A beautiful morning….

We sailed South (beating upwind) to AntiPaxos to check out some good swimming bays, but didn’t like the look of anchoring in any of them, so we headed back North towards our evening destination. We arrived early, so in lively 18 kn winds we just went sailing for an hour, enjoying pushing the boat quickly just for the fun of it. All together a great days sailing in plenty, but not too much wind and glorious sunshine.

We anchored in Lakka bay, just a few hundred metres from our berth for the evening to do some swimming. The kids have come up with the idea of throwing breadcrumbs into atract the fish…. this even works with someone swimming in the water… so I got some good pictures…. meet George….

The day was rounded off with a party on the beach for all the yachts in our flotilla, where punch was drunk, and many sailing yarns were exchanged. There is a storm coming through tonight, so may be delayed in the morning…. forecast after that is sunshine all the way.

Early start, breakfast in the kind of weather promised by the brochure….

In order to get from the South Ionian to the North Ionian, you have to at some point sail a slightly longer leg from the Nothern end of the “Inland Sea” marked by Lefkas, to somewhere near the southern end of the Corfu channel, a stretch of about 30 nautical miles without any Islands or handy mainland ports… Well it turned out we needed to do that today.

First we had to queue up for the “floating bridge” to open to let us out of the Lefkas cannel. Apparently this is not a bridge, but a boat you drive over… this keeps Lefkas an Island entitled to lots of EU grants….. It opens every hour, so we had to be lined up ready.

You can see the raised ends of the bridge… sorry, boat…..

Once out of the canal we were in open sea, and annoyingly the wind was dead against us, so we were slamming into 3m swells running on the engine. The promised shift in wind never showed up, so we ended up doing this all day, covering 35Nm to Gaios on Paxos island in 8.5 bone shaking hours. Still the sun was out the whole way.

Tomorrow we only need to get to the other end of Paxos, so a day of fun sailing and snorkelling awaits, just as soon as we have put all the stuff back on the shelves in the boat…….

After some spectacular thunderstorms overnight, day 2 started out with the sort of weather you come to the mediteranean for, warm, sunny, gentle breeze….. so we sailed a short distance to a small island north of our overnight stop.  Anchored in 5m of water in a sheltered bay we jumped off the boat and went snorkelling.

Above you can see Knight Odesesy lying at anchor.

Lunch in the sunshine as we dried off, then we sailed north in 16 to 20 knots of wind for an hour, until the weather started to go all non Ionian again…. The wind increased, changed direction, and it started raining. So we dropped our sails and motored the last half mile to the entrance to the Lefkas Canal, then through the Lefkas Canal to moor up on Lefkas.

Here we are all moored up on the town key….

After some pretty awful weather overnight we waited for the worst of the swell to subside and headed north

32 knots of wind, and 3m swells made for a seriously exciting run… surfing down waves at over 8 knots on occasions. For the non sailors that is well windy and fast…

Now all safely moored up here in Porto Spilia just below the village of Sparta Houri.

Cold beer, showers and dinner in the Taverna who has been persuaded to open for us……

This is our yacht….. moored 50m froma really nice taverna. Long journey today, sleep and see what the morning brings….

So… all we have to do is sail about 100 nautical miles…..

Easy apparently…..

Hi there,

We are about to embark on a flotilla holiday sailing from Kefalonia to Corfu. And we (well OK, I) thought it would be fun to keep you posted as we go along, rather than tell you about it only when we get back…. If the technology is willing, then updates will appear here!

The Skipper