Flotillas of flotillas. Such fun!
11 August 2016 | Kefalonia
Francis and Chris

Wednesday 3 August
We moved out of very hot and smelly Patras Marina this morning and motored to an anchorage tucked in behind the island of Patalas just off the mainland. Everywhere we look around here are fish farms dotted all along the coastlines. The water here is the result, very murky, but still cool and wet so does not prevent a nice cooling swim. This is a very secure anchorage. Still no wind.
Thursday 4 August
Today we headed over to Ithaca to Sarakiniko bay on the East side of Ithaca where we met up again with Alia and Lance who we met in Patras on the Australian catamaran Catouse. Looking up Catouse:‘a noisy disturbance; commotion’. It took Francis a while, and needed some assistance, to work out that catamaran names often have something about cats in them, hence the name?
After dropping anchor Chris swam a line ashore where Alia kindly assisted in pointing out how to attach the line to the angled slat sideways. There is always something new to learn in this sailing business.
After we settled Clio and had our afternoon siesta we rowed over to Catouse to enjoy a chat and a few drinks. Alia and Lance then joined us on Clio for a very satisfying fried-rice dinner.
Some background: Sarakiniko bay on Ithaca Island displays a great geological feature: it shows very well-ordered layers of limestone (top-middle), formed in Jurrasic to Eocene period, about 200-50 million years ago and thought to be ‘lifted up during the relatively recently uplift on the Ionian trust fault’ (Ref: A geological companion to Greece and the Aegean. Higgins, 1996). Limestone is formed by sedimentation of tiny many millions of years ago being stonified into rocks, composed of mainly calcium carbonate (CaCO3) from for instance the skeletons of tiny marine algae such as diatoms and corals or it can be formed by direct precipitation of calcium carbonate from marine or fresh water when water evaporates (as the Meds did at some time). Anyway, it looks stunning at places.
Friday 5 August
Today Lance delivered Chris and Alia to the beach in their dinghy. From there they ordered a taxi to collect them, and take them into Vathy, the main township on Ithaca. There then followed a long drive on a narrow and windy road with a very nice Greek woman driver. She had some interesting comments to make about foreign male drivers that they encountered coming from the opposite direction, such as, "why do these foreign men insist on taking a driving holiday when they do not even know how to drive". So after some reversing and manoeuvring around very tight corners she safely delivered the girls to the town square of Vathi.
Provisions were acquired and delivered back to Clio and Catouse. After yesterday's overindulgence of a very nice French Rose wine it was time for a quiet night.
Saturday 6 August
Lots of lazing about today along with some snorkelling. After Lance and Francis did a TV and movie download swap we were invited to Catouse for drinks again this afternoon and a lovely summer spaghetti dinner, thank you Alia it was delicious. The recipe went straight into the Clio cookbook for future reference. Alia added recipes tsatsiki (very Greek yoghurt/cucumber/garlic dip) and fig salad to the cookbook to be enjoyed.
Sunday 7 August
Alia mentioned that she couldn’t find many interesting things in the Meds while snorkelling. This is a fairly widely held misunderstanding, is Francis’ opinion. In his opinion, people don’t look in the right places and often do not have some pictures in their head what to look for. He enjoyed many hours diving and snorkelling in the Meds over the years and finds many new things almost every time. Together with many lectures on invertebrates (animals without backbones) and plant taxonomy during his biology study (and what a chore they were at the time) and the many photos and videos collected over the past four years, he had enough material to put a presentation together for interested crews and others. So he spent some time with Alia and Lance today going through ‘marine biology for Meds snorkelers 101’ presentation. The rocky shore at Sarakiniko Bay has some very nice shallow grottos and overhangs, so there is actually quite a lot to be seen. Alia and Lance later reported back that they see much more when snorkelling, now that they know a bit better what to look for and where. We found three species of starfish (3 photos on the right, top to bottom: purple, spiny and red starfish)
Monday 8 August
We had Greek neighbours last night and they decided to talk or should I say yell at each other right through until 4.00 a.m. It was very tempting to turn up our music very loud this morning and if we didn't have other neighbours to consider we would have happily done so.
