SPRING
CRUISE 2023 IN THE IONIAN
(7
July 2022 – 24 May 2023)
After nine months in the UK, we are back on our boat Island
Drifter (ID) in Greece!
UNITED KINGDOM
Previously we had flown back
from Preveza to Gatwick on Friday 7 July 2022, having put ID ‘to bed’ in
Aktio boatyard, in the Ionian Sea near Preveza.
On arrival in Gatwick we were, to our surprise, met by another heatwave,
having just ‘escaped’ from one in Greece.
We stayed that weekend at Will and Lesley’s flat in London. Will cooked a superb BBQ comprising giant prawns and butterfly lamb to retrospectively celebrate Mike’s 80th birthday (which he’d had while in Greece) and his own recent purchase of the Barley Mow pub, of which he had been the manager for a number of years.
Thereafter, we returned briefly to Harrogate before going to our beach chalet in mid-July, where we took over from Henry and Sarah, and remained based there until 8 August. Emmy joined us for ten days. During her stay with us she renewed beach friendships, and we also went to Suffolk so that she could meet for the first time her cousins Isla and Zoe, who live in Malawi.
Emmy and her beach friend Nesta enjoying an evening view of the Solent
For some time Mike has experienced trouble with his legs. He therefore arranged to see an orthopaedic surgeon in Leeds who specialised in leg joints. Following his consultation and advice received, we concluded that Mike needed to take time ‘off’ to build muscle and increase flexibility in his legs in order to compensate for the osteoarthritis that had set in badly in his knees and to a lesser extent hips. Our original plans to return to Greece in September were therefore cancelled.
 |
| Early days: Mike in PureGym where he exercised religiously 6 days a week, with a personal trainer for two of them, throughout the whole of the winter |
While in Harrogate we enjoyed another excellent BBQ with Henry and Sarah to celebrate Mike’s 80th (yet again) and Henry’s promotion to senior project manager. He is now in charge of management and installation by his company of their own plant which they are manufacturing and have sold to the Norwegians for their Government-backed new giga-factory in Mo i Rana in the Arctic Circle. The Norwegian factory will manufacture lithium batteries. While there, Henry, who is an experienced ‘cold water swimmer’, swam in the Arctic!
Henry swimming in Norway: note the snow on the hills!
We returned to the chalet on 27 August, where we stayed until 17 September. We were at the chalet when the Queen died on 6 September and subsequently watched her funeral at The Barley Mow on 19 September.
Phil and Bev's Union Jack at half-mast on the day of the Queen's death
During the rest of the year we remained based in Harrogate. Given the forthcoming power crisis generated by Russia’s war with Ukraine, we finally decided (after 23 years) to insulate the cellar space under the lounge floor. This was quite an undertaking which involved excavating and removing many bags of baked earth and rubble in order to gain sufficient access to the underside of the lounge floor.
Helen fixing insulation boards to the underside of the lounge
floor
We also worked on
reducing both electricity and gas usage, and indeed we reduced usage by over one
third by using a variety of basic economy techniques – including wearing extra
layers of clothing!!
Helen made several
visits to London to Emmy-sit. Lesley has been getting increased audiobook work,
been in an episode of Annika with Nicola Walker and was also delighted
to become the ‘voice’ of Olga da Polga, Michael Bond’s guinea pig, on CBeebies.
We enjoyed a pre-Christmas
lunch with Henry, Sarah and her mother Irene, before leaving for Mendlesham to dog-sit
Flint while Bruce and Jill were away in Malawi for Christmas and New Year.
We stayed in the local Ibis
hotel and spent Christmas and Boxing Days with Will, Lesley and Emmy and
Lesley’s mother Annie.
On 27 December we went back to Bruce and Jill’s house in Suffolk and
were joined for a few days over New Year by the family. We remained to see Bruce and Jill back from
Malawi before we returned to Harrogate.
We went to the Countess Owners
Association’s (COA) AGM on 12 February and stayed the night before in one the Cruising
Association’s five ‘cabins’ in Limehouse Basin beside the Thames. At the AGM we
were pressurised into giving a 20-minute PowerPoint presentation on our
Countess 37. Our article on Will, Lesley and Emmy’s visit to us in Greece on Island
Drifter was published in the COA
magazine at Christmas and our article on our move to and cruise in the Ionian
in Spring 2022 is due to be published in the Ocean Cruising Club’s (OCC)
magazine Flying Fish summer edition this year. For this edition we also
reviewed a couple of pilot books written by Rod and Lucinda Heikell.
The day after we returned home
from the AGM, Helen was knocked down on the Pelican crossing outside Betty’s
iconic tearooms, by a driver who jumped the lights. She face-planted the
tarmac, smashed her glasses into her face, squashed and distorted her nose, severely
bruised her hand, broke a finger and has clearly not done her hip and knee,
where she was hit, any favours. After three months of chiro and massage
sessions, she has improved but is not fully recovered!
During the winter Emmy took up
piano lessons. She has also continued with Street Dance, Scouts, percussion
group and swimming lessons.
