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Sailing Holidays (www.sailingholidays.com) have 120 yachts operating from three bases in Western Greece.  Well they do during the summer season in the winter they keep them all ashore at Gouvia Marina in Corfu, and Gouvia is not one of those operating bases,

Therefore at the start of the season they have to get all those yachts out on trips that will eventually end at their correct operating bases. (And their prices for these "delivery" trips are set to attract enough crews to do the moving…)

So on the first weekend some 500 clients arrive in Corfu on two specially chartered aircraft and the next day all the various flotillas have to sail, but luckily not all the boats try to leave at the same time…

One year they left it to the clients to call in at the fuelling berth on the way out, and I have nver seen a traffic jam like it, 30 boats at a time trying to hold their position in the queue to get in to the two fueling positions, then fill up and head for the open sea.

This year they have fuelled the boats before we arrive so we wont have that problem, so its a welcome party on the Sunday night and then up on Monday morning to find out where our own little fleet of ten 27’ Jaguars are supposed to end up that night,

Our Lead Skipper, Jamie, has a slight problem, he has never actually sailed in these waters before, but armed with his company handbook he is ready to explain to the various skippers where he wants them to go tonight and what hazards they should watch out for on the way.

Our destination for tonight os the NAOK sailing club just south of Corfu town he tells us.  OK thats all I need to know, this is my fifth trip out of Corfu and I’ve been into NAOK on four of them, with the most recent being this time last year.

Time to get going before the rush.