Long Sail South to Levkas

Marcel’s daughter Marieka is an arts student and she is in search of ruins and museums so we agreed to leave Gaeios to head south through Levkas. We left early picking up our anchor and powering out of the harbour. We had about 35 miles to go to the Levkas canal so we were powering reasonably hard. Tomskii Kastan (TK from here on in) was a mile or two behind us so we decided to turn off the engine, pull up the Spinnaker – the wind was 6.5 knots from behind, and go swimming.

Tara looking colourful!

We acquired the spinnaker from Kremik because they missed a delivery date, and we had a ‘snuffer’ made for it at North Sails in Israel. Easy Swissa is the owner of the loft and an outstanding person whose company I truly enjoyed. Anyway, the snuffer makes spinnaker handling fairly easy … it puts a fiberglass tube with a nylon sock around the spinnaker. When you want to raise the chute (cool sailor’s lingo for spinnaker – also used interchangeably with kite) you pull up the sock, then pull the snuffer to the top using a rope system. It makes a big spinnaker manageable. Taking it down is just as easy … head downwind a bit, ease the sheet while pulling the sock down … voila – big sail easily managed.

So, we had the spinnaker up, were swimming in 3.5 to 4.2 knots of boat-speed. This is our patented jump off the bow, swim after the boat, grab the rope being pulled behind the boat, pull yourself up the rope onto the swim ladder and … repeat. Ross is the best at it, Jessie is good too though she only wants to be in the water if someone else is there too … she must have seen an early Spielberg movie or something.

The floating bridge at Levkas opens on the hour, we had 8 miles to go and ninety minutes so we decided to carry on with the spinnaker up as TK passed us under motorsailing. We reckoned we’d sail until we were about 45 minutes of powering with a 10 minute buffer for arriving at the bridge.

Once we pulled up the swim ladder and the swim buoy we tie behind the boat we were doing a solid 5 knots. We pulled out the mainsail – 6.8 knots … the wind strengthened two knots and we were clipping along in the solid 8’s. We quickly went through TK’s lee and made it to Lefkas with time to spare. We really must use the spinnaker more as it really extends our ability to carry sail instead of powering in lighter air.

We got to the canal at Levkas about 10 minutes early, came into the harbour and noticed everyone was anchored so we threw ours out. TK did as well … the guys behind them seemed a bit surprised and indented the buoys (bad idea) and found themselves – and their keel – firmly on the sandbar. A small powerboat came to rescue them … being Greece I hope they negotiated the fee up front. Anyway, we squeezed past the floating bridge, down the canal. Ross and Marina took off in the dinghy to get some gasoline and then Ross had fun buzzing around the boat for the 3 or 4 miles of the canal. Levkas canal is a well dredged and marked canal between a salt marsh that separates the mainland and Nisos Levkas. It leads to a sheltered area that has many bays and interesting places to anchor or hang out.

Standing by until we could go in.

Coming through...bridge at right in blue.

Jessie and Matt on the way.

Ross bombing around in the dinghy as we
went down the canal.

We chose Tranquil Bay – though since being named such it has become so busy that you don’t want to spend any time there. Past that is a nice wide bay that is fully sheltered, though the water was green not blue like at Paxos. The water was also 28.5 degrees C so it wasn’t too refreshing. Ross setup our rope-swing spinnaker-pole and we were making like Tarzan off the boat. Marina quipped “Does the boat move as much when we jump off it?” managing to get a dig in about my expanding girth … primarily driven by my beer, cheese and whiskey diet.

Navionics on the IPad showing our track in yellow
and where we ended up in the bay. It is FANTASTIC
software and essential to our navigation.

 

We had dinner aboard and then joined our friends ashore in the Elena café – where I quaffed a couple of Mythos beers with Marcel while Marina enjoyed some chilled red wine and Jessie ate a Chocolate Pie without sharing much of it.