12 TO 19 JUNE



Lovely week cruising down to Levkas to visit friends Graham and Anne-Marie who are spending the summer on a mooring there on their yacht, Lady Polgaro, in Vlikho bay – a wonderful anchorage almost completely land locked so very sheltered and the whole bay is 7 to 8 metres deep with a bottom of lovely thick soft mud – great anchor holding! (Not so great though when lifting the anchor as our deck wash pump is out of action!) Lovely to meet up with Graham and Anne-Marie and we had a great time sailing/swimming, a few drinks/dinners and an interesting visit to Levkas Town. Entering the Levkas canal is challenging with a shifting sandbank on starboard (and unfortunately the starboard marker missing!) and a rock, position unmarked and unknown, to port – we crawled in through the narrow entrance rather slowly – me up the mast trying to spot the rock and Helen on the helm concentrating hard on the depth meter! Then we had to wait 45 minutes for bridge to open (I should say “floating bridge” which is apparently very important as Levkas is an island – there are suggestions this has something to do with subsidies for the islands!) so we tied up to a fishing boat to wait. Unfortunately when we came to leave Helen was left on the fishing boat (my excuse is the wind was gusting strongly) – I think she said something in Greek but I did the honourable thing and circled round to come alongside and pick her up again. She then took over the helm!



The buildings in Levkas are also interesting – after the 1953 earthquake which apparently flattened most of the town, many buildings now are concrete only on the ground floor – upper floors are corrugated iron. Main street is named after Wilhelm Dorpfeld one of the archaeologists who discovered Troy then spent much of his time trying to find evidence of Odysseus on Levkas (which he was convinced was Ithica in Homer’s Odyssey).