After endless trials and tribulations, we eventually had most things on Hygeia sorted out, and slipped our moorings at Gocek on Sunday morning, 27th April, to motor the mile across to the fuelling barge to fill up with diesel.

Having taken on board 250 litres I turned the key to head south, only to find the engine completely dead. It was the first time in 10 years Hygeia's engine has failed to start first touch. I was unable to locate the problem, so had to call the marina and be towed back where we had come from with our tails between our legs. Further probing with my multimetre showed the problem was too difficult for my little brain, and we had to summon an electrician. He was eventually able to locate the fault, and after about an hour we were once again on our way, initially down to Fethiye where we had to clear out. This was done rather expensively by an agent, and after a quiet night in Fethiye we headed off early the next morning to Rhodes. The weather was fine although the wind weak and contrary, so we motored most of the thirty miles. Rhodes was hot, interesting, a bit tatty and full of tourists, and we decided not to prolong our stay. We looked round the castle, the most interesting tourist spot, had our first Greek Souvlaki and chips, and again left early the next morning for Tilos.

Our plan was to island-hop across the Aegean to the Athens area, but the wind had dropped to nothing, the sea was oily-calm, and as I was still feeling somewhat fragile, we decided to make hay while the sun shone, to mix metaphors, and get in as much westing as we could while the weather was so benign. In the event it stayed like this, so we went straight past most of our destinations - Tilos, Astipalaia, Amorgos, and Ios and finally stopped on Sifnos 30 hours or so after leaving Rhodes. A rather lonely but pleasant island and we moored in a lovely bay on the west side. Not much there apart from a few Tavernas, but we had a very relaxing afternoon there before leaving the next morning planning to go to Kithnos. However the conditions remained utterly benign so we decided to plough on to Poros, only 20 miles from Athens, which is where we are now.

We're moored on the N Town quay - very noisy, and packed with tourists, but very pretty and archetypically Greek: lovely whitewashes houses rising steeply up the hill behind the port.
We're going to take the ferry to Athens tomorrow and do the touristy bit ourselves.

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