Sailing Greece
adventure  5

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Part five

Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Part five

Vonitsa was a wonderful town that so typified one of the great things about sailing in Greece, the towns. It was unpretentious, the people were friendly, it wasn’t small and it wasn’t large, it had a castle, it had a town quay, it had fishing boats, it had a small harbour for visiting boats, it didn’t rely on tourist traffic, it had an agricultural background, it was nice. Tomorrow, the 18th, we would head back to Lefkas. Today for the first time in 6 weeks we would go nowhere. It was wonderful, sleeping in, cleaning, packing, doing some laundry, topping up the water tank, washing down “Spyros”, going for a walk up to the Venetian fort, walking around the water front to the causeway and Islet of Koukouvitsa, shopping, checking the internet, finding a taverna for this evening.

The Islet of Koukouvitsa, Vonitsa.

June the 19th our last sailing day. We made a slow start this morning I released the lazy line about 10am while Yvonne motored “Spyros” out into the gulf where a tempting light northeasterly was puffing away. We had a few hours just to sail for the sake of sailing as we had planned to make the 4:00pm opening of the bridge to the Lefkas channel. Yvonne soon had “Spyros” up to 4-5 knots on a starboard reach until it was time to bear away to avoiding the shallows in the north of the Gulf of Amvrakikos. We ran towards the western end of the gulf until the breeze died then we had to start motoring. A large pod of feeding dolphins and flocks of sea birds paid little attention to us as we motored out of the gulf passed Preveza to pick up the channel markers that would guide us out of the gulf and into the Ionian Sea.

Gulf of Amvrakikos, Yvonne soon had “Spyros” up to 4-5 knots.

On any other day the breeze in the Ionian Sea would have still been quite light at 2:00pm and we could have had a pleasant sail getting to the Lefkas channel and filling in time until the 4:00pm bridge opening. Today, when we arrived at the outer buoys of the Preveza channel the breeze was from the west at 12 rising to 16 knots. “Spyros” took off close hauled on a heading that would make the Lefkas channel on the nose. We reined her in with a couple of rolls in the genoa when the breeze got to 16 knots but she still romped along at 6-7 knots; we reached the Lefkas channel entrance in 50 minutes and made the 3:00pm bridge opening. Nikos got a text message to say our ETA will now be an hour earlier.

Lefkas, we returned to our nice taverna of 2 weeks ago.

Back at Lefkas the adventure was all over. Nikos refuelled, checked and cleared “Spyros”; we lowered our flag, started packing and later returned to our nice taverna of 2 weeks ago.

Back in New Zealand the winter has been cold and wet, a stark contrast to the warm sunny days aboard “Spyros” in the North and South Ionian Seas. Our suntans may be fading but the adventure is far from a distant memory; the Greek Waters Pilot is already open at Chapter IX, The Dodecanese.

Itinerary

Date	Place	Trip miles
May 9th	Lefkas	arrive
May 10th	Spartakhouri	12
May 11th	Fiskhardho	19
May 12th	Argostoli	35
May 13th	Ay Nikolaos	25
May 14th	Katakolon	33
May 15th	Kiparissia	28
May 16th	Pilos	34
May 17th	Koroni	25
May 18th	Kalamata	15
May 19th	Koroni	17
May 20th	Menthoni	20
May 21st	Kiparissia	40
May 22nd	Katakolon	36
May 23rd	Katakolon
May 24th	Zakinthos	38
May 25th	Killini	19
May 26th	Poros	26
May 27th	Sami	12
May 28th	Astokos	26
May 29th	Vathi (Ithaca)	24
May 30th	Kastos	18
May 31st	Kalamos	13
June 1st	Vasiliki	21
June 2nd	Vathi	14
June 3rd	Kalamos	14
June 4th	Palairos	13
June 5th	Spartakhouri	13
June 6th	Vlikho Bay	12
June 7th	Lefkas	8
June 8th	Parga	37
June 9th	Gaios	13
June 10th	Platarias	20
June 11th	Petriti	15
June 12th	Gouvia (Corfu)	18
June 13th	Kassiopi	12
June 14th	Erikoussa	22
June 15th	Palaiokastrita	15
June 16th	Lakka	33
June 17th	Vonitsa	43
June 18th	Vonitsa
June 19th	Lefkas	21
June 20th	Lefkas	depart
	Total miles	859

Part one
Part two
Part three
Part four
Part five

Story and photos by Neil & Yvonne Armitage from New Zealand

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