36:55.122N 21:41.965E Fri 15^th Sep 2017

Not much to post this time, other than to say we have really enjoyed re-visiting many of our favourite places in the Peloponnese with a friend for company and to share the delights of the Greek sailing experience.  I suppose we should really say “motoring experience” as we only sailed for 1.5 hrs out of 10 spent travelling during the last week!

We did visit two new places: the tiny holiday resort and fishing port of Finakounda, about which there is little to say, and the NW anchorage in Navarinou Bay.  The latter is pretty special, as it is overlooked by the medieval Frankish fort of Paleokastro and it’s on the edge of one of Greece’s best bird sanctuary lagoons (complete with flamingos).  Although we’d climbed up to the old castle on our first visit in Red Panda (when we hired a car to see Nestor’s Cave and other sites), we really enjoyed the scramble up and back down via the cave again this time.  The views are spectacular.

Views of the bay and lagoon from the old castle:

Inside Nestor’s cave:

The museum displays in Neokastro, a much later Turkish fort in Pylos itself, have been vastly improved since we visited in 2009 and we learnt so much more about how important this area has been since Neolithic times.  We love learning all this stuff and seeing their great exhibits, even if our fallible memories make repeat visits an equal joy.  Apparently we climbed up to the Paleokastro on our first trip, but have no memory of it at all!

The “new” Turkish castle:

We’ve spent a few days in Pylos’ dilapidated “marina” waiting for a fair wind to take us onwards (as I write this we are in strong winds and have got the first rain in months).  It looks good for tomorrow (Fri 22^nd) so we expect to be docking in the Royal Malta Yacht Club late on Sunday.  We need a few days there for essential repairs; we’ve got an intermittent fault in the chartplotter/radar set-up, low output from the alternator (again – it is only 2 and a bit years since it was last fixed) plus the repair we had done to the fridge in Crete seems not to have stopped it drawing amps pretty much all the time.

A dilapidated boat in the dilapidated marina (very unusual, the Greeks normally keep their little fishing boat looking perfect: