Thu July 17-Sat July 19 We dinghied ashore at Nidro Levkas for a quick look and dinner. We found a restaurant offering nice seafood and ordered the seafood grill platter for two - nice variety, delicious, and the first time we tried octopus. There was a pile of some very small fish on the platter which we didn't eat - plenty of other food and they just didn't look appetizing; perhaps we just couldn't get past their name of "bait fish". We were interested in the annual Ithaca festival which is held on the north side of Ithaca island, but there were no good anchorages there. Our next thought was to take a ferry over from Levkas, but when we finally found someone that knew the hours of the festival we discovered that it was a nighttime event, starting at 9pm that night and going into the early morning hours and there wasn't a ferry that would accommodate that schedule.

So instead we moved on, heading out early and timing our departure so that we would arrive at the Levkas canal near the top of the hour as that is when the bridge is opened to let boats through. When this canal was dug out many years ago, it turned Levkas the peninsula into an island. The tidal flow tends to silt up the canal and the navigable channel is quite narrow, so it is tricky to maneuver and turning around is not an option. You just hope that you don't have any engine problems when you enter. You have to do it in the daylight as the channel markers are not lit. First we passed the dredging equipment at work and then we saw a boat that strayed just slightly outside the channel and was grounded. A fellow cruiser was helping them to kedge off and they got free just as we were passing them; we all cheered. We arrived about 10 minutes early and had to do doughnuts in the channel along with several other boats. Fortunately, they have dredged a wider section near the bridge anticipating this need. We followed the Greek mainland coast north a ways to Preveza. We could see that there was room at the Preveza town marina and went in looking for diesel. They had boats side-tied to the concrete piers so we didn't have to med moor here. The staff bicycled over to help us dock. The marina is very inexpensive, likely due to the fact that there are limited facilities. We have water and electricity but no toilets, shower or laundry. Diesel is delivered by a mini-tanker truck. We ordered the fuel and it was delivered later that day.

The next morning we received news that Virginia's mother was not doing well so we spent Friday arranging a flight back to the US. We talked to the marina staff and they were so nice. They said we could keep the boat here as long as we needed to, even though we had a completely indefinite return date, and they didn't require any deposit - said they would sort out payment when we returned. It was so lucky that we had decided to come here, that there was a spot for us, and that it was a side-tie (which we are more comfortable with than the med mooring for long term stays). Someone was looking out for us. There is an airport just across the bay here, but there were no flights available in the next few days so Saturday we took a 6 hour bus to Athens, then another bus from Athens to the airport (which is about 45 minutes outside Athens) to catch a flight out to California via Moscow and New York - in all, we were travelling for 30 hours. The bus crossed over the Rio bridge to the Peloponnese, giving us a chance to see a bit of this part of Greece which we did not visit on our boat. It then crossed back over the Corinth Canal which was interesting to see from up above (when we transited this canal we didn't even notice that there was a bridge over it).

Sun July 20 - Thu Aug 7 We spent about 2.5 weeks in California. We stayed in La Mirada with Dennis' mother who lives only about 20 minutes away from Virginia's mother's home in Long Beach. This allowed us to spend a lot of time with both of our mothers. Virginia's mom's health is fragile, but she had some relatively good days while we were there. We went up to our hometown of Santa Barbara to visit with our son, daughter-in-law and two granddaughters, and squeezed in visits with some of our siblings and a couple friends.

On Wed Aug 6 at 9:00am we began a very long sequence of flights back to the boat, LAX to New York, to Copenhagen, to Oslo, arriving Preveza Thu Aug 7 at 9:00 pm local time. Fortunately we were able to get a flight into the Preveza airport and avoid the 6 hour bus ride from Athens -even with all the stops the overall travel time was shorter than the trip west, but we did lose a day. The boat was safe and sound. The only issue, which we had predicted, was that the canvas covers we had sewn for our fenders were ripped to shreds on one side of three of the fenders given these are concrete piers. We got our second wind and walked into town for dinner. There were lots of people out and about and a fair with carnival rides had been set up in the field next to the marina. They have a big religious holiday in Greece, Feast of the Assumption, on August 15, but we haven't found out if this was part of that celebration. We are reprovisioning the boat and pulling out equipment we had stored for our trip to the US. We expect to leave here headed for Corfu on Monday, where we will check out of Greece.