After all the fun and games of getting checked in, we had a few days to explore Corfu before Jess arrived.
We anchored up in a very popular bay called “Ormos Garitsas”. It is well sheltered and because of that had loads of boats in it. This was easily the most yachts we’d been around since moving aboard Nautilus. However, there was plenty of space, the holding was really good there and it gave us a great base to explore from. Even better, the airport was only a 20 min walk, so after a quick dingy ride ashore we picked jess up ready for the start of her adventure…
Route was down the coast of Corfu, to Paxos, Antipaxos and then back up the mainland to Corfu again.
We ended up anchoring in some pretty shallow water. The real art was trying to find a sandy patch to “drop the hook”, rather than pulling up large wads of seagrass.
It’s clearly a hard life being on holiday!
On the way back to Corfu there was no wind and it was baking hot. In the end i towed the girls in the water to cool down.
We found some stunning bays, especially around Paxos. Long lines to shore and crystal clear waters. Lots of caves to explore too.
Bye Jess, and thanks for a lovely holiday xx
All too soon the holiday was over and it was back to Corfu to put Jess back on a plane to the UK.
After saying goodbye, the plan was the to drop south to Preveza. It was here that we were going to check-out options for where to put Nautilus when we went back to the UK later in August.
It was a bit of a slow start as there wasn’t much wind and I HATE burning diesel if I can avoid it. We carried on exploring the cost of Corfu as we headed south, finding some inlets to explore in our Kayak. The plan was to head back to Paxos and Antipaxos as we really enjoyed our time there.
As before, we tied up in some lovely bays and got to swim in crystal clear waters, although sadly there weren’t many fish.
From Antipaxos, we pushed off into a strong afternoon breeze to sail over to the mainland. Our goal for that day was to sail into Fanari bay where the river Acheron runs. This was supposed to be the river Styx that took you to the underworld (if you remember your greek mythology). Sadly there was too much swell running in there to safely anchor, we we sailed a bit further down the coast to “Two Rocks Bay”.
We had a lovely night up there and a few beers at the beach bar. the next day we went for an easy sail down the coast to Preveza
as you can see from the map, we spent ALOT of time in Preveza. Fortunately we liked the down and the Ambracian Gulf that runs inland was amazing. We used this as a base for picking people up from the airport and also decided we would have Nautilus lifted out here. Being somebody who follows rules, we paid up for two nights on the town key and went down to the port police to get our logbook stamped to say we were were in the area. This nearly caused us a major headache later in the trip (but more on that later.
All tied up on the town quay. We found that often people leave their unused credit on shore power connection, so it’s there long after they have pushed off for good. Anyway, was a great opportunity to top-up the batteries and do some washing.
Time for a bit of quick maintenance to fix a halyard at the top of the mast.
As well a being a cute town, it was a good chance to catch-up on a few maintenance tasks and provision the boat ready for the arrival of Zach. We decided we were also happy with the yard for the lift-out, so completed all the paperwork and paid our deposit.
We finally persuaded Zach to come out and visit us (maybe helped by the fact his sister had been and had a good time?!?).
The itinerary was to do a 7-day loop of Lefkada so that he could fly back to the UK a week later.
We anchored up a 20 min walk from the airport to meet him. After a trek back to the boat we weighed anchor and set sail for Lefkada. The plan was to drop down through canal into the top of the inland sea. The canal runs down past Lefkaka town and takes about 45 mins to motor down. However, it’s blocked by a road swing bridge that only opens once an hour. In the summer they also cancel the 1pm and 3pm openings as there is too much traffic. After we setoff, we realised we would need to push hard to make the 2pm opening and came blasting into the entrance of the canal at 8 knots, we rounded up into wind, crash dumped the sails and joined the end of the queue of yachts just as the horn sounded for the bridge to open!
Happy we’d got there in time, we joined the slow moving queue of boats as we shuffled up to the bridge. Then the boats behind us started yelling to go faster. We since found out that the bridge will only stay open for 5 to 10 mins and then they’ll just close it to avoid huge traffic jams. So we started passing the message on to the people in front of us, who were REALLY SLOW. Anyway, eventually we were all pretty much flat out on the engines and we hammered past the bridge just as the sirens went to say it was closing. – PHEW.
After that is was a 30 min motor past the town and down the canal to the inland sea. It’s a pretty surreal experience going through the land on your yacht, but all all good fun. Once through, it was sails up and sailing onto our bay for the night. We had a fantastic few days exploring the islands and getting Zachy sailing.
One afternoon we were sailing up the back of Lefkada having a call with mum and dad when a strong kalabatic wind suddenly came in. I stopped the call and we had high energy 5 mins where we had to reef the boat down as the wind jumped from 7 knots to 25 knots in the space of a 1 min or so. It was all fine, but there were a few firm commands issued to make sure everything was done quickly and things were lashed down. Anyway, with everything thing reset we started sailing again, at which point I heard a peep on the phone. Clearly i’d not hung up the call and my parents were still listening – I think they’d decided all hell had broken loose and they got front-row seats to listen in. In the end there were no issues and it was back down the canal for the night to find something to eat and tie up for dinner.
We still had a couple of nights left, so we sailed on into explore the gulf, and what an amazing place it is! Ok, the water isn’t clear, but that’s because it’s full of life. there are dolphin, turtles, eagle rays and loads of other fish. With Zach at the helm, we tacked our way up through the mouth of the gulf in 20 knots of wind to make for some islands in the middle. As usual, after some great sailing the wind died and we motored on. In the distance we saw a pod of dolphin and as we got closer we very sadly saw a dead male floating on the surface. It had clearly died a while ago as it was bloated and the smell was terrible. However, it looked like the other dolphin were staying around mourning it…. We quickly pushed on and motored up to the north coast to explore and go to a tiny local restaurant for some of their specialty shrimp.
We spent the evening anchored up of a group of islands and it was simply magical. Dolphin and Turtle in the distance and a beautiful sunset. Zach kept trying his fishing, but didn’t have any joy. He only stopped when the mosquitoes came out and he started getting eaten alive. The next say was a bit more sailing before we finally had to drop Zach back to the airport for his trip home. All it all it was a fabolous week and hopfully he’ll be back again soon.
3rd and final instalment to follow….
