If you check the picture you can see some brave and lucky tourists (some chance they are local ex-pats) on the beach! They really lucked out as today and the next few days are going to be 10-22 degrees C and perfect. Hard to believe it is not even April yet.
During my almost daily inspection of the town (i.e. a walk) I noticed again how volcanic the rocks along the shore looked.
Many of the rocks are obviously solidified lava (still very rough) and some look like lava mixed with rubble. They look suspiciously ‘fresh’ too, even though there are no active volcanoes on Crete. Crete, like many of the Greek islands, is mostly rock. If you want to build here you usually start by hacking our some flat space from solid rock…..it is not like digging into soil in Canada. I asked ChatGPT about the geology of Crete, and it confirmed the volcanic activity….but also mentioned this which is interesting:
“Crete is home to some of the largest and most complex karst landscapes in the world. Karst is a type of topography that forms when soluble rocks like limestone are dissolved by groundwater. This process creates a variety of distinctive surface and subsurface features, such as sinkholes, caves, and underground rivers. Crete’s karst landscapes are particularly notable for their size and complexity, with numerous underground cave systems and subterranean lakes.”
One of the boaters at the marina gave a short lecture during a hike to one of the local plateaus , which was inside a very large ring, and he mentioned that this was from limestone being dissolved away over hundreds of thousands of years. The plateau was very fertile and was full of farms and there are several on the island.
I also got a good picture of a local boat that sunk during one of the winter storms:
It looks like a ghost boat hiding behind some magic mirror. No engine or equipment on the boat, so no big environmental hazard. It doesn’t look like a working fishing boat (there are lots around) so probably no big tragedy. Plus you can guess that some of the winter storms are no joke.
Victoria and I tested the bow thruster…..and it works! Victoria says it is even stronger than it was before, which might be true because the new propeller was perfectly clean.
And my new parts came for my manual bilge pump:
Does this look like 70 Euros to you? It should. A new pump is just over 100 Euros. At least I’m confident that the parts are of high quality. For an economic reason the threads on the threaded part are a non-standard size (15mm I think, you can buy 14 and 16mm nuts but no 15) so you need to buy their plastic nut to fit on their plastic threaded part. I suppose that is why the company is still in business, and I can still get a maintenance kit. I’m tempted to try to make my own nut next time out of epoxy and a set of thread taps.
I complain, but I do appreciate being able to buy a high-quality maintenance kit to fix a high-quality part. It is not consumer crap that is meant to be thrown out when it breaks.
I’ve now started the repair….and 2 of the parts are not coming apart as they should….I’ve added some lubricant and will wait….but I may need to buy a new pump anyway! Stay tuned to see if I can fix it.
Adventures on Spruzzo 