Mark 1 Eyeball – Sometimes the best of all Navigation tools

Tara has all types of navigation tools onboard, several GPS’s, AIS, Radar, Chartplotters, depthsounders, wind instruments. We find we rely on the iPad using Navionics because of its very high accuracy, easy to use and understand interface, and it is portable and can live on-deck.

The "new Lefkas floating bridge" AKA a ferry turned sideways

The conflagration called the Lefkas Canal

Hand steering on the way to Pargas

To get to Corfu we need to go through the Lefkas canal. At dinner on Meganisi we learned that the floating bridge was sent to Pireaus for refit and a ferry is wedged between the roads on either side and once every three to four hours it opens. The kids were off with Marcel Scuba-diving and by the time they got back and we motored off the dock at Porto Spilio it was 10:45 and we had 11 miles to go. Not a chance. Had we left at 10:30 it would have been 50:50 so it meant we were leaving Lefkas on the 3:30 “ferry opening”.

We used this time to anchor outside the Lefkas canal on the south side and do some swimming and floating in 26 degree water, then we motored up the channel and anchored in Lefkas town. I sorted out another 12 gigs of Internet for 30Euros – roughly half what I pay at home post-pay … in spite of what anyone tells you, it is true that Canada has very high mobile phone prices (OK get off your soapbox!). I had taken my iPad with me to get 4 more gigabytes of internet and the battery was maybe 50% charged when we got back to the boat … (if this were a movie you could call this foreshadowing).

Sailing into Pargas at sunset

We picked up the anchor and entered into the gong-show that is the Lefkas Canal – where someone will cut in front of you and then go really slow – kind of like driving in Vancouver come to think about it. Anyway we followed this little French boat through the opening and about half way through the tightest part of the canal I had to yell at him to get going – I was in Neutral and charging up behind him … a couple of “Vites vites” coupled with our 45kilo anchor a few feet from his head got him to open the throttle a little bit. I can never figure out why he desperately needed to cut in front of us in a 1 boatlength gap and then proceed to open up the gap to 20 boatlenths … weird.

The wind was pretty favourable and since we need to get Jessie to Corfu for her flight on Sunday morning, we were hoping to get the 30 miles to either Gaios or Pargas. The wind chose Pargas for us and it is pretty much directly ahead when we’re on port-tack out of the Lefkas Canal – hey this is good, we can sail for a few hours.

We tried to let Otto steer for a while but in reality I can steer about an average of 1-2 knots faster than the autopilot when closehauled to the wind. I think it’s because it tries to steer too straight a course, the boat slows down and then gets into a negative feedback loop. When I am driving I am constantly bearing off making the boat go fast, then bringing it up into the wind for point and then go through the same process as the boat slows down and I put the bow down to build speed. When you get good at it the rudder movements are very slight and course corrections are in 1 or 2 degrees or perhaps fractions of degrees. Notwithstanding it makes a huge difference going 6.5 knots upwind instead of 4.5 knots – particularly when you have 28 miles to go (e.g., 4 hours 20 minutes vs. 6 hours 15 minutes) so we hand steer.

You have an hour or two of hand steering in you before you need a break.  I can go longer but that’s because I have incredible concentration skills and superhuman stamina. It might also be because I can hold my pee longer than anyone else on board. Anyway after a couple of hours I handed off to Marina and she was hand steering the boat on port tack from the low side. We were still a long way from shore but we were in 10 meters of water and she asked me when we should tack. At that moment she yelled ‘tack’ "GO GO GO GO!". There... about 50 feet from the bow (we’re doing 6 knots which is about 10 feet per second) is a massive rock – like the size of the boat and it is submerged just a few feet under water. We’re not sure whether she steered us through the tack from the lee helm or I did from the weather helm. No doubt in our minds that we would have hit that hard enough to sink the boat and probably injure ourselves in the process.

We might have tacked earlier had we been using the iPad ....

The rock is that red dot -- is actually to the right of where it shows
on the chart .. directly in our path. It is also the only rock
within a half mile and nearly a mile off shore in 10M of water 

After a few seconds of hyperventilating we called urgently for the iPad that was charging downstairs because we had only 10% battery left an hour before (remember the foreshadowing?) and fortunately all was fine and this was a rogue rock hundreds of meters off shore without any other rocks nearby.

