It has been a strange winter. The liveaboard community has been active with music evenings, weekly drink on a Friday and BBQs when possible. The town has been explored in all its dimensions from food shops, beauty parlours, activities and historical monuments so something for everyone’s taste. Unfortunately we have been very unlucky with weather as it has rained a great deal and there have been almost constant cold Northerly winds. On the rare occasions when it has dropped there has been sunshine and warmth so it has been possible to have a BBQ including one that was laid on by the harbour staff where they cooked sardines.

The Christmas festivities went off well with a Scandinavian theme for the main dinner (cooked by the participants) and the results can been seen in the pictures. The harbour did us proud with a lavish spread on Christmas day and another event on New Year’s Day. There was also a visit to a ballet performance by visiting Russian soloists. Svein managed to distinguish himself over the holidays by falling in the water on returning to the boat after some of the festivities. He cut his leg quite badly and had it treated at the hospital. The climax however was when he succeeded in falling in again the next day whilst explaining to some people what he had done the previous night. The outcome was that Caryn lost all her servings trays, spoons and some knives that are now sitting at the bottom of the harbour.

Unfortunately the month of January was not as calm as Caryn spent most of the month travelling to Athens for tests and 2 major operations. Fortunately our friends from Eagle’s Nest on Nisyros (Mike and Marilyn) came up trumps and organised the hospital visits as well as the transport and accommodation. They were truly brilliant. They know a private hospital that dealt with everything on the spot and very rapidly. Now it only remains to get back on form and deal with the preventive treatment that should start soon.

There have been a few visits to beauty parlours and a fish spa that has now opened in town so from the pampering point of view all has been well. We have unfortunately not been able to continue with the latin dancing lessons but the few classes we did in December we enjoyed very much and hopefully have learned something from them.

Svein has managed to shorten the main boom. A task that has been waiting for a long time but had been put off as he was afraid it would be a major job but his fears were unfounded and he did it in a very short time. We now have much more space between the two masts to move around.