Most of the sailing boats which
were here when we arrived yesterday, left this morning. There is still almost no
wind but I guess that, when you have chartered a boat for a week, you are going
to take it out, even if you have to motor.
We had hoped to plug into the
electricity supply while we were here, on the quayside at Fiskardho but it seems
that although it looks as if there is power available, we were unable to access
it. There is power on the wooden pontoon, 100 metres away and the prepaid cards
are easily available. The guy who is in charge of the chandlery told us that if
we wanted electricity, we have to move to the pontoon. It is not necessary. We
are pretty self sufficient.
We were surrounded by cats and
kittens as we ate our evening meal in one of the tavernas ashore. This tends to
be very typical of tavernas in Greece but
unlike so many places, none of these cats looked as if they went short of food.
Nonetheless, 3 of them finished off my delicious Kefelonian meat pie. The
portions are too large for me to eat a whole one.
We hear that storms are raging in
the Aegean. They started Saturday and will continue well
into Monday. Friends report recent gales in
Valencia, with
wind strengths registering up to 61knots. That sounds really scarey!. We are
grateful that we can sit here, on the boat, with flat seas, a blue sunny sky and
almost no wind. Long may it last although it doesn’t do a lot for the
sailing.
A tripper boat arrives which
resembles a Turkish gullet. The passengers disembark and cycle off to explore
the island. What a novel idea. The boat takes its passengers from island to
island, supplying the bicycles which are made available to them on arrival.
Before leaving the picturesque
village of
Fiskardho, I visit the local baker
and buy some flour, so that I might continue to make bread on board.
We release the lines ashore, lift
the anchor and move to Sivota, on the
island of
Levkas. As we pass across the busy
commercial route, we are most impressed that one of the freighters actually
changed course for us. It wasn’t even our right of way.
Sivota is a very popular resort
visited by many flotillas and charter boats. We did appreciate this before we
decided to visit this hamlet but felt that it was worth visiting the bay
nonetheless. However, not being able to access WiFi is disappointing.
Levkas is an island, only because
a canal, built at the turn of the century by the Greek government, separates it
from the mainland. An earlier canal was dug by the Corinthians around the
7th century BC and by Augustus, during the Roman occupation.
The prices of fruit and
vegetables has increased enormously since arriving at Fiskardho, presumably
because most, if not all of it is ferried to the islands from the mainland.
We left Sivota mid morning and
arrived at Spartakhori ( Port Spiglia), on the
island of
Meganisi, in time for lunch, a
journey of just under 7 nautical miles, on flat seas that resembled a mirror.
Meganisi is shaped rather like a tadpole with a number of natural harbours which
we hope to explore over the next few days. The strait between Levkas and
Meganisi is very beautiful with the high slopes of Levkas to one side and more
gentle slopes of Meganisi in the other. Vegetation such as cypress and olive
trees, grow right down to the edge of the sea.
We ate at the taverna in the
harbour which seemed only reasonable. The owner of the taverna had invested
quite a lot of money installing the lazy lines and deserved to recoup his
investment. At this time of year, there is not as much uptake on the facilities
but he told us that, in the summer months, 100 boats a day stop here.
After walking up to the village,
300 feet above, we admired the magnificent view before returning to the boat. We
departed Spiglia and made our way to a bay, just 3 miles away, where we planned
to anchor for the night.
Our first attempt to anchor in
the middle of a small bay within the
bay of
Ofkapali was thwarted, the
anchor just didn’t want to set. I then noticed that this small bay was inhabited
by dozens of small, white jelly fish which, when at their largest, were the size
of flattened tennis balls. We moved to another small bay within Ofkapali and
this time, when we dropped the anchor, it set successfully. Dick swam ashore
with 2 long lines which he secured around large rocks. There was a solitary
small jelly fish in this small bay but it was a very peaceful anchorage and we
were tempted to stay another night. Instead, we decided to move on to Nidri, on
Levkas where we will spend the weekend as rain is forecast from Saturday evening
until late Sunday evening.
Before leaving Meganisi, we
visited 3 other bays with a view to returning next week after the rain. This is
truly a very lovely cruising ground, on par with Skopea Limani, near Gocek in
Turkey, where we
learnt to sail June, 2006.
There are so many islands of
varying sizes, most of which have thick vegetation right down to the edge of the
water. The trees seem to be mainly cypress and olives but there are many other
trees including the tall thin Italian pines. Close, around the perimeter of some
of the islands, the water is bright blue.
We passed the southern side of
Skorpios and Skorpidhi, the private islands of the Onassis family. The
island of
Skorpios has been planted as a park
and even the small part that we were able to see, was stunningly beautiful. The
sloping sides of Levkas is also heavily wooded and a pleasure to observe.
Nidri is a water sports and yacht
charter centre and we found that with the ferries and tripper boats, there was
insufficient room for us to moor on the town quay. This did not pose a problem
as the huge, long bay of
Vlikho had few boats at anchor and we
made just one more, as we anchored in 4 metres, near the end of the bay, far
from the ferries and the charter boats.
We spent a very peaceful weekend
at anchor in the bay of
Vlikho and although Saturday was
cloudy, the threatened rain didn’t materialize.
Below:- The gullet with bikes
stored on the higher level at the stern of the boat, tied up in a bay where the
crystal clear water is like glass.
Fiskhardo village where we bought the flour for the bread from the baker.
Dick is determined to raise the foresail, despite the true wind registering less
than 6 knots.
A tiny island between off the tadpole shaped island of Meganisi en-route to Port
Atheni from the bay of Ofkapali
Its Irene's watch
