The Ionian

Posted at 5:50 PM, Jun. 12, 2008

Finally Easyjet delivered Richard, Sarah and grandchildren Emma and Luke plus Michael (Sarah’s father) to Corfu in the early hours of Wednesday 4^th June. So pretty much straight to bed for everyone. 

We planned to leave Corfu the following day but due to a minor leak in the watermaker pump I had an engineer from the Corfu marina in to look at it. Fortunately the guy knew the Spectra brand quite well and was able to effect a repair which was not a major but in reinstalling the pump he broke off a plastic exit fitting. They were able to produce a replacement but it did delay our departure from Corfu by a few hours.

So it was probably about 1500 hrs before we set off for a sail down to Paxos around 30 miles south. The first 20 miles or so was a run down the coast under the main but after rounding the bottom end of Corfu it was a fast beam reach in 20 knots across to the bay of Lakka at the top NE corner of Paxos for the night. Michael, on the handle bars, scored the record with a 9.6 knot burst while Sarah scored over the stern (which we hosed off later).

The  bay was pretty crowded so we anchored in the entrance but the westerly dropped off over night so we did get a calm night in the end. Dinghied ashore in the  morning for a look around the small town, a caffeine hit and shopping for the famed Paxos olive oil.

Then motored down to the southern end of Paxos and spent a couple of nights at Mongonisi which is a lovely sheltered bay, a sandy beach, and taverna’s.

                           Pam with Luke and Emma at Mongonisi on Paxos

We daytripped across to Andi Paxos a small island a couple of miles south and also stuck the bow in to Gaios which the pilot says is chaos in summer and it was looking like that when we were there. Weather good, calm mornings, westerly to SW in the afternoons and calm overnight. The prevailing winds are from the northerly quarter during the summer months but so far in the still to arrive category.

 Friday 6^th we set sail in a 10 – 15 knot SW for the 30 odd mile run to the town of Preveza on the mainland. Good sail, quick passage and again a beam reach. The entry into the port is via quite a long channel, quite narrow but well marked with channel markers. We dropped anchor off the town quay and stern in along with 20 or 30 other boats. The town quay is free and water is available but not power. The pilot is not overly complementary about Preveza however that was not our experience – the waterfront has been revitalised with numerous bars and nightclubs, and in the side alleyways there were numerous cafes and shops. We had dinner ashore courtesy of Richard and Sarah. There is a marina across the harbour that had dozens and dozens of boats up on the hardstand for storage so it is obviously a popular wintering place.

The following day we motored across to the entrance of the 10k long Levkas canal. The pilot says the entrance is difficult to find and behind a moving sandbar. A few hundred metres after entry into the canal it is crossed by a moving bridge which only opens to boats every hour. It pivots off one end so quite an engineering feat.

                             Michael surveys the Levkas canal swing bridge

Our entry into the canal is probably best left undescribed but suffice to say it did involve some extraordinary feats of seamanship (??) kedging and about 3 hours more than usual. The drawing in the Imray pilot is inaccurate but it would have been prudent to maintain a bow watch. While kedging we found that the anchor winch had stripped part of the main drive gear (which happened as we left Preveza) so it was pulling up the anchor by hand. This in turn necessitated an overnight stop in the marina at Levkas to get repairs organised. The bottom line is that getting a replacement gearbox from Lewmar in the USA does not work so it is a new winch coming up – not a cheap exercise. I have never been happy with the Hanse anchoring system given the additional load placed on the winch through leading the chain through nearly a 90 degree angle onto the winch itself. I think stripping some of the gears has been in the making for a while and I ought to have modified the setup earlier. Fortunately the repair services and chandlery operations on both Corfu and Levkas (both big charter boat centres) are excellent so we were lucky that the problem occurred now and not when we are in the Agean. The chandlery just outside the marina in Corfu was a Dickensian affair – everything you could want stacked on shelves up to 2.5 metres high and aisles just shoulderwidth wide. Fantastic place but the really amazing thing was that the guy knew where everything was!

In the meantime we have headed southwards and are anchoring by hand – I have rigged up a bit of a jury system using the power winch in the cockpit which makes the retrieval a lot easier but it is still a hassle laying it out.

From Levkas we had a late departure for Nidri a lovely town around 5 miles south of Levkas once we had exited the canal. The town of Levkas is at the head of the canal and it is possible to anchor off the town quay and also stern to on the quay if space permits. The marina adjoins the canal so the whole place of like being in the middle of a large shallow lake. At Nidri we anchored, along with numerous other boats, in Tranquil Bay opposite the town and it was wall to wall boats. From here it is only a few miles across to Skorpios, the island owned by the Onassis family, and we motored into the bay the following morning to see the small beach cottage used by Jackie O. From here we went down the inside of the island of  Meganisi, anchored and swam and then sailed around to the NE corner of Meganisi to Port Atheni for the night and then today motored the 15 miles across to the island of Ithaca to the town of Kioni.

                      The fishing village of Kioni on Ithaca

This is a delightful village, well preserved/restored and probably the best village we have visited in the Ionian to date. Some good tavernas’s and an excellent jewellery shop featuring locally made stuff. I can see Pam preparing to get the credit card at the ready! The village is popular and to get a spot on the town quay involves entry by early afternoon and after that it is stern lines to the shore around the bay and deep anchoring. A local guy sells water at EUR5 a tank and offers yachties showers also. The "bread" truck arrives on the quay at about 0800 hrs and has all sorts of bread, and croissants. Not all bad!!

Weather is good, water warm, grandchildren well and Emma particularly at 4 is very much enjoying the experiences and her swimming off the boat is fantastic.

                                        Richard, Sarah, Emma and Luke

We return to Levkas on Friday afternoon to have the new anchor winch installed, a new capacitor installed for the generator and then back out to the islands for a couple of nights before dropping off the family again back at Levkas after which we head down into the Gulf of Corinth before transiting through the canal into the Agean.

Cheers

Keith