The Season is officially ON.
We headed for Lakka on Paxos the morning after Mia left and after an obscenely swelly night in the anchorage under the old fort in Corfu town, with mozzies feasting on our flesh the whole time. We got as far as Petriti, a good way down the southeast coast of Corfu, and stopped for lunch. And thought the beautiful water and sandy anchorage were too good to leave. We had a good late lunch and did some ship shaping and provisioning. A small and pretty, quiet place.
We got to Lakka by noon the next day, and it really is as pretty as pictures and others say it is. The water! Sparkly, clear turquoise blue, the bay is mostly sandy and quite shallow, and ringed by hills around it. The very, very charming town is safely nestled into the innermost curve of the bay, and offers good restaurants, a decent supermarket, nice little shops, and recycling. We sup’d and chatted with Claire and Ollie (Aquila Constellation) all afternoon and looked forward to seeing Craig and Pandy (Distraction), who arrived the next day. While Lakka IS a very crowded anchorage, which is stressful, we had a very good spot off the beach and for the most part other boats had been good about leaving enough space.
We’d thought we would go down to AntiPaxos for a few days before heading back to Corfu town to pick up Kendall and Brad, but we were enjoying Lakka so much that we just stayed. We settled in to a nice routine of getting up by 9 or so, doing something productive, then supping, snorkeling, and/or swimming, then a nap, make food or go into town for a bite, then watch movies and knit or play games. It was amazing to feel so relaxed after what felt like weeks and weeks of the stress of moving around, checking out and into countries, flying internationally, lots of time in either hotels or someone else’s house, and generally feeling like we haven’t stopped for a breath. Lakka was the perfect place to wind down.
After another stop in Petriti, we picked up Kendall and Brad in Corfu town and set out straightaway for Erikousa and Othoni. They were only with us for four nights, so we didn’t waste time. We had another nice check in with George, the harbormaster on Erikousa who watched over our boat while we were in the states and Mallorca, did some hiking and eating and swimming in the still freezing water, and then moved on to Othoni where they, too, fell in love with Ammos and Calypso Cove. We had a lovely lunch at a resto in Ammos after a morning at the cove, including bean soup that redefined the genre for me in the best way, and post meal ouzo.
I will say I was distracted by the maimed and bleeding feral cats surrounding us at our table though. Skip to the end of this paragraph if you’re haunted by stray animals. The injuries are horrific in many cases, and I found I could barely stand to look at some of them. The worst was one with a large open wound on its belly and a piece of barbed wire caught in the flesh. Apparently, all the residents of Othoni move to Corfu for the winter, leaving any stray animals to fend for themselves. It is clear they’re starving, some grievously wounded, and most should probably be put down (as Kendall and Brad argued for the lot). I so wish I were a vet and could take care of them all. It’s unbearably sad.
The morning at Calypso Cove, however, was gorgeous, again. We were all alone, again. I could have stayed a lot longer than the others wanted to, again. But goodbye Diapontians!
We dropped Kendall and Brad in Corfu town just an hour or so before Brooke and Suzy flew in, so there was some mad ship-shaping in the interim. We left the next morning for Paxos and found a space in Lakka amongst the even more boats packed in there now that it was mid-June. They were flying out of Preveza, so after a couple of days in Lakka, we spent the rest of the week making our way down Paxos to AntiPaxos and across to Preveza.
AntiPaxos was a bit of an anticlimax – very crowded and not all that nice anchoring. One afternoon we were preparing to lift anchor and Brooke, who was manning the windlass remote, asked me to come up to the bow. I left the helm and when I reached her, she quietly told me there was a rat in the windlass locker. We were anchored a good way out from the shore, and having heard AntiPaxos had a bit of a rat problem we hadn’t gone in to put lines to shore. I lifted the locker door, and sure enough there was a quite adorable little rat huddled in one corner of the locker. He scooted briefly into the chain locker, but in a fatal change of direction, went back to the windlass locker. By that time, I’d secured a boat hook and was “encouraging” him toward the hole where the chain drops into the water. I gave him a final push, but neither of us could see him swimming below the trampoline. I peered down at the chain and saw him clinging to it just a few feet below. I looked up at Brooke, and apparently my face betrayed some flickering desire for mercy. She folded her arms over her chest and said, “Sarah. You can NOT have a rat on your boat.” With that I flicked him off into the water, and he started his long swim toward shore. Except that just a few minutes later, one of the ever-present seagulls spied him, and with a scream, swooped down and scooped him into the air. Every other gull within half a mile mobbed the original bird, who lost the largest part of the rat’s body to another, who flew off with the hind quarters and limp tail drooping from his beak. Ew. But remarkably funny. Brooke and I howled, albeit a little hysterically.
We liked Preveza, which is a small city on mainland Greece with two excellent marinas and good anchoring. The old town is charming, and we explored as much of it as Suzy was up to walking. They flew out the next morning, and Peter and I looked at each other and collapsed. Though we couldn’t help it, and we loved having all of them with us, having two sets of guests back-to-back was not a good idea. We were exhausted, the boat was a mess, and we both wanted to crawl into a hole for a week.
So we went back to Lakka and waited for Matilda to arrive. Karina and Tim were picking up our Starlink from our agent in Corfu town after their extended tour of Croatia, Venice, and the east coast of Italy. We found Stray Kitty in residence in Lakka when we got there, and we spent a very fun evening with Chris and Christine playing cards, among other things. The following day Cooinda showed up, and we had a great dinner with Seamus and Sandy, and Chris and Christine in town.
