Great week sailing with Terry and Jenny. After a day relaxing by the pool, we set off to visit a few of the most popular spots in the northern Ionian around Corfu – Lakka on the island of Paxos, the Sivota islands on the mainland coast, and Kaloura (where Durrell family lived) and Agni bays on the NE coasts of Corfu island. All great with lovely swimming, good restaurants and beautiful scenery and good breezes for at least a few hours a day to give us some good sailing. Recently we’ve had stronger winds – gusts up to 33 knots on Thursday evening! The Ionian has a reputation for very light winds but its not been true this week. We had anchored in Agni bay but on Thursday as the wind got up and swung round we had to re-anchor and this time we reversed up to the restaurant jetty and tied off there as well. Then we put out a kedge anchor - actually the ferryboat man agreed to drop it for us which was great as it would have been difficult for us in the dinghy, but although we had 10m of chain and 80 m of rope he dropped it only 30m to 40m away. We hoped the kedge anchor would stop the bow being blown down wind in the gusts which blasted down the valley from the mountains. We thought we should be fairly secure but then the restaurant owner came out to check on the jetty as he was worried it might give way! Wondered whether to stay or leave and head back to Gouvia marina for shelter – but concerned winds might be even stronger out of the bay and berthing in Gouvia in these winds would have been extremely difficult (heard later of 40 knots plus in the channel!) – so decided to stay and got up every couple of hours to check our position and ensure we hadn’t dragged our anchors. So a rather disturbed night but anchors (and jetty!) held and winds had died down by early morning. Otherwise we’ve had relaxing easy sailing – ALMA goes very well with any reasonable breeze in the calm waters in the channel here between Corfu and the mainland (even with a reef in which we have at the moment as main halyard is chafing with the full main up – only a nuisance in the lightest winds but we just accept it as a handicap when we’re sailing on the same course as other boats (not racing of course!). Only other concern has been with charter boats. They have a bit of a poor reputation which I’d thought might have been unfair. But having seen how close some charterers go to other boats and how badly some of them anchor (we’re beginners too and have some difficulties anchoring but hopefully not as bad as some of the charterers we’ve seen) , I’m now very wary of them. Don’t want to be anchored downwind from charter boats in a strong wind!



Enjoying Greek food esp grilled fish (wonderful bbq’d sea bass), roast lamb, lamb kapama, beef stifado and of course greek salads. Beer (Mythos or Alfa) good, local wine OK and getting a taste for Ouzo! Had a surreal evening at Nikolas in Agni bay – Greek dancing, music, singing, plate smashing etc – thought this only happened in movies. But all the restaurants we’ve been to have been great – not cheap (EU prices!) but good food, good service and friendly. Just as well as our fishing has not been successful to date – even with our new lures and with Terry’s expertise we drew a blank! Target for the summer is to catch a sea bass – just one, even quite a small one, would be fantastic! (our goals are really quite simple now in retirement – food, water, secure anchorages, good sailing, laundry etc – very simple life. Oh and of course staying fit and trying to slow the inevitable process of growing older)



Swimming improving and managed a swim “marathon” of 40 minutes this week – aching muscles the next day; need to keep up the training! Have also resolved as part of our keep fit program not to use the outboard engine on the dinghy unless really necessary. So rowing now part of our daily gym work!



Now resting up for a day or two – and of course all the normal domestic jobs boat cleaning, shopping, laundry emails etc etc. Had a hair cut this morning too – which is an interesting insight re Europe’s economies – a haircut costs me about E20 in Reigate, E24 in france, E3.60 in Malta and E12 in Greece. Hope UK hairdressers are reading this!



Hope if weather good we might be able to sail to Levkas next week to meet up with friends who are moored there in Vliho bay while they get some work done on their boat. Then we’ll come back to Corfu before our UK trip 22nd to 27th June. Looking forward to catching up with many of you in the UK.



All the best

Helen and Iain