Paxos

Knotty Girl
Tanya/Roberto
Sun 7 Aug 2016 17:05
Definitively not a stressed morning - we are on vacation after all and its Sunday! No alarm clock. When Roberto and I woke up Kim already had swam and was preparing breakfast. She said it rained a bit - and was a bit windy, which felt VERY good after the heat of the day before! After a quick swim in a slightly moved sea, we ate breakfast and were on our way to Kafka on Paxos Island for lunch. The weather remained a bit cloudy and no wind at all (1-2 knots), so we motored till there. Kim and Renee decided it was time to test their game skills and started a serious scrabble party! On the way, the sea being again totally flat, we say 2 "ailerons" of dolphins, yet from quite afar only unfortunately. We arrived in "Lakka" for lunch on Paxos. A very nice bay but crowded, yet we managed to anchor and have a nice lunch and quick swim. Roberto stayed on watch given that some boats were anchored with an mooring line on earth, which means that when we turned, we were relatively close - not a night anchorage for sure but a pretty nice lunch!

We took off and for the first time had the right conditions to try our sails in "papillon mode" (both the jib and genoa on opposite poles). Since we only had seen once how to do this before we bought Knotty Girl, it took us a bit of time to set the sails right but we did it and it looked wonderful, yet given that we only had 9 to 10 knots, we did not sail very fast, only about 4 knots but it did not matter since we were not in a hurry (for once!¨). When we arrived in "Mongonesi " Roberto's friend, Vincenzo was waiving at us - he had "reserved" a mooring on a Greek Tavern quay - and given that we appreciated his gesture we moored there, "à la Greque" - meaning putting the anchor and then motoring back to the quay were Vincenzo was waiting for us to grab the back mooring lines. Vincenzo came on board to visit Knotty Girl and told us of a few of his "favourite" places in the Ionian Island since his wife, Julia and him had been touring them for about a month already. We invited Vincenzo and his wife and crew - A Russian woman and her Italian husband and daughter. Renée prepared an amazing tzaziki and Olga some nice feta pieces and Roberto the always welcomed "aperol spritz" and we had a wonderful time in Knotty Girl cockpit who easily welcomes 5 guests. Given that the quay we moored was privately own by the Taverna, we felt a moral obligation to go and have dinner there - even if our fridge was full ! It was a typical Greek Taverna and Renée and Kim tested their "XXX" , which in Olga's terms was a "ramequin au fromage" and "quiche aux épinard" !

To digest all of this we treated ourselves with Limoncello and a couple of biscuits.