The Last of Greece for a While!

Finally, on the 20th June we set sail from Preveza heading northwards, a little later than intended, but once we had left the long channel out from Preveza, we had a lovely sail in a gentle south west wind, a very soft introduction back into the swing of things, up to a bay called Ormos Kastrosykia on the mainland, where we dropped our pick for our first dinner and night properly afloat, surprisingly all on our lonesome!

The next day, we chilled out for the morning waiting for the winds to pick up, swimming and paddle-boarding, a bit of a record to be able to do that so early in our season, but looking at the pics below, well what else could we do 😛?

At about 13:30 the winds came, again we had a wonderful sail for 19NM to a bay called Two Rocks Bay… not sure why as there were certainly more than 2 visible rocks there! Hey Ho, we dropped our pick along with some 17 other boats, all very respectfully spaced out, a marked change from the southern Ionian where people anchored with not enough room to swing a cat! In fact we loved it so much we decided to stay for 2 nights, only chased away by an influx of chartered catamarans, it must be the first stopping point of their holiday.

Again we waited until about 12:00 for just enough wind to carry us onwards… many moons ago, we would have put the engine on at anything under 5 knots of wind, but today, with only 11 miles to go, we decided to potter!

Our next stop was Parga, which we thought we hadn´t been to before. The quay in Parga isn´t set up for yachts, so we anchored off in the bay next door and caught a water taxi that ran every half an hour into town to explore. Only then did we start to have a bit of a deja-vu feeling… 🤪

Parga

Whilst we hadn´t planned to to stop for dinner, our tummies got the better of us so we stopped for a gyros, well at least I, (Chantal), played safe and decided to opt for one… David however ordered the Island Burger…….

…only to realise that whilst it was called a burger, it was just what the menu said…. grilled bacon, cheese, tomato, lettuce, french fries, not a burger in sight… kinda reminded us of pepperoni (as in pepper only) pizzas in Italy, oh did we chuckle, thankfully they did exchange it for a proper one!

We also hadn`t realised that it was St Juan´s festival all over Greece that night and so had a bit of a surprise with a live band and a greek custom of people jumping over fires….🥴

A throughly enjoyable evening before we were ensconced back to Seaclusion by Christos in his water taxi for a peaceful night.

On the 24th June we then had planned to go over to Paxos to anchor in the very cutesy town of Gaios, as we remembered it. With no wind on the horizon we motored over the short hop of 7 NM, and dinghied in, only to realise that we were not quite problem free, the outboard engine would only run under choke without much power…….still it got us to the town, which whilst it was still very cutesy, we were in for a shock… OMG there were soooooo many people being offloaded by multiple day tripper boats, thankfully I got a few images before they disembarked, we soon bugged out and went to the next bay along, Mogonisi, where we snuck in and had a wonderfully peaceful night on board!

Gaios, Paxos Island

Mogonisi, Paxos Island

We spent the morning, hauling the outboard onto Seaclusion trying to flush through the carburettor, hoping to fix the issue, sadly not. So we then headed back to the mainland again, the winds were northerly so we couldn´t go due North anyway, arriving in Sivota where we once again dropped our pick, arranged for someone to take the outboard away to service it the next morning and had another wonderful still night, long may it last!

The following morning we slowly made our way into the harbour on the dinghy and thankfully passed the engine off to someone who really knows what to do with it, so we had a couple of hours to kill wandering around the very small village of Sivota, drinking lots of coffee!

Sivota, Mainland Greece

David did have a chuckle though…

A couple of hours later, our outboard back, all working well, we headed back to Seaclusion, then off to Corfu, stopping for a night in a new marina called Benitses, we would not have normally done this, but we had highlighted a second problem, our AIS was not transmitting our location, not normally an issue sailing in between islands, but with our plans for the rest of the summer, we really needed to get that sorted.

By the time we arrived at Benitses, we had a bit of a nasty cross wind blowing, that together with this being our first mooring, not just of the season, but probably since we left Turkey. We had to moor stern too with a lazy line instead of our anchor, and it being a very tight spot against a much larger and higher power boat, it wasn`t our finest moment. Thankfully no real damage done, nothing a magic sponge couldn´t remove at least! Soon after our marine electronics guys arrived and soon had the problem fixed, without even a new part, phew!.

Bentises

Our departure the next day was an awful lot smoother and we headed 4NMS to anchor off Corfu town and go wandering…and have dinner ashore.

Corfu Town

It was a lovely afternoon and evening, sadly we can`t say that for the night, despite the forecast of no wind, a southern swell arrived in the middle of the night, suffice to say, we had a very rolly polly night, a bit early in the season I have to say!

The next day, our last in Greece, we left early to motor over in a dead calm sea to Gouvia, just north of Corfu Town, as we had been told it was easy to clear out from there.. hahaha

The North side of Corfu Town

We dropped our pick in a peaceful bay and dingied into the marina only to be told by the Port Police that whilst he could do the paperwork for the boat, we needed to go to the new port in Corfu Town to get out passports stamped out… arrrgh. So on a bus we hopped followed by a half a hour walk trying to find the customs office in the heat of the day. Finally we found it only to have the customs official not only look at our last entry in to Greece a month before but go back through all our stamps to find one into Malaga in 2021 and none out! Having clarified that this was because we were Spanish residents, we realised that our residency cards were back on the boat 🥴. Thankfully we had a copy on our phones which they were happy to accept, stamped our passports out and sent us on our merry way!

So more than 4 hours later we got back to Seaclusion for a much needed peaceful rest of the afternoon and evening..

The following day, we set sail for pastures new, Albania….hoping that clearing in would be a lot more straight forward with the help of an agent!

So onto the next Chapter of this summer´s trip….

29th June 2023