Ah the pleasures of being an engineer!
we set sail on friday afternoon for an overnight anchor in rhodes, before planning to return to Rodos on saturday afternoon to collect two more guests.
as we tried to dock on saturday, we had a failure on our stern thruster. now, before you run off to find your anne summers catalogue to see what a stern thruster is, let me tell you. it is like a big underwater fan that drops out of the bottom of the boat and pushes the boat sideways, very important piece of kit when parking in tight spots.
while i was trying to rectify the fault, i noticed that we were taking on a lot of water through the thruster housing, i could slow the leak but not stop it, and to slow it meant that we could not use the thruster so, after a half hour thinking time, the captain suggested that we now head to athens ship yard, as they have a crane big enough to lift us out.
On saturday evening at 7pm, we pushed off from Rodos old town and would cruise non stop until midnight the following night, pumping the bilge as we went.
Of course technology would fail me again half way across the aegean. Mid afternoon on sunday, just when i was feeling realy tired , i spotted a family of dolphins heading straight towards us. The must have been around 20 of them and as they reached our bow, they turned and swam with us.
now this is where technology lets me down. I grabbed my camera to film these beauties, and within 5 seconds it was flat. OK so i had grabbed a couple of seconds of dolphins under my feet in glorious blue waters but then, i tried to transfer from my camera to laptop or ipod and no joy! so even though i got some footage, you can’t see it.
I have added a couple of shots though, 1 of a dolphin at my feet, the other is from around 3am on sunday morning while i was alone on deck , on watch.
enjoy them
i may now be stuck in athens for the best part of a month while we fix the thrusters and a few other items i would like to do while i am out of the water. tune in again later this week to see if i make it all the way without sinking the boat
The November Archives 
May 7th, 2007 at 16:00
hi honey… Just spent the last half an hour catching up with the life of wayne… Sounds like things are going well (apart from the sinking boat lol!) Speak to you soon I hope, love v xxx p.s. i\’m super jealous about the chef!!! xxx