A brilliant days sailing, which needed an early start as we had 30 miles to cover. We needed to get to our final destination this evening, as tommorrow is the end of season race.

We headed for Corfu in light southerly winds, with some gentle swell in the open sea between the islands, which disappeared once we were into the Corfu channel, between Corfu Island and the mainland. The wind died at lunchtime, so we motored for 30 minutes while we had lunch, then it returned, a little stronger than last time and now from a little North of west. This meant we had to sail close hauled, with some short tacks to reach our destination, Gouvia Marina, North of Corfu town.

With winds between 10 and 16 knots we had Knight Odysseys full sails up for the first time, sailing at up to 6 knots in almost perfect weather.

Knight Odyssey uses traditional slab reefing, we can hoist the main sail fully, or reduce it by three different amounts. In the picture above you can see the different coloured ropes that control this. The red rope is for serious winds (it has seen lots of use this week) it pulls the sail down to fold up all the cloth below it, leaving not much above it, with amber and green ropes below it that reduce the sail progressively less. We are probably carrying 5 times the sail we were on Sunday!

By the time we got to Gouvia it was nearly dark, otherwise you would have a picture of the hundreds of boats moored around us, we have acomplished our goal of bringing the boat to it’s winter home…..

Tommorrow is the race….