Greece at last! 19-7-2007 to 30-9-2007 - Position Update

Current Position: 38:49.800N 20:42.800E 

Dear Blog,

It was a good sail for the rest of the trip from Mid. Ionian to Kefallinia and although not extremely fast I managed to conserve the rest of my fuel.

I arrived at a nice sandy beach on the North West side of Kefallinia on Thursday 19-7-2007 at 08:30.  I went to call Jan with who I would meet and found that there was only 40 seconds of talk time left on my satellite phone,  this and a broken PC explain the lack of updates to my blog.  There was one phone box in the village where I was and this required a phone card that was not sold locally.   I enjoyed the beach and Calamari in one of the local restaurants before returning to the boat and having a well deserved sleep until 17:30.

On Thursday evening I sailed next to Vassiliki on the Island of Lefkas and arrived after dark, it is a great place to anchor.  There is a windsurfing and catamaran sailing club in Vassiliki, this mixed with great bars and restaurants had the makings of a great atmosphere for an evening out so I went ashore for some entertainment.  There was also an internet café so was catching up on my emails and about to update the blog when it closed (it was late).  I also managed to buy a phone card and left a message for Jan.

On Friday Morning Jan drove to Vasilliki, and he was shouting across to Lady Drake from the harbour, but I was sleeping off the late night and still catching up on sleep from the 48 hour crossing (not to mention the whiskies).  Jan later came with his family and ski boat so we all traveled back to Nydri where he was staying.  I sailed with Jan’s two children Sam and Eileen and he went of for some high speed fun with his wife Catherine.

Nydri is a wonderful place to anchor and very calm, there is not much wind in this part of the Ionian, but the sea is very calm and there are plenty of wonderful anchorages.

The next two days were spent waterskiing in the morning and relaxing in the afternoon.  My arms are feeling now a bit longer as I had my full share of skiing, but did not manage to get up on the wake board.

Booking a flight home was a bit of a headache and in the end I booked to fly from Athens and planned to get the bus from Lefkas to there on the Monday morning.  I sailed to Lefkas marina with Catherine and Jan met her there.  Lefkas looks like a great little town; I am looking forward to exploring it on my next visit to the boat in August. 

The morning of my trip back went a little wrong when I arrived in the bus station at 06:45CET (07:45 Greek time) for my bus which left 07:00 Greek time.  I managed to do some careful negotiations with Europecar and got my self a ride in a car already traveling to the airport so all worked out fine.

So that’s all for now, I will be returning to the boat on 25^th August for another trip, but hope to be able to spend some more time there before then.

Many thanks to Jan and Catherine for the great food, waterskiing and Ouzo J