Christmas letter 2008

 

We left Stockholm airport in the beginning of April. There were a lot of snow on the runaway but we made it and reached Athens airport without any problems. After 6 hours on the bus to Preveza we finely saw our boat again after our 5 months. We had a busy time preparing our boat, s/y Ayla, and we spend a lot of time with our Swedish sailing friends in the boatyard. In the beginning of May we lounged Ayla and sailed across the bay to Preveza and the Swedish pontoon. One week later we sailed together with some Swedish boats up north against Albania. Unfortunately we did not find any sailing marina and refused to stay in any industrial harbours together with BIG ships. For that reason we decided to sail on to Montenegro, were we stayed for three weeks. We rented a car together with the other Swedish crews. We drove around the country and really enjoyed the countryside. After a week in Bar marina we sailed up to the fiord of Kotor. We anchored in the fiord in several places and really enjoyed the spectacular view from the different anchor places. We were surrounded with high mountains, about 2 000 meters high.A few weeks later we checked out and sailed south and back to Greece again. We had a nice time exploring the surroundings of Corfu and Mother Nature gave us two earth-quakes before we celebrated midsummer on the island Meganisi, just east of Lefkas.The strength of the earthquakes was not very strong; it was like sailing the boat on a sandbank in 1 knot.

The Midsummer celebration was very nice. About 35 people enjoyed the Swedish tradition with herring, potatoes, beer and of course a “snaps”.

In July and August we sailed south to look for the sea turtles on the islands in the south of the Ionian Sea. In the middle of October we hauled our boat at Aktio Marina in Preveza and drove to Sweden through the countries on the Balkan Peninsula. We had during the summer bought a car, Volvo of course, from a Swedish couple in Greece. The purpose was driving through the countries we couldn’t visit by boat. Driving home to Sweden was a great adventure and we will write about it on our website.

We sailed 1800 nm this season and we bought about 200 litres of diesel. This is 0,1 l / nm. We usually start our engine when the speed is less that 1 knot.

Next season we are planning to sail a very long distance, 4 500 nm.

Curious about our sailing plan?????? Follow our website www.ayla.biz now in English and with weather forecast from all over the world.

Marry Christmas and a Happy New Year 

Radio Olympia Greece

WX
A. (ALL SHIPS) 3 THIS IS (OLYMPIA RADIO) 3 WEATHER AND SEA BULLETIN
FOR SHIPPING PLEASE LISTEN ON CHANNELS:
NORTHWEST AEGEAN		23 – 60
NORTHEAST AEGEAN		82 – 85
CENTRAL AEGEAN		01 – 25 – 85
SOUTHWEST AEGEAN		04 – 25 – 85
SOUTHEAST AEGEAN		23 – 63
KRITIKO		04 – 27 – 83 – 85
IONIAN SEA		02 – 27 – 83 – 85
V H F
TIME OF TRANSMITIONS FOR WX
GMT	06:00	WX
	10:00	WX
	16:00	WX
	22:00	WX
HF
TIME        AND        FREQUENCY
GMT	09:30	8424 KHZ
	21:30	8424 KHZ
MF  VOICE
06:33,  09:03 , 15:33 ,  21:33  GMT
SVL (LHMNOS RADIO )		2730 KHZ
SVH ( HRAKLEIO RADIO )		2799 KHZ
SVK  ( KORFU RADIO )		2830 KHZ
SVR ( RHODES RADIO )		2624 KHZ

Arriving at Montenegro

We arrived to Montenegro after a nice sailing day. We had some problems when we approached the lighthouse just outside Bar. It was around midnight and it was raining as well. We ( read = I ) picked the wrong lighthouse and navigated wrong. It was a lighthouse on a peninsula just north of Bar. But when we discovered the wrong course, we already past Bar so we had to turn back and go to the marina in Bar.

The marina in Bar is just north of the commercial harbor. Here are a lot of Russian people but you will hardly see any Russian flags. It is to complicated to register a pleasure boat in Russia so many Russian boats where flying the flag from Sierra Leone!

It is quite easy to do the paper works for entering the country. The people was very nice and helpful and told you what to do. We had to pay a sailing permit for one month, 225 euro, for our boat.

For staying in the marina we had to pay 40 euro per day, including water and electricity.