In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we find ourselves in 30 knots of wind and we can't furl in the head sail. Fortunately some teamwork and electrical tape sa...

Closed Captions (CC):
We've seen something white in the sea and

we don't know if it's a fender or

polystyrene, but we thought we'd go and

check it out

We're off to Upper Koufanisi today

Ooh, that sounds like a posh part of town.

It certainly does doesn't it

Yeah behind us is Amorgos

It was great, it protected us from the

wind which is what it's intended to do and

touring around the island was really pretty

Yeah it was great. The Chora is

beautiful - absolutely stunning place. Yes

Oh the one thing you can't get sorted

out at Amorgos -

you cannot buy small gas bottle refills

it's not, just not no. So we're going to Koufanisi,

there's an anchorage there

that's our preferred anchorage, our anchorage

choice (A) and stay there for one night

and then we go to Ios where we meet up

once again with our friend Jim on our

buddy boat Acheron. Yay-hey so looking

forward to seeing Jim again - yes!

We've seen something white in the sea and we

don't know if it's a fender or polystyrene

but we thought we'd go and check it out.

If it's polystyrene we may be

able to bring it in and get it out of

the sea and if it's a fender, we get a free fender!

Yay you got it Bazzie! We've got a step fender

It's our new step fender!

Looks like we just got ourselves a new

step fender!

How's it going there Admiral

Pretty good Cap'n ... got one end on

Cool. Just doing the other end. Cool!

Thank you Universe!

Yep, coz our old one was definitely well buggered

Oh it was.

And we're very near to the bay that we're going to pull into. So we're going into

that bay there. This is us here and we're

doing five point eight knots

So this anchorage that we're coming up

to behind me there are several cats

monohulls and a big stink boat in there

and we're unsure looking through the

binoculars whether they're all tied back

to shore, so what we're going to do is

we're going to go in there, have a cruise

round, see if they're tied back or

whether they're free swinging and then

if necessary if we see a space and they

are tied back, we'll come back out, we'll prepare our lines and prepare ourselves and

then go back in and tie back along with

everybody else. If they're free swinging

and there's a space we'll just drop the hook and do

what we normally do. So I'm not sure what

the name of this bay is but we're on the

Greek island of Koufanisi in the north

east corner and this bay is absolutely

stunning. It's busy as because it's so

stunning. Check this out.

How beautiful is this water?

I am up with the sunrise this

morning mostly because I didn't really

get much sleep last night.

This bay that we're in is an absolutely

gorgeous bay but it is not good for over

our anchorages because even as you can

see it's very very flat at the moment

the slight swell that does come in

causes you to roll and we've been

rocking and rolling all night. Not vastly

but just enough to not allow sleep. So

we're up early this morning; we will be moving

on as soon as we've got the boat ready

Great anchorage though, good sandy bottom

good holding. Very small weedy patches

this is pretty much sand all throughout

the bay, the holding is good but

unfortunately just rocking and rolling

Oh and one more thing about this anchorage

it's very much a day tripper anchorage

there are one, two, three, four, five, six,

seven boats including us in here who

stayed the night but yesterday three times that many

were here anchored for the day, they all

left for the night, possibly because of

the rolly rolly, who knows

I think that last night while we were

down below trying to get some sleep

A B Sea went out dancing because she's done

a couple of pirouettes around the anchor

chain this morning

Seems as though every time we come

around the northern end of Ios, that the

wind decides that it's going to teach us a

couple of lessons and this time I was

watching the wind and it was running

about 20 / 25 knots and I could see that

further out it was coming up and

building up to 30 so I said okay let's

reef in that head sail and that'll be

just right by the time that wind gets to us

And something we've been keeping an eye on

for the last couple of weeks was the

furling line for the head sail. The outer

sheath had started to fray so basically

when we tried to reef, the sheath had

completely separated and we could

actually see the main core and then the

sheath got bunched up on the outside of

the jammer and so we couldn't winch the

furling line through the jammer

Luckily my little inner voice early that

morning had sort of said to me "How good

are you at remembering a rolling hitch?"

