huss arrived and we tackled a few additional projects together, like greasing the Autoprop. And Thursday, we were launched. We were a bit surprised while having lunch inside the boat when the boat seemed to be moving .... It was a game of centimeters getting the boat to the water between a humungous catamaran and a large stink pot but we ended up getting down to the water smoothly and in no time, were at anchor in the bay like we were in the fall. Friday saw many more projects getting done, like launching the dinghy, getting the big motor back on which can only get done in the water. Friday night saw the arrival of Tom Logisch, the guy who sold me the wind and hydro generators on the Dusseldorf Boat Show. He turned out to be very likable and very competent. He had installed these generators on several Amel 55s before, which meant no trial and error (or just a bit ....). On Sunday, everything was done and a little test run around the Kilada island under engine showed that all was working fine! It was a very complex installation and I shudder to think how the result would have looked had the local yard electrician done the work. Experience counts! Tom also had a nice tip about our still not working SSB transceiver. He suggested to contact an SSB specialist in Germany who seems to have actually come up with a solution to the problem. We will know for sure once the replacement part arrives.

Tomorrow, we will take the day off and visit Mycenae. And do some shopping. Nothing else!

PS: This year, in addition to keeping the blog, I will post on Facebook from time to time. If you are not seeing the posts and would like to, make sure you are a "friend" of mine. If you're still not seeing them, email me at jhesdorn@gmail.com and I will tinker with the Facebook settings to make it happen.