Hi All,

 

We left Spartakhori on a hot, windless morning unable to sail and motored south east to the sheltered bay of Ormos Oxia on the Greek mainland.  We are heading for the the Gulf of Patras which leads east to the Gulf of Corinth to take us to the Corinthian canal.

 

The south west tip of the mainland is very shallow at the entrance to the gulf, without many safe anchorages for the night. The coastline is fairly desolate without any small villages. The only people here come to work on the many fish farms nestled into many of the safe anchorages preventing any yachts from stopping over. The nets are well lit and buoyed so yachts are able to see them from a distance but the farms move the nets around so they are not always where they are marked on the chart.

The fish farms use very bright powerful lights at night to encourage the fish to feed--- it creates an eerie place.

 

We had a good look at the charts before leaving Meganisi and decided to head for Ormos Oxia arriving in afternoon daylight.  We were able to find an anchorage off a beach with a protective spit of sand from the prevailing wind.

A couple of other yachts joined us at a distance and at sunset the small Cornish yawl yacht, proudly flying her Cornish flag was silhouetted against the low lying coastline.  As you can see the photos show a landscape more like the Helford river outside Falmouth--- especially with the yawl.

 

The only historic fact of any note for the area is that the poet Byron was sailing on a ship in the same direction as us. On New years eve in 1823, his ship went aground twice in the Oxia channel at Scrofa where the channel shelves from 37 m to 4m steeply, whilst trying to anchor to evade a Turkish brig-of-war.

We feel very lucky to now have good charts and GPS and we gave the shoal area a wide berth staying in deep water as we left.

 

Lots love

 

Tina and Tony x x