Messalongion to Itea -- Best Sailing Yet

The night was calm and uneventful at Messalongion, but the water isn’t really swimmable and there was little to do near the boat so we got up early the next day and bugged out. Marina and I got up early and lifted the anchor – the chain was covered in black silt and it took about 10 minutes to clean it off with buckets of water. 

AK. Rion -- world's biggest suspension bridge?

How tall is our mast?

Lots of Room to Spare

We were off to our next destination – Galaxidi or Itea. We powered out and turned east and approached the point of Ak Rion – apparently the worlds’ largest suspension bridge. When we were 5 miles out we called bridge control on the radio and they told us to ‘leave one pillar to the left, three to the right’ – OK cool – now what is the height of the bridge (followers may recall our close encounter with a bridge in Croatia). The answer was 25-40 Meters and we have a 21 meter headroom requirement so we were fine. The bridge reminded me of the Alex Fraser bridge only with 5 spans instead of two. 

Driving is so easy Ross can do it with his eyes closed

On the boardwalk at Itea

Did I mention that it was raining? Well it started to clear up and get windy so we (novel idea) put up the sails. We started averaging 6 knots on a broad reach. The six became a 7, then an 8, then a 9, topping out at 9.7knots. Here are a couple of videos on how we keep morale up on these long days.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cmt0fU0cOVo
and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yiTCgBd9_QM


We had a full genoa and a reefed main in 1-2 meter seas and were bucketing along. Unfortunately as we turned the corner for Galaxidi the wind pooped out so our 6 hour 50 mile sail was pretty much over. As we were powering into the bay Marina decided Itea sounded better than Galaxidi and then we discovered mostly by accident, that the Delphi Oracle is just outside Itea – quick change of plans, we’re going to Athens on Friday and touring the Oracle on Thursday. We will put a photo essay and a couple of blog posts up on Delphi from the kids. The pictures don’t do it justice. We met a very enthusiastic Port Policeman in Itea so we had to pay 30 Euros for staying for 2 nights – still unbelievably cheap. 

Itea from Delphi

We also bunkered a 125 liters of diesel fuel. The price is 1.40Euros/Liter – so if we complain in Canada about fuel prices, a Euro is $1.40 CAD so a liter of Diesel is nearly $2.00 here, with gas about 10-15% higher. I asked Kosta on ‘My Way’ -- the 50 foot Feretti powerboat what his fuel consumption was – 120 liters per hour to go 16 knots. So basically he is 120/16 or 7.5 liters a mile. He’s from Athens and since we left them we have gone about 200 miles. He’s gone both ways plus then some, my guess is that he used nearly 4000 liters of fuel in 10 days -- or his fuel costs are about $1000 per day when he's travelling. Ouch. Maybe slow is a good way to go.



After the Delphi Oracle it’s time to get to Athens – so the next stop is the Corinth Canal and if we get through early enough, we’ll go to Athens, if not we’ll overnight in Corinth and leave the next morning.