After a final snorkel in these beautiful waters it is time to move on to Vathy.
We anchored in the Vathy harbour while it was still quite early in the day and fairly deserted, but that soon changed as the day wore on. Soon it was like grand central station with boats piling into the place. We are very happy we got here early and got a prime spot. We waited for the day to cool and headed ashore in Cloe at around 5.30. After a wander through the shops and Francis displaying enormous patience while Chris tried on many, many swimsuits (he believes she tried ALL of them), we had Greek salad, of course, and gyros on a little terrace close to the water. It was the first time that we could not have a bit of vinegar to put on the salad without having to pay extra for it and the chicken gyros was the worst ever. Tourism is not good for quality. We compensated (not) by not so nice local ice cream. We then stocked up on provisions and headed back to Clio. At last the temperature cooled enough to enjoy a good night’s sleep. It has been quite hot with temperatures in de mid to high thirties during the day and high-twenties during the night, combined with high humidity, so our wind-scoop has worked overtime.
Tuesday 9 August
We needed a top-up of our water tank, so skipper went in the dinghy to the fuel station to ask for a water sample to test it on Total Desolved Solids (TDS, actually how well water conducts electricity, a measure to estimate mainly salt in the water). He got some blank stares when he presented the staff with an empty bottle. After some time they shrugged their shoulders and filled up the bottle, still keeping a close watch on the idiot that asked for 1 litre of water from a fuel station that delivers water by the tonne. The water was good 400 mg/L, below the 600 mg/L level for ‘good palatable’ water, set by the Australian drinking water standard. Some context: many times we get water between 150 and 200 mg/L in Greece.
After we filled up on fuel and water, the water guy confided that the water is not always of high quality. It gets brought in by tanker and the filters used in the reverse osmosis process to convert seawater to drinking water are not always of the highest quality. No more blank stares :).
We gladly headed out of Vathy that morning to look for a less crowded and less touristic place. We went first to Kioni bay, a little bay just North of Vathy where we anchored and Chris swam lines ashore. The wind picked up and was blowing onto our port side so we were not too sure about staying here. After some time a cat that had been moored on our starboard side moved out and as we had inadvertently laid our chain over theirs that extended to the other side of the cove, so they collected our anchor line. This helped us to decide it was time to move as our anchor was no longer holding.
As Chris was releasing the lines Clio was pushed back by the wind and scraped the rudder on a rock, luckily no serious damage done, although the steering is now a bit less smooth (another task when going on the hard stand) ). Skipper had to take Clio out into deeper water to haul in the anchor (praise to the little anchor switch at the helm, one of our first improvements when we got Clio) while Chris treaded water with the second rope waiting to be collected. The joys of sailing in crowded places. We then motored further up the coast to Ag. Nicolaos where we managed after a second attempt to secure a good spot in this very pretty anchorage.
Time then to pop the bottle of Champaign to celebrate our 19th anniversary. Yahooo!
Wednesday 10 August
After a very windy night and not much sleep for skipper we had a good long snorkel along the rocky shore and then lifted anchor and headed for the Ionian island of Kefalonia, next door to Ithaca, and a more sheltered harbour from the North-Westerly wind prevailing in this region. We got into Fiskardho around midday and found a good spot to anchor and take a couple of lines ashore. At this stage although it was relatively busy we were happy in our quietish little spot. That all soon changed! A flotilla of flotillas were appearing at the horizon. This is what the English must have seen when the Armada appeared, scary sight. In our case there was no storm to decimate the onslaught and within no time we had four yachts rafted on our port side and then came another five on the starboard side. It soon felt like we were in a marina and we now know why fenders are almost always down in the Ionian. By 5.00 p.m. every available bit of open water in the bay was occupied and ferries, tour boats and dinghies were criss-crossing all over the place, weaving their ways through a spaghetti of charter boat flotillas and their minders, as well as the latecomers eagerly seeking a small gap somewhere to squeeze into.
