Portas Canal

Thessaloniki was great, many chandlers so I've fixed the toilets, kitchen pump and have parts for a few more jobs. Managed to find a gas shop (marina office lady rang her mum to ask!) and have decanted with a pretty dodgy hose, into our three bottles. The new Greek gas is wonderful, I don't know where the old gas came from, but everything works better now. The gas shop man was going mad trying to understand what I was doing with all the gas. I did try to explain what I was up to, but he was adamant that you can't turn the bottles upside down, and asked if I had a REALLY big stove! He laughed a lot.

Dimitris has a couple of days spare so has joined us to sail around Chalkidiki.

Viktor said our mast was 15 metres and the bridge 20. The book says bridge is 18 metres, but another yachtie was sure it was higher. We measured our mast many times (without going to the top) and I thought it might be 16.5. Dimitri said 17.8(and a few other numbers I suppose!). Clearly there was a small risk…..

Headed into the canal and noted the boatyard at the entrance so if we did have a disaster help was close at hand! It's a small canal, 2.5M depth and quite narrow. Headed very slowly to the bridge, as slow as I could take her, with Anne and Sabine screaming 'no, no, no' and Dimitri quietly saying 'I think it's ok'. There is a little flexible antenna atop the mast which went gently 'click click clack' as we eased under the first span…… The good think is, we now know much more accurately just how tall the mast is!!!!