Lovely to hear from so many of you and so chuffed that you are bothering to read the blog . Special shout out to Mo, Carolyn, Pam, Birgit and Wendy Darling - to say that your comments on our first blog of the season were wonderful and a huge thank you x

After checking in we headed on our old faithful track , through the lefkas canal to Nidri to see our wonderful friend Jim on Nanjo, for our traditional 'Welcome to Greece Giros.'
On route we stopped at Ligia, where we chilled at anchor for 3 days before hooking up with both Jim and Manfred in Nidri.

Wednesday 5th July
Another wonderful day surrounded by nature. as well as Jim and Manfred, we have had company every morning in the bay at Nidri . At least 6 swallow fledglings perch on our guardrail, chirping and flapping their tiny new wings to get a parents attention to be the one to receive the juicy fly for breakfast. Yes I said fly, the swallows feed on the wing. So graceful and swift are they, that they can swoop and snap up a morsel in mid flight . We even witnessed one fledging braving leaving his perch to meet his mum. The risk paid off as she did actually feed the little one in the air! We spent ages watching them, at one point we counted 14 birds on our boat. Word must have got around that we were a bird friendly vessel. I got so close to them, I could have almost touched them. I stood with my head stuck out of the forward bunk hatch and got some stunning photos and a slow motion action shot of mum swooping down to feed her noisiest, flappiest chick.

Greece is wonderful, but we have decided to move Patience a little nearer home. We are going to Spain! That way more friends and family can come and join us onboard, as the flight is shorter and lots cheaper. There are even flights from Southampton - so no excuses folks ... From our stand point - having Patience in Spain means that we can escape for some winter sun and cheeky long weekends and use more than 3 months of our Brexit allocated 90 days out of 180.
A win win we feel . We just have to sail there now ... only 1,300 nautical miles - roughly haha .

We had expected to wait for the perfect wind to set sail so we headed over to Keffalonia to officially check out of Greece. What we hadn't expected was quite so much wind! But hey we are sailors not motor boaters and we are supposed to chase the wind, not shy away from it. As it was we had a stonking sail all the way to Poros on Keffalonia . We even managed to give our cruising chute a shake down when the wind calmed a bit (that's the pretty blue striped light weight one for our non boatie readers.) Sadly after such a great sail we ended up mooring with our stern (bum end) against the concrete harbour wall. Not ideal, but we have a big fat round squishy fender and a
very good anchor to use in these situations, and the light wind actually was pushing us off, so we slept well.

The final morning we were up early sailing around the island to Argostoli. Here we will begin our very own Odyssey although unlike that of Odysseus (also know as Ulysses)ours will obviously not be told by the mighty literary pen of Homer - my blog is gonna have to do. It will also most definitely not take 10 years!

We love Argostoli. We have made many friend there, some passing through and some like Roger and Heather who became boat buddies and lifelong friends . It is pretty much the furthest western point of Greece, so a great place to start from, get all your papers stamped ( again) oh - and a spot where you can guarantee to see a turtle . We had a few days in Argostoli, waiting in the new unfinished(so greek) marina for the perfect wind to set sail. One final goodbye to the turtles in the bay and we're off - first stop Sicily we think x