Thursday, August 1, 2013

To Corinthos and Beyond



Getting diesel from the "Diesel Guy" on Poros

Our favourite coffee / breaky place on Poros

46 Flavours of Gelato on Poros!
We got up fairly late after our dinner out with Chelsea and then headed to shore for water and diesel fuel. We lit out for Korfos and, without much help from the wind, we made it to Korfos back anchored in close to the same spot we were in the week before. We sent the kids off to shore and then cleaned up the boat a bit, did some swimming and SUP’ing.
Anchorage at Korfos
We decided to eat dinner onboard. After nearly a month on the same gas bottle we needed to switch – and the second bottle was empty – yikes. A half cooked dinner, a couple of hungry kids and no gas. Ross and I  grabbed the gas cylinders and headed to town and, luck have it, we found 2 gas bottles and got back to the boat and finished dinner.
Goodbye Aegean Sea
The next morning Marina and I woke up at 6:30 and picked up anchor to head to the Corinth Canal. We arrived at the Canal at 09:30 and after a 5 minute stop where Marina dropped me off to pay my 267€, picked me up again and we were off through the canal.
 
 



Hello Gulf of Corinth
Our transit through the canal was solo with lots of pictures taken. We managed to be on the other side at around 10:15 so we put the hammer down and started powering north-east. We had two destinations in mind, either near Itea (50 miles) or the island of Trizonia (70 miles). We were making good way and also encountered several large pods of dolphins that stayed with us for a little while.
So excited to see dolphins!

Going under the Aktion Bridge

At around 4pm we decided to press on the other 20 miles so we continued on to Trizonia. There wasn’t a breath of wind until about 5 miles out of Trizonia, when we got 20 knots right on the nose. We just continued to power and we anchored beside a 45 foot catamaran instead of trying to go into the docks. We had powered for 10 hours straight … got to love that Yanmar.
Within an hour 4 other boats came in and anchored with us. There were a number of kids onboard the nearby boats and we tried to engage them on the SUP to no avail. We ate dinner onboard again. After dark we met some boys swimming back to the Catamaran from town with a watertight flashlight.

Trizonia Anchorage
We had a chat and invited them onboard for a glass of wine. We met three very nice young men, Theo, Elie (pronounced Eli) and Jean Baptise (JB), two brothers and a cousin from France. The oldest Theo has just graduated high-school. It turned out that both of us were heading to Messalogia the next day. We stayed up talking until 01:00 am about the sailing experiences we have had. They too take a month every summer and head out as a family. There just are not very many of us that do this so it is nice to meet up with fellow yacht-owning cruisers with kids roughly the same age as ours.


 
Marina and I got up a bit groggy the next morning after serving about 3 liters of wine to the crew and then we lifted anchor and headed to Messalongia at around 07:15. The good news about doing a 70 mile day from Korfos to Trizonia is that you get a 30 miler the next day. We were anchored at around noon, grabbed a quick lunch and walked to the beach area – about 2 miles down a road that also serves as a dike for the town.


The "Beach Club" in Messalongia
Ross and I did a small amount of jogging – about 5 minutes in the noon-day 38 degree heat, and then continued to walk to the Beach Resort at the entrance of Messalongia. As soon as we got there we saw our friends in their Catamaran “Eagle” arriving. I yelled to Theo – and got a friendly wave back. We were hoping that they would arrive at Messalongia so the kids could hang out again.
 

Dinner with our new friends from the catamaran Eagle
After we walked back from the beach, the kids and Marina went back to the boat and went to hang out with the kids on the Cat. Marina met Frederick and Delphine – and their two younger daughters Josephine and Adelade 13 and 8 respectively. I continued on a hunt for a cheap portable air conditioner and came up dry. I got back to the shore and Marina picked me up – then joined the kids pulling the SUP around behind Bonnie Blue. We decided to make plans for dinner that night and we went out as a crew – all eleven of us looking for a restaurant in Meganisi. You’d think it would be easy but, as it turns out, it was a Greek holiday and most of the people that work in Meganisi are from the mountains and they go home for the holiday – so the town was e-m-p-t-y. Anyway, Frederick managed to find a restaurant – it had a Coq on the top of it – and we had a great meal of appetizers and Greek food. We had a laugh at the menu that said "Rooster in Wine" which we gathered would be Coq au Vin.
 
We made it back as a group to the boat at 01:00am and then Jessie, Chelsea and the three boys Theo, Elie,, and JB went out to a local club … for an hour. At 05:00 Marina and I were considering going on a search party … just as a gaggle of tweens, teens, and a twenty-something showed up all happy and giggly from staying out at the club until it closed. Jess was particularly happy having closed her first nightclub down.

Our friends leaving on Eagle
The next morning Frederick came to see my new alternator setup as the Eagle has basically the same engine as Tara’s except that it isn’t turbocharged. The night before we had been discussing the most important aspect of cruising sailing – keeping the batteries charged. He like Marcel, has had some struggles with maintaining the charge of his batteries. I believe we have solved that problem with the big alternator and the regulator timed to fill the large battery bank we have on Tara and want to help others find the way as well.
After a coffee, we said our goodbyes – they’re heading first to Kefalonia, then Sicily the following day. We are heading into the Ionian – on our way to Corfu to pickup our friends Chris Read and the Price family.

 
The wind was up so we sailed downwind in 20 knots of breeze until we turned the corner and headed North. We had two choices, Vathy on Ithaka or Tranquil Bay on Lefkas.

Lighting candles for passed loved ones on Atakos,
now an annual tradition.
We had made some good time under sail, then we powered for a while, so we decided to make lunch around 4pm at Atokos where we lit a candle at the tiny church for our lost loved ones, then carried onto Tranquil Bay, near Nydri. Marina and I left the kids onboard and went to town returning with some more food and some plans for the next day.

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