So I had a really strong feeling to get

our RYA Handbook out and remind myself how

to tie a rolling hitch. Of course when

Baz said to me oh the furling

line is not coming through the jammer

I went oh it's okay let's get another

line, I can do a rolling hitch, we'll at

least be able to support it around

another winch while we work out what to do

So we did that and we also managed to

use black electrical tape to wrap around

the outside of the sheath and make it

slim enough to be able to pull it

through the jammer

This little bit of black electrical tape is now our eyeball

for how far we can actually let this

furling line go out. This is our enforced

reefing point basically so for now we're

having to run with a reefed head sail

This is our furling line for our

mainsail and as you can see we have the

same issue here and again we've put

black electrical tape as our eyeball to

how far we can actually let the mainsail out.

Both of these lines will be replaced

as soon as we find somewhere

that sells the correct size line.

Bonjour, je m'appelle Aannsha. Anch? Aannsha. Aannsha, nice to meet you.

Alrighty

Hello! Hello I can give you a hug at last.

Hang on. How're you doing? Really well!

It's good to see you.

Hello I'm Eve. Barry, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you

Hang on ... this is ... woa

Jimness Furnessus, my old friend! Biggus Dickus, how're you doing? It's great to see you again!

Alrighty

First things first after coming ashore

Get rid of our rubbish!

It's always fun trying to locate the nearest bin.

Next mission is to go from

this beach to the main port where we're

going to ask if there's a chandler's and

also find out where in the Chora is

the place that we can buy a refilled

gas bottle for cooking. Just after midday

now about 12:30 and we're starting to

feel the heat of summer. It's the first week in July

Well we went to the port police and

he pointed us in the direction of a small chandler in town here in the port of Ios and he didn't

have enough 10 millimeter rope so we

went to a rental car place who the

chandler recommended. Jacobs. Jacobs and

they said no we don't sell it here but

we have another shop just about 700

to 900 metres out of town where you will

buy it. We're on a mission!

We were able to buy

the right size line in the right lengths

at Jacobs Hardware and Chandler Store

just outside of town and it was also the

place where we were able to swap out our

cooking gas. Unfortunately we were so

excited about completing our mission

that we forgot to film anything!

Just woke up this Monday morning here at the

Greek island of Ios and there's a fog

bank rolling around the side of the

island. That's pretty impressive

Also in the fog there just past the yacht

there's the silhouette of a very large

motor cruiser.

We're both feeling gutted.

We are anchored in a small bay a

beautiful bay on the Greek island of

Ios and as has been our daily ritual,

once the sun is up and we're producing

power we power up our instruments to

transmit our AIS signal and also just to

check for water depth and wind speed and

all that sort of stuff. So this morning

Monday morning I did as I usually do

powered everything up and then went

below. Next thing we know there's all

sorts of alarms coming out of the

chartplotter. Comes up onto the deck, has

a look at things

there's no AIS and no GPS. So I had a

look at the Raymarine autopilot - remember

the story about that one? And it's dead

the display is dead again and it took

out the GPS and AIS. So I emptied the

locker, disconnected the cables from the

autopilot, powered the system back up again

and thankfully the GPS and AIS are now

displaying correctly on the plotter

So the autopilot saga continues

We have had a couple of comments from

some viewers who are more knowledgeable

on this subject than I and they were

suggesting that if the diodes that Nail

replaced in Marmaris have gone then that

was indicative of a polarity situation

with the power to the unit. So what I've

got to do isn't certainly not today

because it is a scorcher, what I've got

to do is I've got to get into the wiring

that the guy who install the autopilot

sort of like jerry-rigged because he had to

change the pins from the old style

to the new style, I'm gonna have to strip

all his wiring back and check that it's

all connected as it should be and just

make sure that that's not going to be an

issue because if we get this repaired

again and we haven't checked the wiring

then it's just gonna fail again, yeah, so

that's that saga. Yeah. Bummer, anyway, look

it could have been worse it could have

happened well he really needed it, out

to sea or something, anyway... So there you go, yeah We'll keep you up-to-date on what happens. Yes

And you're emptying this locker today because... because...

you love to do it. I just love getting in lockers.

No, doing this today because we've got to get the

autopilot removed because we are sending

the autopilot back to Marmaris via

Jimness Furnessus on the big boat Acheron

Coz he's going that way. Yeah he's going back there

So that's yeah quite fortuitous isn't it? Yep

All right I'll put this down now and

I'll give you a hand

Oh, there it goes.

Bad boy

And on that there boat is our buggered

up autopilot on its way to Marmaris in

Turkey for another repair from the

magical Nail. And of course big thanks to

Jim for being the courier.

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