It was great to watch the flotilla leaders laying anchors and taking lines ashore for their mostly inexperienced charter skippers. By the time they had finished there were lines everywhere looking a bit like a Giants game of Cats Cradle (bottom right photo).
We dragged ourselves along our stern line in Cloe to go ashore for some dinner. After a bit of a scramble over rocks and through the bush we managed to find the road into the town. We indulged in a drink on the quay and then found the Thai restaurant as recommended by Alia. Thank you Alia, it was delicious and a treat to eat non Greek for a night. By the time we had finished our dinner it had become dark so we bought a torch at the local supermarket to find our way back through the bush and down over the rocks to Cloe. We dragged our way back to Clio along the spider’s web of land lines, changing lines at their crossings, and got home without anything broken or scraped and with our groceries still in bags.
Thursday 11 August
There is more wind predicted tomorrow, Friday, so we figured it would be best to make a move today and get to a protected bay further south along the coast. As we could easily see that we had at least one anchor line across ours from the flotilla boats, Chris asked one of our English neighbours if they could alert the flotilla leaders so that they could give assistance if we needed it. After letting our stern lines go Chris began raising the anchor only to confirm our suspicions we had picked up the first chain. So out came the minder (the flotilla called the ‘spirits’ on the vhf) in his dinghy to the rescue. We managed to haul up the chain to about 5 metres from the surface and he dived down to release it. But when he came back up it was with the sad news that we had at least two more lines crossing. So after some manoeuvring we were able to raise our chain again to a reasonable distance for him to dive down and release number two. Ok only one to go, which was a small stern anchor that had managed to land exactly on top of our anchor. Eventually we were able to raise our anchor with said stern anchor firmly attached to it. After some struggling with it the minder was able to get it free and we were on our way.
Our first stop was just around the corner in Dhaskalio a very small bay that already had a super yacht, a catamaran and a monohull in there and it was crowded. The monohull soon moved out so we moved into their spot and dropped anchor. After some time the wind had shifted a couple of times and we were getting a little too close for skipper-comfort to the rocky shore. As we were thinking of leaving a Greek couple pulled alongside in their small motorboat and he asked if we had cream for a wasp bite, as he had been stung, diddums! We had noticed a lot of wasps about. Chris got out our antiseptic cream for him and he was very grateful. We did have a little chuckle thinking he was being a bit of a sook.
We moved on again this time going into another small bay where we were the only yacht. Yes this will do, says skipper, so we dropped the anchor and again Chris jumped in to take our stern line ashore. There were many more wasps here and they were quite aggressive. As Chris was securing our line she was stung on the back, taking it in her stride she yelled at the wasp and jumped back into the water to swim back to Clio. Once back on board after being stung two more times within 10 minutes it was decided that this will not do at all. There were so many wasps that it was hard not to squeeze one when picking up things and being stung by the self-defending creature. Chris now completely empathised with the young Greek guy and fully understood his pain. These killer wasps bloody hurt! After some recovery time Chris jumped back in to retrieve our line and we hightailed it out of there.
Heading further south we at last got some wind and were able to break out the headsail and sailed along to Ag Sophia, a medium size bay with its bottom at a reasonable depth of around 10 m, with only a few boats and where the wasps are fewer, thank goodness. So in went the nail and time for a swim after all that maritime excitement of the day. Francis had had enough of his Rod Stewart hair image on InYourFaceBook and very bravely let Chris loose on it with the razor, it will be a while before he is looking windswept again. Chris’ assessment of the result was ‘star war’s Yoda’, Francis’ was ‘Snow White’s youngest dwarf Dopey’. Thank you for NOT putting more suggestions in the comments, we will withhold of sa(i)d images until later notice.
So far this is a good anchorage so we should be able hang here for a couple of days. The wind has started and is predicted to reach in the high-twenties today. Blowy but not many flotillas around!