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Nidri, Greece
17.07.2023

    After a long Sunday in the park for a sea themed farewell party we spent the early hours of the morning attempting to cram our lives into 4 mega-size Amazon basics duffel bags. One dry-eyed stupid-AM flight later and we landed in Preveza where the local temperature was 38 degrees.

    For a shock to the system it couldn’t have come much more stark. I managed to sign my name to take over the rental car and we oozed into the hour drive to the boatyard. In the boatyard the baking sand only amplified the midday heat.

    We both immediately got migraine headaches and spent the afternoon alternating between being passed out and attempting to create a rudimentary shade like two castaways on a desert island.

    We quickly learned why summer is the worst time of year to do any boat work. The temperatures climb quickly around lunchtime to the point that almost any movement soaks your clothing with sweat and your brain turns into hot goo. Most of the shops in Lefkada run on a siesta time-schedule with a break between 14:00 and 18:00 in order to avoid the worst of the heat.

    Being the good Digital Nomad Millennial Architects we are, this became our office hours with hours before and after becoming workshop time. On a good day we could squeeze in one task in the morning and one in the evening. On a normal day we would fail to finish something by lunch and then be too tired to pick it up again after dinner…
     

    But the daily trips to Effie’s Hotel, which acted as Ebbe Studio headquarters, and the slow filling in of the yard as characters needing repairs or downtime started showing up, created the cast of our summer. There was George running the best chandlery in Nidri, some sort of cross between the Harry Potter wand shop and Black Books. Simon, with the ‘go sailing first’ attitude who pushed us to get in the water ASAP and bequeathed us a huge collection of  spare lines. And of course there was Peter, our local man-about-town and general spiritual guide, who after 7 years living-aboard in the area showed us the ropes and introduced us into the little community that is Lefkada. At times it felt like we weren’t making any progress. Almost all the time in fact. And then one day we realised that we’d finished everything we needed to launch. We asked the yard and they said they’d put us in tomorrow. All of a sudden we were afloat.