POSTCARD FROM LEONIE
again and we were able to sail for the next seven hours. The rising of the sun brought
Corsica within our sight plus two dolphins who swam and frolicked in Leonie’s bow. Carl topped us up with oil and in a fickle wind we switched from sailing to motoring, without any hitches, until reaching Macinaggio on Cap Corse at lunchtime.
The next day Carl phoned Beta for some advice as he was struggling to locate the problem with our 20-year- old Beta engine. The company’s customer service is excellent and the engineer he spoke to was really helpful, making several suggestions as to what to look for. The end result was a loose sump
nut, which carl was able to fix himself by the time-consuming but virtually cost-free method of disconnecting the engine’s electrics and its fuel and coolant lines and uncoupling the prop shaft from the gear box.
This allowed us to hoist the engine a foot or so into the air using a block and tackle in order to reach, clean and improve the sump nut seal. He put the engine
Carl raising the engine to fix the sump nut below.
pipe - easily fixable with help from a local restaurant owner at Marina di Campo who sourced us a new pipe length. We had a memorable night-time
arrival on the beautiful Isola d’ Elba. As a tourist pleasure boat had
us to untie as he was heading out. We eventually found a more
suitable mooring near to, but not alongside, the quay wall. On Easter Friday we sailed to another of the Tuscan islands, Giglio. At the entrance to Port Giglio is the sad sight of the cruise liner Costa Concordia which hit rocks and keeled over with some loss of life. As we rounded the corner to the harbour entrance we found ourselves on a collision path with a big car ferry backing out and had to quickly get out of its way to avoid being mown down. Once safely inside the harbour we
were directed to a stern-to space by a young harbour officer but decided to enter it bows-to as Leonie does not reverse easily. Just as Carl dropped anchor another harbour officer began madly waving his arms at us from the pon- toon, shouting unless we came in stern to we must leave the port. Then for some reason he changed tack and told us to come alongside on the other side of the pontoon instead. This is a busy
Leonie (blue boat on left) moored below the old town in Bastia, Corsica.
back together again and breathed a sigh of relief when it started. After running it in gear for an hour all seemed to be in working order. Our woes were not over though
as during a four hour run to the Corsican city of Bastia the following day the temperature alarm went off. We were worried but not unduly so as the coolant level was fine and we thought an air bubble was the culprit. However it was more serious than that as we discovered during our pas- sage to the Italian Island of Elba a day later when the coolant level dropped several times and again we faced the possibility of another costly solution. Relief was ours once more when Carl discovered a split coolant
ferry port and we are moored a couple of boat lengths away from
taken the space reserved for visitor moorings we headed for a vacant bows-to berth but were waved off by a maritime policeman who said the space was reserved. The only other spot was alongside
the quay wall where another yacht was also moored. It appeared just deep enough for
us but at 1.00am Le- onie’s keel started to bump on the bottom. The tide in this area had caused the sea level to drop 18 inches. We had to move. This time we
moored alongside the tourist boat and slept like logs until 8am when the captain asked
The ferry comes in close at the Giglio Porto mooring. 79
where the ferry docks. it was quite alarming to see it come in so close just as we were tying up. We are sheltering here while a gale
rages outside the harbour walls. When it abates we will continue
our voyage to the Greek Ionian islands via the italian coast.•
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44 |
Page 45 |
Page 46 |
Page 47 |
Page 48 |
Page 49 |
Page 50 |
Page 51 |
Page 52 |
Page 53 |
Page 54 |
Page 55 |
Page 56 |
Page 57 |
Page 58 |
Page 59 |
Page 60 |
Page 61 |
Page 62 |
Page 63 |
Page 64 |
Page 65 |
Page 66 |
Page 67 |
Page 68 |
Page 69 |
Page 70 |
Page 71 |
Page 72 |
Page 73 |
Page 74 |
Page 75 |
Page 76 |
Page 77 |
Page 78 |
Page 79 |
Page 80 |
Page 81 |
Page 82 |
Page 83 |
Page 84 |
Page 85 |
Page 86 |
Page 87 |
Page 88 |
Page 89 |
Page 90 |
Page 91 |
Page 92 |
Page 93 |
Page 94 |
Page 95 |
Page 96 |
Page 97 |
Page 98 |
Page 99 |
Page 100 |
Page 101 |
Page 102 |
Page 103 |
Page 104 |
Page 105 |
Page 106 |
Page 107 |
Page 108 |
Page 109 |
Page 110 |
Page 111 |
Page 112 |
Page 113 |
Page 114 |
Page 115 |
Page 116 |
Page 117 |
Page 118 |
Page 119 |
Page 120 |
Page 121 |
Page 122 |
Page 123 |
Page 124 |
Page 125 |
Page 126 |
Page 127 |
Page 128 |
Page 129 |
Page 130 |
Page 131 |
Page 132