Zakinthos

Akibbon
Richard & Helen Morris
Thu 20 Sep 2007 16:09

Our last long trip started bright and early and we had a really good first day including catching our second fish!! Two fish in nearly 3000 miles…

 

  It’s a dorado or mahi mahi as far as we could work out, not as big as the tuna but much nicer!

 

We did actually catch a third fish well sort of! We found a tiny flying fish which had committed hari kiri on the deck. We found it after rigor mortis had set in!

 

 We didn’t know that flying fish could fly high enough to land on our deck!

 

 

 

 We originally were heading for Cephalonia as we had to arrive in Greece at a designated port of entry however after looking at the harbour there and at Zakinthos, we decided that the latter was the safer bet and there wasn’t a lot of difference in the mileage. 

 

By the second day the wind had dropped and so we had to motor and finally as we came round the corner of Zakinthos the water was like a mirror! Fortunately for us there was still very little wind as we came into the harbour as this was our first attempt at Mediterranean mooring without a pick up line for many a long year!  It was a great relief when we were finally tied up.  It was really rather exciting to think that we were in Greece! We intended to stay for a couple of days only to recover from our long trip but as the wind had picked up somewhat we were still there 4 days later. We were tied up next to an Austrian catamaran - Pink Panther. Johann and Bettina are on their way to Turkey together with two friends and an 8 month old baby!  The slight snag with mooring without a pick up line is that you are reliant on your anchor to hold the boat of the quay and if another boat drops his anchor over yours then there is more than a little risk that he may dislodge yours on either his way in or out.  In Johann’s case another boat snagged his anchor on the way out so we had rather a stressful half hour till it was relaid – so stressful that Johann produced Bacardi and coke at the crack of sparrows!

 

 Akibbon is over behind the orange ship

 

In view of our enforced stopover we decided to do a tour of the island on one of the trip boats (in spite of the windy weather). We really enjoyed it although some of the other passengers were just a little green around the gills.

 

 Honestly it really was this colour!

 

Just a little further on was wreck bay which is the one in all the photos advertising Zakinthos.  Unfortunately due to the wind we couldn’t stop there for a swim nor did it look quite like its photo!

 

 Wreck bay

 

We did however manage to stop in a couple of other bays for a swim although the water was more than a little refreshing!

 

Distance run 277.32nm  Cumulative total 3004.05nM