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…….