Paxos in the Springtime.

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sat 25 Apr 2009 20:14
39:12.1N 20:11.2E

Thursday 23rd April
Woke up to a gentle breeze from the South East and the big winds that had
been a feature of the previous few days forecasts, had passed south of us,
so we set out around 9.00am and had a great first day's sailing with a
steady 15 knots of wind driving us on up to Paxos Island. The sea still had
a big swell running from the previous storm so we did roll quite a bit but
we covered the 30 miles in good time and secured a space on the quay in the
'New Port' in Gaios, between an Australian yacht and a British Swan 47. We
are just about the only boats here!

Paxos does not open for the summer until around 5th May so the whole place
is very much still in winter mode. Most of the shops and tavernas are closed
but the pay-off is that the island is looking beautifully green with an
abundance of spring flowers and foliage everywhere.

Friday 24th April
Exchanged phone calls with Theo who we needed to see about his new website,
but he like everyone else is frantically busy getting things ready for May.
His solution was to invite us up to the house he has just finished building,
for dinner, and so after a quick drink in the town square, he drove us out
there and we joined his family for a lovely meal and evening which ended
when he ran us back to Serafina around 1.00am! The house is fantastic with
wonderful stonework and features throughout. It appears to have cost an
absolute fortune despite him doing so much of the work himself. The day
itself passed rather slowly as the weather was less than pleasant and we had
a fair amount of rain and a cold wind. Got plenty of jobs done on board (all
yachts seem to have a maintenance list that never gets any shorter...) which
was useful as we probably will not get much time over the next week or so as
we are about to set off for Turkey by way of the Corinth Canal.

Saturday 25th April
Bright sunny day, hooray! The owner of the boat next door to us is
celebrating his 60th birthday today and his wife certainly managed a new
level of surprise party, by arriving off the ferry from Corfu along with 11
of his friends all of whom have flown out from the UK for the weekend. She
has even persuaded one of the restaurants to open especially to stage the
dinner tonight!

Sarah spent some time today doing a watercolour of Gaios Town which is good
to see as she did very little art last summer. Pan came to see us in the
afternoon and we had a good long chat about everything before he had to rush
off to deal with some beehives (full of bees) he is moving by car this
evening. No sooner had he left than his brother Spiros, turned up with his
family to see us and discuss a few issues about the website we have done for
their resort at Mongonissi. Finally we were joined by Theo who had brought
along some of the information I had requested the night before and then
suddenly it was time to say goodbye and it may be some time before we get an
opportunity to return here to see them all again.

Tomorrow we set sail southwards for Lefkas with a forecast for light winds,
but another round of very windy weather is forecast for Monday.