- How it all began
- Phasing out from The Moorings Owner’s Programme
- The Project List
- Haul out day
- Lazy days at Levkas Marina
- Finalising the boat paperwork
- Untying the lines
- Searching for ‘Donkey’
- Boat maintenance in exotic locations
- Coffee and solar cake!
- Last minute change to the passage plan
- Searching for Myrto
- A taste of the city in Corfu Town
- Victory and failure in one night
- Teeth grinding, and hoops of joy, at 9.4 knots
- Introducing the ‘freeloaders’
- June-July 2018
- Sharing Nemrod with friends, and discovering Ormos Afales
- Not in the pilot guide
- Yoga on board
After our brief visit to the mainland, we hankered after island life, and decided to head back to Lakka on Paxos. The wind was forecast to pick up at 1pm so we headed out at 11am and then did a heave-to in calm waters to waiting for the wind. There was a large cave on the SW of Sivota that we would have loved to check out, but were too anxious to leave the boat in case the wind veered in.
We headed towards Paxos and this passage was a tale of two halves. The first half we were struggling for wind and motored in 4-5 knots, feeling very chilled. Then as soon as we cleared the Corfu peninsula the wind came in at 20+ knots and before we knew it we were hitting record speeds of 9.4 knots. Fun to start with, but I started to get anxious when we had large swells on our side. It was an hour of teeth grinding for me, and hoops of joy from Scott. The pilot book promised that Lakka was a virtually landlocked harbour so we were confident of calm waters once we got there.
It certainly calmed down, but the wind was still howling into the bay. Lots of boats were getting anchored in for the blow. We decided to go close in to the head of the bay when Scott noticed a boat in trouble. And what happens when Scott sees a boat in trouble? He wants to help. It turned out the troubled vessel had caught an anchor chain with his propellor. And was side on against 2 or 3 bows of boats who were stern-to to the quay. So we offered a line to help him off. We did enough to get him out of the immediate trouble, and a jet ski managed to help turn the boat around and they somehow anchored in the bay.
In the meantime we still had to get secure. Anchoring out wasn’t really possible as there were already so many boats and the wind was challenging so Scott spied a spot on the town quay. I prepared the lines and Scott got himself in position ready for the anchor to go down. There was still 20 knots on the nose so the anchor had to stop us from hitting the quay. When I came down to do the lines, there was no-one to help so I managed to jump ashore – but forgot to jump with the line, so Scott still had to throw it to me. Duh! After 10 minutes of manoeuvring and line pulling we finally got in. I needed a stiff drink after all of that excitement.