An erratic trip round the Ionian

Friday 6 to Thursday 19 May 2011

This is not a travel blog, but I thought I'd put in a few highlights of our trip.

The boat went in the water at 11ish on Friday, and we started to motor round towards Nidri, to take on fuel and collect the dinghy from the Skorpios pontoon where we had wintered.

After about half a mile the engine died.  Dave restarted it, and it went for a few minutes, then died.  We dropped the anchor in Tranquil Bay and Dave identified the fuel supply as the problem.  After a few more tests he changed all the fuel filters - they had been changed last week, and were perfectly clean.  Why is it that an engine that works fine in the boatyard gives trouble in the sea?  The short story here is that four hours later Dave found a loose jubilee clip on the fuel line and the problem was solved.  But it was too late to get packed and shipshape, so we delayed departure to Saturday.

This is us in Zakynthos Town on Sunday.  We are bows-to after having stopped the night before to overnight in a bay at the south end of Ithaka: after a late lunch and siesta, we woke around 5 pm to find the boat nearly on the rocks.  I let the land lines go, while Dave pulled us out on the anchor.  Imagine our surprise when the chain came up - without the anchor (or the new shackle we'd just bought)!  It was in 18 metres, too deep to dive, so we decided against staying in a bay on the spare anchor and went on to Poros harbour on Kefallonia.  We couldn't get a new anchor there, so we continued to Zakynthos the next day.  You can see the new anchor, but we were snug on the kedge, so we didn't bother to turn round - which was lucky in the event, as there were fierce winds from the north over our bow the next night, so we were more comfortable this way round.

 We were in Zakynthos to meet up for a couple of days with Dave's sister Linda and husband Ian.  We hired a car from Zakynthos Town and drove to their hotel.  We then explored down the south east leg of the island, finding this great place in Gerakas.  It is run by a local eco-warrior called Yianni, who is quite well known for his work trying to save the Loggerhead Turtle, which is in serious trouble due to tourism on Zakynthos.  We met Yianni, and liked him very much, and had an excellent meal in the organic restaurant on site.  Check out www.earthseasky.org for info or if you fancy some eco-tourism or volunteering.

Dave and Linda try out a bit of nesting in the sand of Gerakas beach.  It was lovely soft flowing sand, deliciously warm.  I'd lay eggs in it any day, given the chance.

We dropped Linda and Ian off for the evening, and had a quick look at Laganas, the nearby resort.  It's a strip of tatt shops and night clubs - all the worst kind of tourist excrescences.  I took a photo of this one, because the name struck me as exquisitely accurate!

Dave, Linda & Ian at their very smart hotel in a quiet and rural area.

Back in the boat overnight - a chance to catch up with guitar practice.

We'd been in Zakynthos Town for three nights, so we thought we'd try a bay for the night.  We motored round Zakynthos - north (with the wind on the nose), then down the other side, south (with the wind still on the nose) to this bay just south of the famous shipwreck beach.  The water was sparklingly clear ...

... but the hillsides were strange, until we thought, maybe they are recovering from fire damage, as all the trees were dead, but undergrowth was making a recovery.  It looked like a major fire had swept through here at some time.

 It was calm and pleasant and warm, although we were bobbing around, and the dinghy somehow managed to wrap itself right round the land line several times.

But as soon as we'd had a meal and settled down for an early night, the katabatic wind off the land started, howling down into the bay and bouncing the boat around.  I was just thinking we would have to sit watches through the night to make sure we were safe when it calmed down, around midnight, and we were undisturbed thereafter.

We left early the next morning, with quite a long trip up to Poros on Kefallonia ahead of us.  We'd only spent one night there on the way down, and it seemed quiet and friendly, and worth exploring, so we were planning a few days ashore there next.

The morning was bright without being too hot, so we set off inland up this ravine valley, following the road towards Sami.  

We passed this Olive tree - clearly the Kefallonia natives don't bother planting trees, they just screw them into the ground!

Following a rare signpost to archeological remains we turned off the road onto this nice track ...

... to find ourselves at this excavated Mycenean burial tomb, dating back to 1350 BC apparently. 

Unusually for Kefallonia, it was very nicely presented, with information sheets, and gardens, displaying some of the pot sherds found in and around the tomb.  We've visited some sites that were nothing more than tumbled stones in a goat farm, so this was a surprise.

Moving on, trying to follow a circuit back to Poros, we saw this wild gladiolus.  As we have a couple of these on the land, but I hadn't photographed them, I thought I'd capture this one in flower.

Some hours later, we had lost the nice open track, probably by taking a wrong turning or two - there were no more signposts.  We knew we were aiming back towards the sea, but we had a ridge to climb over and the track was turning more and more into a goat path.  It was hot and sweaty and fly-infested.  Lovely.

After four hours of walking (maybe ten miles - half of which was scrambling) we were back on the waterfront with a large glass of draught beer in front of each of us, admiring the fishing boats in the harbour as the dusk drew in.

Next day was a writing day for me, and a fishing day for Dave - he's the little shadow leaning against the harbour light in this photo.

 We moved on to Ithaka and went into Kioni for two nights.  The neighbouring boat had this fancy gangplank, so I took a photo to help us make one just like it (maybe, one day).

Our stay in Kioni was remarkable for two things - meeting an expat local called Sarah, who knew everyone and joined us at her favourite of the restaurants; and the more than usually messy anchoring problems a neighbouring catamaran had the following morning - not even realising they had our anchor and trying to pull up the linked anchors by hand.  We eventually took pity on them and went out to the rescue with our windlass.

We left Ithaka and these storm clouds behind.  We'd had thunderstorms and torrential rain the day before, and we were hoping it was all behind us ...

... so we tried again for a quiet night in a bay.  This is our favourite - nicknamed 'one yacht bay'.  It's very beautiful, and sheltered every way except east.  The forecast was NW, so no worries.  We had supper, and were just settling down to a glass of wine at 8ish when the storm began, with the wind swinging right round to east.  Dave's too cautious to risk sitting still in weather like that, so he got into full oilskins, while I got into shorts and t-shirt to be soaked in the dinghy letting the land lines off.  Once dry, I joined him on deck also in oilskins and we motored round to Kalamos harbour in the storm. It had mostly worn off by 10pm when we arrived, but it was dark.  We found the harbour and located a spot, doing a neat mooring manouevre by the harbour lights.  We came in next to a Sunsail yacht with people on board - 'Great', I thought, 'they'll take our lines, to save me jumping ashore'.  But as we backed up to the harbour wall, no-one moved.  The wall turned out to be too high, and the bottom too shallow to get closer than six foot, so it was impossible to go ashore with lines.  The neighbours just sat there.  Luckily someone from one of the yachts further up came to help and moored us up.  Then the neighbours said, curiously, 'Did you lay an anchor?'  I think maybe they were very new to yachting. 

A nice sail the next day brought us home to Nidri and back to Goat Bottom.