the Corinth canal

Knotty Girl
Tanya/Roberto
Wed 17 Aug 2016 19:03
As we knew we had a long day ahead, we left at 09:30 (shooting for 9 am but without success!) and motored for about 30 miles (wind about 2 to 5 knots) while continuing doing some boat maintenance on the way. At 11:00 we received a direct MMSI call from Mimosa - our friend Yannis on his Dehler 35 had seen us on AIS, and were only 4.5 miles away from us! We had a nice chat and realised that unfortunately our route would not cross again on this trip. While on the phone Roberto saw a tortue, yet Tanya was not able to spot it - snif! At 12:45 we passed front the Capo Alk. Melangavi - beautiful one!
 
At 1:30 we were in front of the Corinth Canal and were told to wait for further instructions. 10 minutes later, we were told to follow a catamaran in the Canal. We entered the canal at about 1:40 pm and it took us till 3.30 pm to cross it. Very impressive white rocks, very high walls on both side and very tight passage - you understand that there is no way to cross another boat nor to do a 90 degree turn! You could see in the rocks the steps built for workers in the 1800 to be able to climb the wall. The water colour is just incredible - a blue turquoise extremely clear. Tanya took a lot of pictures and filmed it. Roberto tried to film with the Gopro but was disappointed by the short length of its battery :(
 
After paying the passage (340 Euros for Knotty Girl!!!!), we finally put the sails up as we had between 10 and 13 knots but as usual, just in front of us so we had to do some tacking!
 
As we did not want to arrive too late for the night at some point we put the engine on and motored towards bay Sofikou on the Peloponnese. On our way we saw many and different kind of birds, sometimes lots of them that we saw fly as we approached them!
 
As the water in the bay was not very inviting Tanya decided to pass on her evening swim and prepared the appetizer. We then took the dinghy to have a delicious dinner in the Taverna Stavedo in Korfos, highly recommended by Trip Advisor and worth it!