Our Week With Angie and Cal

July 4 - We woke up fairly early and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast of coffee and tea with some Greek yoghurt, granola and fruit drizzles with a little organic Greek honey – yum! After a quick swim, essentially the morning shower, we headed into town to go marketing in Syvota. The best Super Markets (sometimes known as Souper Markets) are a little ways up the main street, along with a butcher, a couple of bakeries and several veggie/fruit stands. Between the lot of them we got what we needed and and brought back several bags of groceries. Cal and Matt got the dinghy ready to go while we girls did the last purchase of water (heavy to carry so we buy it closest to the dinghy) and ice (bought last for obvious reasons). We made it back to Tara, lifted up the anchor and headed over to Lakka. We got the sails up and sailed tentatively at first, then the breeze came up to about 15-17 knots so we ended up with a  great sail to Lakka.

It was pretty crowded (no surprise there) but we found a spot and anchored in 3.2 meters of water with about 0.9 meters under the keel over sand and in beautiful clear water. We did some swimming, some paddling, some lizarding…and cocktail hour. We went in for dinner and said hello to Georgios ... who called Jessie the “girl of the night”.

He and his brother own the restaurant and spend 8 months of the year working 7/24 – we like him and give him our business whenever we are there, and he looks after us well. We made it back to Tara and quickly hit the hay.

July 5 - Up fairly early, had a couple of coffees and had a quick swim and went into Giappy’s for an amazing crepe. We have been here enough now to have a few favourite restaurants and this is one. They’ve got amazing breakfast crepes: the Mexicanna (eggs, cheese, beans, corn and more), the Popeye (eggs, spinach, cream cheese, tomato, cheese), the Superfood (Greek yoghurt, granola, fresh fruit, honey) – you get the picture. No one needs lunch.

Jessie, Angie and I did a bit of shopping, Jess bought a nice shirt.

We made it back to the boat where Cal and Angie went for a SUP ... Cal on his knees and Angie standing up. The highlight of the morning was Angie ‘walking the plank’ off the SUP and into the drink. Early afternoon we hoisted anchor and powered slowly down to Antipaxos – everyone needs to see the beach there once, it’s crazy busy but must be the nicest beach in the country, often shown in magazines.

After a swim and a visit to the taverna for a snack and the view we hauled anchor and headed to Parga.

Dropped the hook, standard cocktail hour, taxi boat to town to rub shoulders (literally) with the masses of people enjoying the unique and beautiful town, and have the usual late dinner (remember, people dine here between 9 pm and midnight). We got our taxi boat back to “Canada!”, as our taxi guy calls us, and to bed.

July 6

We got up and took BB2 to shore where the girls went off to shop and the boys went to a beach restaurant for a nice breakfast.  We picked up anchor and headed to Preveza to have the stern to the mole experience, and it’s a good town for shopping for bathing suits! The boys were very patient with us girls as we went from shop to shop (and it was dinner time). Purchases were made and finally we found a place with gyros for dinner.

July 7 - Lots of noises when you’re stern to the mole – nights end around 4 am with music blaring and garbage trucks at 07:00 but we manage to get back to sleep. Up about 9 and the diesel truck rolled by so we shipped 152 litres of fuel then headed down the quay to our favourite breakfast place in Preveza called Prevere where we gorged ourselves like crazy.

Once fed and watered off we got off the mole and headed south through Lefkada canal (another unique experience in this neighbourhood) and on into Ak Varko where we anchored in 5 meters of 27.5 degree water and swam for much of the day.

Jessie was doing front flips off Tara while some boys were doing back flips off a catamaran nearby. She tried to will herself to do a backflip. The boys were encouraging (while attempting front flips themselves) and eventually one swam over to give some coaching.

Before long she had made some new friends. We went over to their Lagoon 440 and had a drink later and met Christophe, and Renee and their sons Paul, and Matteo, each with a friend (Sebastian and Leonard) from Vienna, Austria. We ended up playing guitar and singing along for a few hours. Around 1 am we rowed home and fell into bed. A lovely family that I hope we keep in touch with. We have now dubbed the bay at Ak Varkos "Back Flip Bay". 

July 8 - Up at the crack of 10, Angie made a terrific breakfast of eggs and toast. Then into the water to float around Linto (our new friends’ catamaran) and eat watermelon. A very lazy, enjoyable day.

We raised anchor around 2:00 pm and made our way lazily to Nidri where there is good food shopping, as we needed provisions. We picked up a whopping amount of food and booze and then headed out of Nidri towards Atokos. The wind was up and our hope of getting to Atokos and into One House Bay was a little optimistic. We made it but our friends were nowhere to be seen. We noticed them in the south bay, Cliff Bay. It was deep and windy and sketchy so decided to carry on to Vathy on Ithaca, a bit of a disappointment for all of us, but it was a  beautiful evening sail with lots of wind. We crossed a fast ferry fairly closely fully powered up (had to alter course as the AIS said we would be within 300 meters of it if we carried on). As expected, the wind died as we got close so we powered into Vathy ... and the wind came back as we were anchoring. We picked a great spot and we dug in well, content for the night.

