Made it to Galaxhidou, reliant totally on the engine. 

Hauled anchor single handed in the early hours at Korfos whilst Sue snoozed on below, and feeling happy to be doing my ‘one man and his boat’ type sailing, headed off westward across the last bit of the Aegean to the Corinth Canal.

It went from an idyllic calm at sunrise to a strong west north westerly right on the nose by early morning.  Finally built to F7 with gusts of 35+.  Still sunny skies and hot as, but had no choice but to drop our bimini due to the amount of flapping around caused by headwinds and our combined motoring speed.

The Canal second time round had not lost its power to impress.  This shots from last years transit when we went west to east – it looks much the same going the other way.

Finally powered into the bay off Galaxhidou around 1600 against those strong winds.  Expected to find peace, calm and the same pretty place we experienced last year. 

Not the case. 

The relatively sheltered town quay tucked up towards the head of the bay was undergoing a re-build, and looked like what it was.  A dusty building site.  No room at the inn for us. 

You can’t help wondering how stupid is it for a tourist town to do this in summer months – as no other yachts were there either.

Our only option was to try anchoring off, but we found we still got the full force of the blast furnace winds, and a surprising amount of wave action despite the short distance from the shore.  The wind still made the biminin a no no.

We lived with the conditions for maybe 60 minutes, but eventually decided it might not die at disk.  So using the pilot book we selected a small deserted but south facing bay maybe 2 miles westward, and went there just as it got dark to get out of the wind under the protection of high cliffs, close inshore. 

Stopped over there for Saturday night.  The winds did eventually die, but not until midnight.

Sleeping on deck to stay cool, Sunday saw another early start with sun up.

Again, a repeated ‘on man and his boat’ exit to get out of the Gulf of Corinth and into the Ionian asap. 

True to form, started with flat calm at 0530, and built to F6 again on the nose as we covered more miles westward.  The seas in the Gulf, both this year and last, don’t have a hospitable look.  Maybe we were tired, but both times they were a shade of dark gunmetal grey, and seemed far too lumpy.  Seems from later experiences as we exited the gulf, the short waves were probably a result of a west going current against the westerly winds.

Once we’d slid under the impressive mile long bridge which spans the Gulfs western entrance, it all started to get nicer.

Twigged that westerly current as under the bridges, which shot us out into the Sea of Patras at 2 knots over boat speed, and immediately experienced ideal sailing conditions.

The seas flattened out, and turned a lovely shade of azure. 

The winds eased back to F4, and clocked south enough to sail.

So we then spent the rest of the afternoon slipping quickly towards the south west of mainland Greece, pacing and overtaking several other yachts en-route. 

We hugged the northern shoreline which proved variable and interesting.  First huge cliffs and mountains, then sandy flatlands with shoals extending out to a mile or more seaward.  Then pretty beaches crammed with sun worshippers and brollies. 

As we passed Mesolongi and its delta type inlet, there were lots of these stilt type house reminiscent of some parts of the far-east……..

I went for a late siesta as Sue conned the boat the final 20 miles across the Ionian Sea to our chosen first stop at Inthika’s main port of Vathi.

As we arrived at sunset turning into the north east facing Gulf of Molo where Vathi is located, the wind gave one last reminder of its fickleness by howling back in at 30+ knots.  So it was a kind of hasty anchor down and shoot in reverse towards a smallish gap between yachts already on Vathi’s north eastern quay.  Our new smaller yacht neighbours were less than impressed with us moving in and jamming ourselves between them, but we both too knackered to care.  The wind continued until late, and lots of slop and slap from wave action continued during the night.

Monday morning saw no wind, so we moved off the quay to anchor in the bay half a mile away off Vathi town, and went ashore, hired a scooter, and got away to explore and visit some super beaches.

IMHO the whole island is stunning, in again, an Italian sort of way.  Hills lush with lots of shades of green.  Pencil type pines that look like (but are not) Cyprus trees, and some visible vineyards complete the picture.  Even some of the villas look like they should be in Tuscany.

The Italian connection goes back a long way in this region.  First Venician colonization, then again Italian occupation during WWII.  The adjacent island of Kefallonia was the setting for ‘Captain Corelli’s Mandolin’ which apparently summed up the wars occupation quite well.  It seems towards the end, when the Germans occupied the island to bolster defences against an expected allied invasion, the 9,000 Italian Alpine troops refused to co-operate and finally began fighting the Germans. 

Only 3,000 survived that action, and they were lined up (apparently under direct orders from Hitler) and shot.  Only 37 are reported to have survived. 

This is our first sailing foray into the Ionian, and from first viewing, it looks fabulous. 

Lots of high lush islands fringed with good anchorages and nice beaches – can easily see why one might buy a place and live here!  Thanks go to Olive (another blogger) who influenced us to spend some time around here. 

I’m hoping we can secure wi-fi access sometime soon so as to update the blog with pictures so you can see how nice it is yourselves, but for now I’m sorry but you’ll have to make do with text.

Y’all take care.

Cheers