TripSailor.com® Sailing Blogs

It started with one of those “too good to miss” offers, a week sailing in Greece for £800 including two return flights from London.

I tend to prefer two week trips as it give you more time to unwind but at that price lets go!

So its down to London Gatwick early on the Sunday morning to catch the charter flight to Preveza, and afew hours later we are on a coach crossing the Levkas bridge and down to Sivota where we finished our May trip.

Weather looks a bit ominous, there seem to be a lot of thunderhead clouds around.

Anyway we arrive in Siviota and are directed to Andros a 27’ Jaguar.

Last trip we had one of the largest boats in the Sailing Holidays fleet, this time its one of the smallest but there is ample space for two (for a short period anyway). 

The Jaguars are also the oldest boats in their fleet, some of them are nearly 30 years old, and Andros is still in her original configuration with very few mod-cons.

(If you want hot water use the Solar Shower bag. If you drop the anchor then its a manual job to haul it back in).

Check the inventory, make sure that everything is complate and find some way of stowing the bags, not a lot of stowage space on these is there.

The first morning briefing doesn’t follow the normal format of “This is where we are going today”.

The weather men are threatening Severe Gales and Isolated Thunderstorms and the flotilla lead skipper has decided that it is too dangerous to take the fleet out, as he has to remember that some crews aren’t very experienced.

“You can go out for the day if you want to, but please come back here for tonight”

Well I have an inexperienced crew with me for this trip, Gary my only crewman has only done 18 days on yachts, but that is 18 more than he had when we started the last trip, but there were four of us aboard that time.

Oh well we will go out and see what the sea state is like out-side the shelter of Sivota Bay, and work out how we are going to do things with just the two of us aboard.

Wind is probably a good Bf5 and the waves are running at about a metre and a half and Gary finds that you are a lot closer to the water on a Jaguar then we were on the Bavaria 42 we had in May.

After about half an hour of bouncing, and trying to get him used to a tiller we turn back for Sivota and start to set things up for our first solo Mediteranean mooring.

Gary has only been at the helm for one or two moorings and was still trying to get to grips with his first boat with a tiller. There was also a nasty cross wind coming down the valley so I decided to take the helm and get Gary to drop the anchor.

We were going in stern-to as the quay is quite low so I lined her up upwind of our target berthing point and started to go astern.  “Let go” and Gary dropped the bow anchor and scrambled back to handle the stern lines.

That is where the trouble starts. We have dropped far more scope than we should have and as the stern reaches the quay the wind catches the hull and we spin into a side-to mooring position.

Get the windward stern line on and dash forward to pull the bow back out with the anchor chain and we are under control again. Adjust the stern lines and the anchor and she is snug again.

I think we had better work out a better way of parking this thing…

Gary is a bit of a “storm chaser” always looking at reports of tornadoes etc and the weather around Siviota this evening looked ominous. he could see three thunderheads, North, West and South of us and remarked if those three come together it could get interesting.

At about 22:00 there was a massive roll of thunder, a massive lightning flash and the rain came down in torrents accompanied by a gale force wind coming down the valley and along the quay.

The wind caught all the boats and started to try to turn them into the quay. Would the anchor hold? Was it taught enough or did we still have too much play in it.

There was only one way to check, get the waterproofs on and go on deck.

Oops all the lights in the village have gone out so get the head-torch as well.

Adjusted the anchor and lines and then see our neighbour about to try to do the same but without any wet weather gear, so its over the rails and sort them out as well so he doesn’t get soaked.

Wind, thunder, lightning, it was going to be a long night.

By morning the storm had blown itself out and we could get underway heading for Little Vathi on Meganissi.

Sea-state was still a bit on the lumpy side but there was a good breeze for the trip.

Rounded the corner and headed North

Got off Meganissi a bit to early to go in and decided to let Gary do some manouvering practice. Normal sort of tricks, drop a fender over the side and say that was me falling in so what are you going to do about it…

Man-overboard is one of those things that you always hope won’t happen but it is definitely worth getting the crew up to scratch on it just in case.

It is also worth going through the options for retrieving the casualty, as well as the manouvering to get back to them. Picking up a fender with the boat-hook is one, thing getting a 70Kg crew-member back aboard isn’t as easy.

Let him do it a few times using the engine and then did it myself under sail a couple of times just to keep my hand in.

Into little Vathi and onto the village quay this time.

A longer run today, heading East towards the “Whaleback” island of Kalamos.

Not a lot of wind though so its a case of trying to make the best of every little puff, and trying not to have to start the engine.

The channel between the mainland and Kalamos is one of the most scenic areas of the Ionian.  The norhern slope of Kalamos is forested and opposite it is the picturesce village of Mitika, withits houses appearing to be right down at the sea.

The harbour at Mitika has a reputation for lots of mooring anchor chains that can make mooring difficult so I have never plucked upp the courage to stop there.

Opposite it there is a little bay with a small stone chapel on Kalamos. This can make a nice “lunch time” anchorage.

Kalamos harbour was extented a few years ago and now can take quite a few yachts. It has a long quay running paralell to the shore.

There are a couple of tavernas by the harbour and a mini market and bakery uop in the village. And I meen up, it is a steep climb up the road from the harbour.

We get away from Kalamos fairly early for the run South West down to Vathi, the main town on Ithika.

The plan was to drop the anchor for lunch in One House Bay on Atoko, but it proved to be just a look into the bay and continue due to a fickle wind.