111 postcard from Leonie by ginny ware


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wapping the rat-race for a cruising life in the sun, Ginny and Carl Farrell sailed from Dartmouth to Greece in their classic yacht Leonie. Leaving their 63-year-old wooden Lion Class boat in Lefkas in


October 2015, the couple returned to Dartmouth to top up their dwindling funds. Just two months before they were due to return to Leonie, news came through she had been battered in a violent, freak hurricane. Months of repairing Leonie lay ahead of them before they could get back to sea. Ginny tells us how they got there.


Our much yearned deadline for


Leonie’s repairs to be completed by the end of July loomed and passed. It was to be another month before she was fit enough to be launched into the sun drenched, sparkling Mediterranean Sea. We spent the best part of the sum-


mer, and the hottest, living inside our small wooden yacht encapsulated within a sweltering tin roofed shed set within a dusty, noisy boat yard containing a thousand other yachts propped up on dry land. From the cockpit, defaced by tools and other random boat-fixing detritus, a big yellow industrial sized hoover and endless dust, we sometimes gazed longingly at the narrow strip of clear blue sea beyond, dotted with yachts freely bobbing about at anchor. But we couldn’t waste time


daydreaming, we had work to do – lots of work. I spent a cramped and blisteringly hot two days crouched in the mildewed heads and the cabin giving each two


fresh coats of paint. Carl, meanwhile, spent hours squatting in the saloon treating the iron floors and repainting Leonie’s bilge, then squeezed into the heads for the tricky task of replacing the waste pipe. This was done while we were


staying ashore in nearby Preveza (two weeks in a basic apartment, one in a hotel). When Leonie’s expert classic yacht repairer, Bob Phelps, had fixed her interior broken frames and replaced the floor it was time to take the plunge and move back on board our damaged yacht. We were para-


Guy Savage


and Carl re-step


the mast


Ginny sanding the hull


Carl with Bob Phelps and his son Coby


“Papa Smurf ”


Bob and his son Coby help fit the new pushpit


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