We hired a car to drive across the island of Kefalonia to the airport near Argostoli (the alternative was to motor/sail all the way round taking all day). 'Gerolimatos' in Eufimia town charged us E40 for the day in a modest Accent saloon which with E20 for fuel was also better value than a taxi (E55) as we could do the shopping (Lidl and AB supermarket in Argostoli) and a bit of sightseeing on the way. We parked under the trees at the side of the airport runway to avoid the heat and our son Josh and girlfriend Jen arrived without major delay. There's virtually no parking at the airport itself, normal Greek chaos with buses and coaches fighting it out for space with hire car returns and private vehicles.

We spent the night on the quay at Eufimia as it was too late to leave and ate in 'The Local', one of our regular haunts. We were ready to leave by 09.00 the next day and luckily the wind that had been pinning us on the quay had dropped. We still had to conduct a 90 degree turn of the boat in a very restricted space between other craft but the crew pulled the right lines at the right time and Splice's two engines made the task possible.

There was virtually no wind so we motored around the bottom of Ithaca and up the east coast to Kioni dropping our anchor and falling back against the south western quayside after about three hours. The harbour was still busy, but compared to our previous visits there were fewer of the chaotic scenes we previously witnessed. One charter cat did make himself very unpopular by trying to squeeze into a space too small for him but we had a quiet time with no difficult neighbours.

On board in Kioni

The next day we headed north. We had been asked 'will we see dolphins' and answered was that we hadn't seen any this season in the Ionian, five minutes later the skipper noticed a leap ahead of us and we shortly had eight dolphins playing in our bow-wave. They stayed for 10 minutes doing their normal display and then headed away, Josh had been filming on his phone all the time so no one else bothered. He then found he had no storage space left so no recording at all! We moored back to shore in Abelike Bay on northern Meganissi with Josh swimming the lines ashore. We then took the quite steep walk over the hills to Vathi to buy meat from the butcher there and have an ice-cream. Our BBQ came out that night and the homemade burgers and the butchers sausages seemed to go down well.

We again headed north in minimal wind to Porto Varko, a lovely bay for swimming and spent the night free swinging there. J&J took Fizz (the kayak) for a spin and we swam ashore to sit in the shade for a while. We made a large quiche with salad for dinner (the remainder did the skipper coffee break next day and lunch).

Josh and Jen trying out 'Fizz'

Another windless day saw a short motor-sail to Spartahori on Meganissi. We moored at the public quay near Taverna Spillia and ate there that evening. J&J did the walk/climb to the town above the next morning and the skipper swam across the bay to the beach. He got back safely but decided that was a bad idea given the number of motorboats that chose to zip past in the process.

We had a little more wind for the sail down the Meganissi channel to Sivota, albeit on the nose. The sails came out and we tacked our way all down the channel with Jen taking the helm for a number of the tacks and holding the course well on her first attempt. We moored at the Yacht Bar pontoon without a problem, and an hour later Chris wandered up to pay the owner Martino (as usual not getting a receipt). A few minutes' later two people appeared on the pontoon from the Greek Tax authorities asking Chris what he'd paid and wanting to see his passport. It ended with Martino telling us he'd get a fine but he seemed very laid back about it. We suspect that he hadn't been paying his tax!

We actually had a good sail from Sivota back to Eufimia on Kefalonia, main and genoa out in around 12-15 knots of wind as we crossed the open water and then the spinnaker came out for the run down the channel with 10 knots apparent behind us. Josh and Jen got to see all our sails even though there was no wind for much of the week. We anchored in Eufimia harbour around 15.00 and spent the last night on board, Josh and Carolyn spending much of it in hysterics as they tried to complete code-word puzzles and got tongue-tangled on the odd pronunciations.

We hired the same car to get them back to the airport the next day and were back on board with the shopping done by mid afternoon.

Main Photo: Drinks on the fore-deck for Josh and Jen in Spartakhori