TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

Its a grey drizzly day and we are running late after looking around the fortress at Vonitsa. We’re pushing to get through the Levkas bridge on the hour (it only opens every hour on the hour) when we get a radio call “Misios, Misios, Please close with the lead boat”.

What are we doing wrong this time?

When we get over to her, its just a case of them wanting to ask us something without letting everybody in on it and they say “Can you please give us a tow we’ve got engine trouble”.

On the way again and we are pushing Misios’ engine hard with a Maxi 100 tied on the back as if we don’t get to the bridge by 15:00 we will have to wait until 16:00 for it to open again.

We round the point at 15:00, but will they shut the bridge before we get there?

15:05 and its still open but whats that up ahead, Arillas is doing figures of eight where the bridge wants to be making sure they don’t shut it on us.

We get through and the bridge closes behind us.

The lead boat’s engine trouble was fixed once we put her alongside the fuelling berth at Levkas Marina, they had run out of Diesel!

A lot of work bleeding their fuel system and injectors though, diesels don’t like sucking in air instead of fuel.