Even just a few days later in June, Lakka was even more crowded, and at this point many people were not being “good” about space. We anchored in a spot just vacated by a departing boat and were then crowded by other boats coming in and anchoring between us and our nearest neighbors. There was a French boat that swung so close to us that I could have stepped from our sugar scoop to theirs. And they wouldn’t move. Peter started out being friendly, but the situation devolved when their boat came to within a couple of inches of ours and they still wouldn’t move. We eventually moved and found a spot closer to the bay’s entrance that felt quite safe. Then a large cat came in, dropped his anchor next to ours, and then went stern to with lines ashore. Close enough that the wrong change of wind direction would send us swinging into his boat. Peter supped over to point out the problem and asked him to move since we were in our spot first. The captain’s reply? “No.” So we moved again. And again. Finally, we again slipped into a space vacated by another boat that was quite close to the beach, but otherwise remained safe.
That’s where we were when Matilda arrived and anchored next to us. We had a wonderful reunion, sharing Aperol spritzes on the Fish, and later heading in for a dinner in the garden of a restaurant in the heart of town.
They had to leave for points south since they were headed for the Corinth canal and the Aegean for the rest of the season, but we knew we would see them again in the fall since we’re both wintering in Mytilini, Lesvos. So, it was mid-June, Lakka was becoming a nightmare, and we didn’t have to be anywhere until dry-docking the Fish in Nidri on August 1st. We too headed south, this time to Ithaca.
Our first anchorage on Ithaca is described in the blog post “The Crash,” so I won’t go into more detail about that here. Needless to say, that anchorage was ruined for us, and we left the next morning, headed for Kioni, a charming little town further down the coast of Ithaca. The charts showed that there really wasn’t any good anchoring in the deep harbor there, and we didn’t feel like joining the flotillas of charterers on the town quay, or wedging our boat in with those that were stern-to the shore across from the quay. We continued down the coast, heading for one of the little coves shown on the chart just a few minutes away. And we found paradise.
A pocket cove with room for one boat, stern-to. Turquoise waters and sandy beach. We stayed well into the month of July, when things went from really hot to really FUCKING hot. So fucking hot we couldn’t move after about 08:30. So fucking hot that the lack of air-conditioning on the port side, where our cabin is, made sleeping virtually impossible. So fucking hot that we were in the water all the time. I’d bought some floaties in Kassiopi that were ovals of inflated plastic with mesh bottoms in the middle, and by this time I was living in mine. There was a natural spring that fed directly into the rocks along one shore, and the water from the spring flowed particularly strongly in the mornings. And the spring water was significantly colder than the sea water, which was now in the upper 80s. Not exactly refreshing at that point. When we desperately needed cooling, we could find it by swimming to the spring and just floating there. But the sun was so hot that even that became difficult, and we had to limit ourselves to early morning or late evening excursions.
We went to Kioni a couple of times during that stretch in paradise, got some lunch, did a little provisioning, then returned to the boat dripping sweat, feeling faint, and immediately got in the water. We also hiked a couple of mornings before it got too hot and returned to the boat dripping sweat, feeling faint, and immediately got in the water. We sat still and sweated and felt faint. And got in the water. But we knew we were in the right place at the right time, and we loved our little cove. Goats were regular visitors to the beach, and we usually had at least one other boat come into the cove for lunch, and now and then one would stay the night. We still spent a lot of time naked. Lots of sunscreen, but butt-naked. It was really fucking hot.
With great reluctance we left our paradise with a week or so to explore Lefkada before leaving the boat on the hard in Nidri for our August vacation to the states. We found Molly Moo blissfully anchored in Vlikho Bay, just inland from Nidri and better sheltered for the most part. Last winter in Montenegro Judith had mentioned an excellent restaurant in Vlikho, so we joined Phil and her for a welcome dinner out, complete with delicious moussaka. Since we didn’t find the water conducive to swimming (I don’t swim unless I can see the bottom, and the water in Vlikho seemed relatively nasty. We were very spoiled by that point). We decided to go south down the coast a little way to check out some of the little inlets shown on the charts, and eventually got ourselves tucked into one, stern-to.
And then we started noticing a few wasps. “A few” became an almost unbearable swarm, and because we don’t have netting on our cockpit doors we couldn’t close them – the heat was still stifling. We started burning coffee grounds. Peter learned that the resulting smoke discourages wasps from hanging around, but it didn’t matter how much we burned or for how long, they still made themselves at home. When the first of the day trip boats arrived the next morning, joined by at least a dozen more over the course of the day, we noticed the wasp population was smaller. Through acute observation we found that they’re more active in the late afternoon and evening, and we could get by without the stench of burned coffee in the boat for most of the day. Either that or the daily influx of fresh flesh to torment drew them away – whatever the reason, it made our little spot slightly more tolerable. We swam and hung out under the boat on our floaties, and people watched, which I would categorize right up there with paper bag television. (So cringe worthy the only way you can keep watching is by putting a paper bag over your head.) It passed the time.
Until we needed to get the Fish back to Nidri, and the Katapoulos marina for our haul out. We were close enough to leaving for a month that boat prep was taking over our days. Ditching perishable food, packing up staples well enough to avoid pests while we’re gone, dosing both the water and diesel tanks to prevent unwanted “growth,” closing holding tanks and saltwater intakes, and a dizzying array of other tasks. The haul-out went well overall (“Opa!”), and we taxied up to Lefkada town to spend the night before flying from Preveza to Athens early the next morning.
It was 117 degrees in Athens when we arrived. The air was heavily scented with forest fire smoke, and we were treated to a full body immersion in the joys of climate change. It was a relief to board our plane the next morning, bound for Denver.
And we arrived just in time to celebrate my father’s 90th birthday with the Denver and Santa Fe fam! He’s still got some of his marbles, but it was hard to see how much he had deteriorated. Fortunately he’s still a goofball too. And clearly apples don’t fall far from the tree.
