Petalídhion

We spent the morning of 18 April shopping in Kalamáta primarily to make sure that we had lots of food on board but also to look for (and find!) a non-return valve which I wanted to fit to the water inlet for the generator. This will help the impeller get the flow of cooling seawater flowing. The impeller should provide enough suction to self-prime but having water held in the pipe by the non-return valve will cause less wear on the impeller and minimise the chance of an airlock and no cooling water flow, as has happened on a couple of occasions.

Kalamáta in our ‘rear view mirror’   

The marina allows you to stay up to 1400hrs on your day of departure, however, we slipped away at 1220hrs. As we had expected, the southerly sea breeze had already kicked in so we had planned to sail just 8 miles west to anchor off Petalídhion. It turned out to be fast and very pleasant sailing with BV romping along at 7½-8 knots and it was almost a shame to stop and anchor.

Anchored off Petalídhion   

There isn’t much ashore at Petalídhion and nothing we could see grabbed our attention [Ed: other than the incessant racket from a pile-driver/large jack-hammer in road-building mode!], so we stayed on board. I fitted and tested the new non-return valve, we filled the aft heads pipework with vinegar to descale it, and then we relaxed in the cockpit reading and caught up on some paperwork.

Looking back towards Kalamáta, just 8 miles away   

The small harbour at Petalídhion   

It was very much a positioning day to get us out of the marina at Kalamáta and ready to take advantage of the favourable morning winds to get us south to the more interesting town of Koroni.

Petalídhion, Greece