about crossing the dodecanese channel and a 10mm seal

so we got up early (5am) to start our long trip to paros. with approximately 65nm ahead of us and the experience of finding a habour behind us, we thought it might be good to arrive not to late in naousa - not knowing if the marina was still operated or not. recently some marinas around greece seized being taken care of.

so off we went again and the meltemi kissed us awake with 35kn of wind and big waves. below the island of ikara the wind all of a sudden stopped completely, different to our expectations as we thought there might be katabatic winds coming off the cliffs of ikara - not this day!

after two hours motoring the wind returned with 25kn and we flew along under sails sometimes doing 9,4kn (which is really fast for a bavaria 42 - and very slow for an airbus, as i was told by a pilot-friend!) ...but to us it felt really like flying over the big swell of the dodecanese channel.

it was not long after, that mark was sitting under the spray hood and noticed the smell of diesel.
appart from not smelling good, it is generally not pleasant to find diesel in your boat other than the tank or inside the motor.
a small amount was sitting there under the engine. to find the diesel proved easy, but to find it´s origin was a bit harder. after searching and searching next to the hot motor in a boat that rocked on the short steep aegean wave, we at first suspected the oil filter was not fitted properly. you might remember, we just changed them - so having done something wrong there was our first thought. but the filters were all nice and proper...so where does this tiny amount of diesel come from?
the bleeding screw! - to vent the fuel system there is a bleeding screw - and this screw has a little seal, about 10mm. and it was this seal that gave up on us. how a little thing worth about 2 cents can possibly ruin your day!
problem found - soon to be solved!

so on we went crossing the dodecanese channel, a big body of water where our friend the meltemi blows it's hardest, lots of strong current and even more shipping traffic. in these rather demanding conditions we had to wear a warm jackets, got to try out our new life vests and got to learn using the AIS (automatic identification system). at times we had more than 100 ships on our screen (i love this little thing - gives you all the info about the traffic out there: name of the boat that is about to run you over, course, speed and my favorite "closest point to approach")
if you ever plan to sail the dodecanese...mind the high speed ferries though - they come at you really fast out from nowhere!

so again we flew with an average (!) of 7kn and at 16:20 local time we tied up in naousa marina, paros.
some of you out there knew already where we were... the AIS makes it possible to track us realtime on pages like http://marinetraffic.com or an app like shipfinder (just search vessle "maloo" and there we are!) of course this only works when we have it turned on.
we found ourselves all of a sudden in this postcard-picturesque town with the typical white houses and the blue windows, drinking a freddochino (something very yummy that resembles a frappé only with a faint chocolate flavor to it) and feeling happy and tired. a big day sailing had come to its end.

we´ll gonna have a day break - enjoying paros and stocking up on water and food and sleep. i will also hunt down these lovely little shops, missing my mami, who would be the perfect partner in crime for this!

naousa, paros

a great and cheap spot just 200m from the little town