Friday 10 October 2014

Pelagia’s final Ionian fling.

We returned to Greece at the end of August and had Pelagia lifted back in the water. Pat had a big shock when she saw a rock about the size of a golf ball hanging on one of the curtains inside. Obviously some insect had built a nest and there was a pupating grub inside this rock structure built of grit stuck together. We did not leave it to see what emerged as it looked large and dangerous! Whilst England had started an Indian summer, Greece was plunged into storms and rain. 
Pelagia in the rain

We sat in Cleopatra marina watching the rain and the lightning for the next 2 days!! We saw one yacht coming in when dark with no lights and it turned out they had lost all electrics in the storm so lucky to get in safely. That was the second yacht we heard of that experienced the same problem. All my portable instruments go in the oven when a storm is around to act as a Faraday’s cage and protect them. Finally it cleared and we were able to sail up the Gulf of Amvrakia, a stretch of water about 20 miles long going in from Preveza. It is said to have more fish, turtles and dolphins in here because of the ideal conditions. We sailed gently to a bay at the far end of the gulf where there was nobody else in the anchorage and we could watch the wildlife which included many Storks flying over. We had a wonderful quiet night on anchor. The following day we sailed back to the small town of Vonitsa still within the gulf and anchored off the town. On route we were treated to a display by 3 dolphins that stayed with us for about 15 minutes, a great treat. Vonitsa looked like a pleasant holiday town but behind the façade it was run down and incredibly poor.
Vonsita

We sailed back to Cleopatra marina where we waited for Zorana to join us for the next two weeks. The weather seemed more settled and we set off on a trip including many places we had seen before, this included the islands of Levkas, Meganissi, Kalamos, Ithaca, and Cephalonia. We had a bad forecast again after a few days and we scuttled into Frikes on Ithaca to shelter from a violent storm which we sat out for the next day watching other boats entering in dreadful conditions. At least the rain was warm! It did finally settle down a bit for Zorana’s second week and we had some good anchorages. One new place we visited was Vathi on Ithaca which was very pretty and a lovely anchorage in the middle of the small town.
Port Vathi

 A wind came up in the night on that anchorage and we said to Zorana that we would have a lively sail the next day up to Spartakhori so we all prepared for it but as soon as we got out of the bay it virtually dropped and we sailed intermittently with motoring to get there to meet our friend David in his boat. Swimming was great at this time of year with water temperature of 24 deg. and we had some lovely nights on anchor. Finally we arrived back in Lefkas marina where Zorana left us. Lefkada is actually an interesting town with many of the houses having upper floors made of tin sheeting. This was a precaution against earthquake damage. Many of the shops in the main street are pretty coloured tin upper stories above the shops.
Lefkas tin shops

Our final week was spent working on the boat, in between the by now regular rain storms! We are lifting out at Preveza Cleopatra marina for the winter to return home on 2nd October. We have added another 190 miles logged in September to our total for this year making a total of 1170 nautical miles for 2014 and added two more countries to the list that Pelagia has experienced. Sadly Greece has had the worst summer locals can remember ever. We had some glorious days, as we should, but one could never relax as storms came back regularly every week or so and we constantly were looking for ports of refuge. Thank God we were in Greece this year because Croatia has been even worse!
Sunrise over Port Atheni, Meganissi