Our major project during the
period was having the roof itself lined, re-slated and fully insulated in March.
At the same time (and indeed throughout February) we emptied the loft and had a
dramatic sort-out of the contents (before subsequently replacing a
significantly reduced number of boxes, once the roofing work was completed). We
adopted the rule that if no one is likely to want it now or when we fall off
our perch – it goes!
By the middle of March, Mike
had concluded that his gym and training sessions had ‘sufficiently’ improved
his strength and mobility, although he still feels that he is walking ‘on
stilts’ and stiffens up after sitting down for any length of time. Helen also
felt that she had recovered sufficiently from her accident. We
therefore agreed that we would go to Greece as originally planned and simply
see how we get on. Apart from anything else, Island Drifter needs
checking out and servicing and it should be warmer and more pleasant in Greece,
even if we only use the boat as a holiday cottage in the boatyard!
PREVEZA, GREECE
We therefore booked flights to
Preveza with EasyJet for 15 April, since this was after Easter and prices had
returned to ‘normal’. In the absence of
any sensible train options (engineering works over the weekend) we took an
Addison Lee cab door-to-door to Gatwick. (Only £102!)! Flight was on time and
arrived in Preveza at 2110 hours local time. There we picked up our keys from
the boatyard’s Security Guard, and spent an hour or so sorting out (as best we
could) our sleeping arrangements for the night. To our joy we discovered a
bottle of Metaxa and a large packet of crisps, which we had for supper! (We had already had lunch in Wetherspoons at
Gatwick.) It being Greek Orthodox Easter, the office was closed on Sunday and
Monday, although fortunately the Mini Market in Cleopatra marina was open.
During our first weekend and
indeed much of the following week, it rained heavily, such that the ground
under the boat was flooded. We needed wellies tp negotiate the boatyard. Not a
problem, really, since there was plenty that needed sorting out below deck and
the rain gave the deck and rigging a thorough wash-down. Thereafter, the
weather has steadily improved, although the temperatures have remained cool
enough to work in comfortably.
We made good progress in
servicing ID, preparing for sea and effecting some significant (and
overdue) modifications and repairs. In this we were grateful for the help and
engineering advice of our Italian neighbour, part of the Italian community we
were surrounded by.
On the day of King Charles
III’s Coronation, 6 May, we dressed ID overall. We were the only boat in
the yard who made an effort. Helen watched the proceedings on the iPad.
LEFKAS
We eventually launched on Monday 8 May and motored six miles south towards
Lefkas. We arrived at the small fishing
quay at the north end of the Lefkas Canal, five minutes late for the 1000 hour
opening of the floating bridge.
We therefore pulled into an empty space on the large
concrete quay opposite the Santa Maura Fort to await the next floating bridge
opening. While waiting, we decided that we’d stay there the night and ‘wind
down’ after having spent three weeks working non-stop in the boatyard.
Our first impression of the location was that it was fairly
run-down (some might say ‘ripe for development’) but had a very spacious quay. The
abandoned old retsina winery and holiday buildings were seriously derelict and
covered in graffiti.
On further investigation we discovered that the quay
and narrow spit had four particular attractions: the buildings and trees on the
spit provided good protection from the prevailing northerly wind; it was only a
5-minute dinghy ride down the canal to Lefkas town itself; it had a superb
sandy beach on the west side of the spit (together with beach shower), and had
a pleasant little Kantina (a Greek ‘greasy spoon’) some 100m away from our
location. We also discovered a ‘free’ source of good water at the old wine
factory.
On reflection, we soon concluded that the location was
ideal for our purpose of continuing to sort out ID and, in particular,
to repair the dinghy where the 2-part adhesive takes 7 days to achieve full
strength.
Plenty of room on the quay beside ID to refurbish the dinghy
We periodically had lunch at the Kantina, which we
quickly discovered offered good quality local fare at a more than reasonable
price. With the aid of our dinghy, once repaired, we were also able easily to
shop in town for provisions, goods and chandlery items. We also took advantage
of the excellent beach behind the spit.
While on the quay, we got to know our single-handed
Argentinian neighbour, Jose Miguel, some of the friendly local anglers who were
a source of help and local knowledge, and Valerii, a Ukrainian, self-employed
sailing instructor and owner of a Countess 33, which he is now selling before returning
home to help his country’s war effort. (We haven’t included a photo of him, for
obvious reasons.)
All in all, it has been a good and valuable stop-over,
which met one our main strategic objective, namely it has given us the time and
facilities with which to sort out the boat properly after the Covid interlude
(2020–21) and because we did not come out in Autumn 2022 due to Mike’s
osteoarthritis.
KEFALONIA
From Lefkas, we made our way down the mainly
uninhabited and sheer west coast of the island, which we had not sailed past
before, to Ag Efimia in Kefalonia, ready to meet Will and Emmy who are joining
us for half term. Lesley won’t be
joining us because she was already booked to record two audiobooks over the half-term
period. She and Emmy went to Gozo at Easter to stay with an old friend of hers,
so Lesley has at least had a share of Med sun already.
Comments
Post a Comment