Thank goodness for Marina paying attention to where she was going and a quick response to avoiding a potentially very bad outcome.  New rule on Tara … less than 20 meters of depth – iPad is on deck.

Porto Spilia -- Catching up with Old Friends

Ross saying hi to Lena at Porto Spilia

We set off for Nidri and were messaging our friends and they showed us that Windfinder was predicting 25 knots of breeze for Nidri … a beautiful but very crowded and tight anchorage. Marcel suggested we go to Porto Spilia, a restaurant with laid moorings that let you stay there if you eat in the restaurant. We had Tomskii hold a place for us on the quay and we put the engine in gear and headed to Meganisi and the restaurant at Porto Spilia. We rounded the corner and there was a boat that was toodling along but when we headed into the bay he belted his engine to get there earlier. We saw Marcel and Lena and waved and the guy that goosed it to get there before us tried to take the slip they were holding for us. Thankfully Baboo, the owner, and yes that’s actually his name, told them to make way for us.

I was circling around getting ready to back into the slip and a German boat tried to shark the spot too. Me being the crafty racing sailor that I am was having very little of this and I aimed my bow at the guy at the helm eventually passing about 2 feet from his transom – cut in front of Tara will you …. Baboo waved him off too.

The whole group out for dinner

Anyway we sqeeeezzzed Tara into a pretty tight slot, got her tied in and said our hellos. The girls were off trying on swimsuits and Marcel asked Ross if he wanted to go Scuba-diving – which to our surprise, he did. After swimming and a walk we settled down to dinner at a lovely table right on the beach. We also caught glimpses of the French team beating Germany in Eurocup 2016, causing both some happy faces and some long faces in the crowd.

We met a couple, Mark and Debra, that had their dog Hudson with them, a young male beagle that had a funny howling bark that made us all laugh when he let it fly. Marina was quick to teach him to "speak" – so she could teach him to be "quiet". It works with our dog, beagles are pretty stubborn but he was starting to get it.

Anyway, the next day both kids went Scuba diving and we bugged out just in time to miss the Lefkas bridge opening.

Marcel and Ross in the water

Ross getting prepped

Jessie after her dive channeling her inner 'Bond Girl'

Zakinthos Town to Vathy

One of the dozens of ferries per day in Zakinthos Town

We handed Chloe off with to the taxi and then had a leisurely breakfast – particularly Jess who sat at the table for 2.5 hours while Marina and I went grocery shopping. We let go our stern lines and Jess pulled up the anchor – spawning my post about how all work stops when Tara lifts anchor.

Ross in his favourite Hat

Matt undoing the lines getting ready to go

We then set out for Vathy on Ithaki, a bay we have been to a number of times and is an excellent place to overnight. We stopped in a bay on the way in for a dip. An Italian guy cut us off because he absolutely needed to be there before us. Whatever, we dropped our hook, took a 10 minute swim and then gathered ourselves up and motored into Vathy.

The wind came up just as we were entering the harbour and began to blow a solid 20 knots. Terrific time to be anchoring. Our first throw had a guy on shore doing jumping jacks and whistling at us because he wanted to hold that spot for a superyacht to drop their anchor – it was only a 90 footer – hardly a superyacht. Being Canadians, we lifted our anchor instead of arguing about it and moved a hundred meters over. Our second throw put us a little too close to another boat. We were probably OK but after a half hour of deliberation we picked up the anchor again and moved 20 meters over so that we were centred between a couple of boats. We let out about 50 meters of chain and started to relax just as the wind decided to howl 25 knots or so for the next several hours. We were quite happy the be the outside boat in these conditions, while we had the deepest anchorage we also had the most chain out and if one of our neighbours broke loose from their holding and started to bash through the rest of the fleet.

Anyway, while it was howling on deck it was snug-as-a-bug-in-a-rug down below where we had dinner for the first time this year. We also had a chance to email Marcel and Lena who were going to meet us at Nidri the following day.

Up 2x during the night, Jess actually woke us up as the anchor alarm went off (note to self, when you have 50 meters of chain out set a longer than 30 meter anchor alarm). Regardless there was nothing wrong with our position and our trusty anchor held us tight for another night.