Saturday 26^th May ..

 

All ready to go, we sacrificed the “match” in favour of an early night.

 

Up early on Thursday and raring to go, we had no idea

what sort of a day we had in store ….

 

As we pulled out into the Aeigina Harbour and raised the anchor we pulled up some old rubbish that even the locals had not seen before.  Apparently there used to be some old massive chain moorings, and we had brought up the chain,  some other smaller gage chain, and some old rope that had been discarded by previous unfortunates …. It took us 2 hours to disentangle ourselves from all this rubbish..  Eventually we had to cut ourselves free using our bolt cutters,  with Mike, mask in place, dangling in the water and Sue, going beyond the call of duty, ensuring that he did not fall in and keeping the dinghy in position at the same time! …..   Competent crew training I am reliably informed ..

 

 

Two hours later the anchor was free but the anchor winch was not working…..a call to Wim soon solved the problem and we eventually departed Aegina at about 2.30pm…..

 

Hans and his yacht the Ariahna were leaving at around the same time and so we sailed together to the Corinth Canal.

 

 

 

Three hours later and we reached the Corinth Canal…..an amazing sight…

 

We were lucky we did not have to wait long before we were allowed through….eerie sailing up through this narrow, high sided channel of water in the pouring rain!!

 

Once through we decided to stay with Hans and continue sailing until midnight to make up some time….we dropped anchor at Galaxidhi.

 

 

 

Up early on Friday morning to make up as much time as possible….on our way to Kefilinia.  We had some wind and so had the fore sail up and we had speeds of up to 7.8 knots at times.

 

 

 

We sailed most of the way with Hans and then he left us to sail onto Malta….

 

We could see the island of Kefilinia but it took forever to reach the tip of it and then at least another three hours to reach the Port of Argostili….

 

The GPS system really came into its own whilst trying to feel our way up and around into the Port.  It was 3.00am when we entered the Marina and whilst mooring in darkness the bow thruster went!!  Some pretty nifty changes meant that we did manage to moor safely but pretty hairy for a while!!!  Not quite how I had imagined my second mooring alongside to be….!!

 

We all sat down and had a debrief and a glass of wine (or two)!!.. before eventually falling into bed exhausted….

 

 

Saturday morning arrived and it was lovely to see the sun after two days of sailing in the rain (not quite the Mediterranean cruise Sue had been looking forward to!!)

A brief discussion in daylight meant that we decided to move Quilombo over to the town side of the harbour…that accomplished we spent a quiet day relaxing and looking around the town, which seems very nice with extremely friendly locals…they even have an Indian Restaurant which we are going to try out later….

 

A look at the weather forecast means that we are here until Tuesday at least so tomorrow Mike and I will look at the bow thruster and see if we can find out what the problem is…..yes yet another problem to solve!!!

 

A lovely meal out and an early night…..

 

Sunday morning and time to look at the bow thruster….problem actually very minor and easily fixed….so time to look at the radio which has been playing up a bit….and again easily fixed…!!

 

Sue went off and did some exploring and shopping….we are all feeling much better for a good nights sleep..!!