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| Getting diesel from the "Diesel Guy" on Poros |
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| Our favourite coffee / breaky place on Poros |
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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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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