Freya & Us

We stayed in Port Atheni for 3 nights in total, just chilling out and snorkelling when the weather got too hot. But it was time for a change of scene (and we also needed to escape the wasps that were driving us down below at meal times) so we motored the 8 miles to Palairos on the mainland. We anchored off the harbour for our first night and were planning to move into the harbour the next morning, after the charter fleet that uses this port as a base left. Before we had even thought about breakfast a number of boats weighed anchor and started circling around the harbour mouth, waiting for the boats to leave. A couple of hours later as the first boat pulled away the very undignified scrap for spaces began. At that point we decided to leave them to it and stayed at anchor for another night before leisurely moving into the harbour on Tuesday morning. There was free water and electricity available on the pontoon which we think was the reason why people were so keen to get in.

Palairos was a nice little town with a beach and the usual array of bars and shops but otherwise it was unremarkable, but it was good for some swimming and chilling. Its other main attraction was the Panorama Taverna, a Greek taverna that employs a Bangladeshi chef, and hence serves "proper English curries" which were as good as we were led to believe by other boaties.

In Port Atheni, we picked up a stowaway that was with us for quite a while. One evening we saw something crawling along one of our long lines. It was a bright green cicada. We thought nothing of it at the time, but while we were at anchor a few days later realised it was still on board. We hear him every night and have been feeding him on lettuce leaves. We almost caught it one time, with the intention of releasing him ashore, but so far "Jiminy" has been to fast for us.

From Palarios we motored, again, to Sivota where we met up with Aran and Kitty. We anchored in the middle of the very sheltered bay where it was relatively cool and had a nice meal with Arran and Kitty. We raised our anchor the next morning to meet Miss Chips in Vliho.

We weren't expecting to much much from our short passage as there was no wind, but as we entered the Meganisi straits the wind accelerated and we had about 5 kts behind us. We unfurled the jib and sailed down wind at between 2.5 and 3.5 kts for just over an hour. Exciting it wasn't but it was very peaceful and satisfying.
It took us a little while to find Miss Chips as she was on the Sail Ionian charter company's pontoon and not at anchor as we expected. When we found them we realised why, Becs was on her own as Robin was working (excuse the language) ....... He is working as a skipper for a few weeks.

When we arrived in Vliho we dropped the anchor and it bit first time. However the next morning the wind changed and we realised we were a little closer to an unoccupied mooring buoy than was ideal, so no problem we thought, just raise the anchor and set it 10m further forward. It took us four attempts to get the anchor to hold securely. It seemed to set each time, but as we tested it by reversing with the engine on, we just pulled it through the soft mud. What should have taken a couple of minutes, took nearly an hour before we found a firmer bit of mud, but as least we put some charge back in the batteries! Temperatures here have been in the mid to high 30s and it was hot work. Unfortunately the water in Vliho Bay is a bit murky and doesn't encourage you to go swimming to cool down.

We stayed in Vliho for a couple of nights sharing a couple of glasses of wine with Becs and then moved a whole mile or so north to Nidri. In Nidri we anchored with lines ashore in Tranquil Bay which we were hoping would live up to its name as there are some strong winds forecast for the next couple of nights.

We celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary in Nidri, with a bottle of Greek champagne in De Blancs wine bar, where after a little while, we were joined by Arran and Dylan. Another bottle of champagne and a few glasses of wine later, helped along by a delicious meze platter, we finally found our dinghy and made our why back to Freya where we sat on deck for a while looking at the stars....and feeding the mossies. 11 years ago when we got married in Wells it was blisteringly hot and after everybody had left the party at our house, we sat in our garden staring at the stars until 4:00 am - History almost repeated itself.

The next day, while the sea in Tranquil Bay stayed quite flat as the forecast winds arrived in the evening. Initially we felt quite secure. However a few minutes after we both came down below to get out of the wind, we were hailed by our neighbours. Freya's bow was being blown onto their boat and we were a lot closer to shore than we should have been. The wind wasn't quite from the direction forecast and was hitting us beam on and our anchor had slipped.

We quickly turned the engine on and gently motored forward against our stern lines to get us away from the shore. We then tied onto our neighbours boat so we could focus on sorting the anchor. We pulled it back in with the windlass and then drove the dinghy to the bow. Then holding the anchor in the water with a rope from the bow of the dinghy, we flaked all of our anchor chain into the bottom of the dinghy. Then with the help of Murray from the neighbouring boat, we drove the dinghy out (in reverse) as far as we could go laying the anchor chain as we went, eventually dropping the anchor about 40m in front (and slightly to windward) of the boat. Then we pulled in the chain with the windlass and the boat straightened up as the anchor bit. Voila problem sorted! We then added a second shore line to the mid-ships cleat to reduce the lateral strain on the anchor and hopefully its a bit better now.

It was a bit exciting and made it much harder to relax that evening. In fact I (Paul) am writing this at 1:00 am as I can't sleep and keep checking the anchor every few minutes. The winds are now forecast to die down in 24 hours and so I've only got to stay awake for 2 days or so.

The good news is that later that same night we managed to capture Jiminy and after a night in a sandwich box with a few lettuce leaves, we released him ashore the next morning