Jul 9

We got up fairly early for us ... and went into town for a few provisions ... ice, chicken, cucumbers, cereal, milk and a couple of other things.  We enjoyed a coffee in town and back to the boat and headed out of Vathy north around the top of Ithaki and across to Kefalonia.

There was reasonable amount of wind on Ithaki but as soon as we turned the corner the wind died and we ended up powering for a long way. We were hoping to hang out with our new Viennese friends but they failed to show (we realized later we missed a message from them saying they decided not to go there). Jessie and I went out SUP-ping around the bay and Matt tried to catch us rowing in BB2. The RIB against the wind is a bit of an exercise so he gave up.

We lounged around...Jessie made some great food that Cal BBQ’d. Wasps were everywhere, and when the chicken and beef were on the table we had about a dozen swarming around. JJ and Matt were calm, the rest of us don’t really like wasps.

Jul 10

Matt got up at 06:00 and lo & behold, Cal and I got up too. We lifted up the anchor among the wasps and started powering, hoping for a little wind. We had to get to Zakynthos where Cal and Angie would be flying out from. We did 8 hours with the motor running, there wasn’t wind any except a little when we got to Zakinthos town and it was right on the nose.

We timed it right, we found a place on the front of the quay and paid a fixer to deal with the paperwork. For 25 Euros it was worth Matt not having to hump around on the quay looking for Port Police and going through the rigmarole in terms of the crew list.

The quay is kind of sketchy so we needed our passerelle (the plank we use to get from the boat to the mole). We had several cocktails on board and headed out for dinner around 20:30 or 21:00 ... it’s a bit hazy from here.

We went to a place called Thespiros, or something like that, with a blue neon anchor on top. It was blisteringly busy but fast service and good food. After dinner we took a bit of a walk down the quay and back to bed as the Reads were out at 05:15 to the airport on their long odyssey back home.

Jul 11

Cal wanted to get a cab ordered for 05:15 and was up at 04:30 rummaging around the boat getting ready to leave. At 4:45 we put the passerelle down and carried the bags across. Angie wasn’t quite so much in a hurry. Cal was a bit like a horse on the way back to the barn ... he had the bit in his teeth. They started the 2 minute walk to the hotel with about 25 minutes to spare. Marina and yelled “nighty-night neighbour!” and we waved goodbye, fell back into bed and slept until 09:30 when we woke to the bustle of the city. The girls went to get some laundry done (at 15 Euro a load!) and Matt went to get some parts to figure out the leak in the engine compartment.

We had breakfast at “Dali” a 10 out of 10 place with an excellent menu, bathroom, internet, and great coffee. Matt and I took our laptops over and surfed for an hour or two and drank coffee and lemonade. Jess joined us for a while and then we all went back to the boat. 

Matt tried to set up the generator to charge the batteries but the battery charger kept switching on and off, hmmmm, more boat “stuff”, the pleasures of boat ownership. Oh well, you know you have owned a boat for a while when you are replacing things for the second time! We turned off all non-essential electricity items and used the generator to charge our i-devices. We wanted to get going but we needed a boat muffler that was on order so hung out for the day, not our favourite being at the mole but we made the best of it.

Guests Arrive

Cal and Angie arrived in Greece a few days before us and went to Corfu for the planned meet up day. The original plan was to take the ferry across from Corfu to the mainland, grab a taxi and meet us in Pargas. Alas, there was a surprise one-day ferry strike and they were stranded … no problem, we can figure something out … we took Tara to the southern trip of Corfu and using those miracles of modern communications -- mobile phones, Cal and Angie made their way to the town required and called us from a beach bar.

We packed Marina into the dinghy and she went to shore and came back with Cal, Angie and a few of Angie’s bags. We got it sorted out pretty quickly and headed into Muertos / Syvota. The wind was light and we sailed pretty slowly the 10 or so miles, and anchored in the lagoon between the islands. There is a lot of boat traffic so it's a great place to people watch.

The water is much warmer than last year with the lowest temperature we have seen being in the 25 + degree range or between 77 and 80 degrees for you fahrenheit types. Even though we have been in country a couple of days we're still a little jet-lagged so we took it pretty easy for the day, lounging and swimming and tanning. 

We went into town, piling into BB2 our trusty RIB, and the 5 of us made it into Syvota for dinner. Parasole is a large outdoor Italian Restaurant that makes terrific pizza and pasta dishes. We all had our different meals -- me eating a half a pizza -- man was it good. I was really looking forward to eating it for lunch the next day but someone beat me to it. 

After walking the quay and taking in the sights we piled back into BB2 and did the moonless-dark-night-ride back to Tara in our dinghy without running lights. A makeshift running light made up of an iPhone with its lights on would have to suffice.