Crotone -> Preveza, Greece: Arthur, you've got to let go!

Wanderingdragon
Stephen & Anne
Mon 30 Jun 2014 06:40
38.58.054N 20.45.633E

Having studied the weather forecasts all week we decided Saturday was a good day to make our passage to Greece. We thought leaving sometime after 9 am, but before midday. In the end we left at 7 am, mainly because everyone else had already left!

Although the wind did pretty much what the forecast predicted the sea state was a bit worse. Which meant we had a very rolly, bumpy ride. Yoyo was not very happy :(

Unfortunately the seas stayed rolly, which meant the whole passage was rather uncomfortable. The good news is we were averaging 7.1 knots thanks to Wanda's clean bottom. The bad news is we had a good 1.5 to 2.0 knots of current against us the whole passage :( meaning our actual average speed was 5.3 knots and very long!

We were all very glad when we saw the entrance to Preveza. Having decided to leave the main and mizzen sails up as we entered the channel into Preveza we headed in. We were ready to go onto hand steering, so switched of Arthur, the autopilot, however he wouldn't let go again. This time we thought, ok let's completely switch him off at the main control panel. After 5 minutes he still had not let go. So the only thing to do was to navigate the channel using the autopilot. As steering this way is not that responsive it was rather nail biting to say the least. Having the sails up also didn't help, but we got in to the inland sea without any further problems.

As it was windy and the anchorage was busy, we did not want to use the autopilot while anchoring. Hence we emptied the lazarette, manually disconnected the auto helm and anchored.

After sorting out the boat we had our safe arrival drinks and an early night.