On Friday we left Edinburgh on our Bi- Annual Tarbert-Leros Challenge. In April 2010 we failed miserably as a result of the feckless Icelanders selfishly depositing their ash in our flight path. We withdrew from that challenge and spent the next 3 months in amusing banter with the airlines to get our money back.

This time we had the forces of BA strikers, Greek revolutionaries and the British weather gods lined up against us . Luckily the BA staff haven't made up their minds about their next strike and the Greek activists had their riots last Wednesday. However the Brit weather entities had a half hearted attempt with gales on Friday which caused delays in BA flights. Thankfully our cunning plan of leaving a couple of spare hours soon saw off their 2 hour delay in our first flight. Our pilot, probably on a promise that night, actually shaved 20 minutes off of our flight, thus giving us time for a quick pint in terminal 5 before our Athens flight left – cool or what!

I’m not saying that the aircraft BA dragged out of it’s museum for the Athens run was old, but I’m sure that I saw the pilots carrying leather helmets and flying goggles. The seat padding had seen better days and the in-fllght TV was one of John Logie Baird’s earlier prototypes.

After an arse aching 3 hour flight we arrived in Athens at 2.30 AM to await our Leros flight at 6.30. We settled among those deeply weird creatures that seem to inhabit airports in the wee ,small hours . They have an ability to sleep almost anywhere, create personal burrows out of unlikely piles of luggage and walk around looking ominous and speaking in strange tongues. It’s like the entire cast of baddies in Lord of the Rings had decided to hibernate in the strange twilight zone that is Athens Airport at night.

Our Leros flight took off in the dark and, as it rose through the clouds, flew into the most glorious deep red, pink and orange sunrise. When one looked down at the Aegean it gradually turned from blood red to an impossible shade of blue in about 20 minutes. Gina noticed all of this but Bob had fallen asleep and was only woken by the third bounce as the aircraft touched down kangaroo fashion at Leros Airport.

Leros greeted us with sunshine and strong winds. Bob was in a state of some nervous anxiety when he eventually became fully awake and realised that we were at the marina. He had been dreading arriving at the boat after 11 months away and not knowing what might have gone wrong .

Evros marina is always a dusty place and the outside of Tiercel bore evidence of it. Nonetheless this was the only problem that we encountered. Everything worked just fine. Even the engine started after only about half a turn. It just shows that our anally retentive attitude to de-commissioning had paid dividends this year.

When one owns a yacht it requires somewhere in the region of an hour’s work for every day that it is in the water and about 10 minutes for every day out of it. On this basis Tiercel probably needs between 60 and 80 hours of work.

We did have vague intentions of sailing up to Samos but, as we are only out here for 15 days, decided to drop Tiercel in the water, do the necessary maintenance, do some holiday stuff (eat, drink, visit, wear strange clothes, point at stuff, take pictures etc) then take her out of the water and head for home. Tiercel has now been relegated to being the country cottage and we have become holidaymakers .

Normally when we are here in Lakki we bump into old friends from our days as liveaboards. This year there are more boats here than ever before but, those we know are all uninhabited. Quite a few boats here are up for sale. Perhaps this reflects the strained times in which we live.

However, Lakki really looks prosperous at the moment. The marina has grown immensely, there are new shops and restaurants, old restaurants have been re-furbished and there is a general air of prosperity about the place.

Being tourists we have eaten out most nights. On Monday we celebrated Tiercel being back in the briny by eating out at an Italian restaurant where the portions are huge and the staff eccentric. The starter was a ball of mozzarella about the size of a cannon ball surrounded by half a pig of Parma ham. The main course was a delicious heap of pasta that one could barely see over. The litre carafe of red wine actually didn’t need chilling and had no shudder factor at all . All of this was served by a charming , drama queen of a waitress ,dressed in a black outfit that was the height of belly dancer chic. She had a voice which told of overindulgence in strong spirits and full strength cigarettes. Every time she passed the bar she took a swig of red wine and a couple of drags of her full strength Capstans. The music was divine - all that great stuff from the sixties and seventies that we thought we had forgotten but ended up singing at one another as the evening wore on and the level of the red wine dropped down the carafe. The whole evening was an absolute delight and well worth every cent that Rob drunkenly handed over to them.

Yes, its good to be back in Leros even if we are now only holidaymakers here.