We welcomed Paul and Tracy onboard in Corfu, they are friends from home in Whitstable and are also WYC members. It was great to spend time with them but sadly the weather didn't really play ball, being a bit chilly and occasionally wet. We did find a decent anchorage in Kalami bay, going ashore to a restaurant called the White House. Imagine our surprise to discover it was THE White House once belonging to Lawrence Durrell of the infamous Durrell family. His brother Gerald wrote My Family and Other Animals which we both should now read! The interior was all designed around memorabilia focussed on the family. The food and wine were gorgeous.
The White House
Andy Provan had left the boat but was still in Corfu, now with his wife Louise. We took them back on board for a daysail and all had a great meal in a taverna afterwards, despite the horrendous rain. It was a fun social event to have all onboard at the same time though.
After a couple of nights more it was sadly time for Paul and Tracy to go back home and time for us to plan our route out of Greece towards Monastir in Tunisia, which is to be our berth for the winter. We bade them farewell and moved the boat close to Gouvia marina so we could stock up on gas, chandlery parts for winter jobs, water and Diesel. We forgot it was a Friday afternoon and despite the late season the fuel dock was overwhelmed with charter boats refuelling before returning at the end of their holiday We counted 14 in the queue, not being in any hurry we waited until Saturday for that.
Kalami Bay
We were very excited to see that there was a Lidl close to where we had to check out, its been a long time since we shopped in a large commercial supermarket of any sort. The excitement vanished as soon as we stepped inside. Too many choices! So busy! Just the cheese counter was enough, Edam, Brie, Camembert, Gorgonzola, multiple various Greek cheeses, cows cheese, goats cheese, cheese of various consistency, grated, sliced, blocks and it went on. That small experience was enough to remind us how complicated most of Western life has become and how much we didn't miss it. The large queue to get through the till was the final confirmation!!
Finally we checked out of Greece and moved to St Stephanos bay ready to depart early in the morning for our 2 day passage to Syracusa. Leaving at dawn, we motored around the top end of Corfu until we got into the southerly breeze on the Western coast of the island. We settled into a 5-6knt broad reach in 10knts of wind. Lovely conditions for the day and first night. The wind dropped for the second day and we motored onwards towards some threatening clouds as evening came. What followed was probably the most stressful nights sailing we have done, we could see many thunderstorms ahead and watched nervously as the lightning strikes hit the sea surface. Some so strong they were orange in colour, 3 hitting the sea at the same time out of the one storm. As the line of storms approached all thoughts of a watch system (we normally do 3hrs on, 3 off) vanished as we nervously threaded our way around the storms as best we could. There wasn't much surface wind but the torms managed to travel at a speed and direction that were hard to determine in the dark. Making decisions regarding our own direction was also therefore difficult, on more than one occasion we made a 90deg turn only to correct it back the other way plus 90 deg a few minutes later. Threading our way added 4hrs and 20nm to our trip, at one point we had a lightning storm off our stern and one off each beam, all angrily lighting up the area with the aforementioned orange coloured lightning bolts. Needless to say the engine got some workout that night.
Dawn, the morning before the storms
Dusk, threatening storm clouds starting to form
Eventually we cleared the storms, calmed our nerves, got some sleep and arrived in Syracusa in bright sunlight. The thunderstorms were not far away and returned in the evening, after we had been ashore to look around this beautiful town. Sadly they also hung around the following day, with lots of rain, so we were tied to the boat and missed out on a more extensive exploration. Hopefully we will get some time before we head out tomorrow evening, we have a decent weather window coming up, with no thunderstorms!!
Syracusa old town