Fiskardo to Preveza, via Meganissi

We entered the quiet and beautiful port of Fiscardo early afternoon to find a sleepy, end of season town. We dropped anchor and settled comfortably near the famous Tassia restaurant, where Clinton and even Shimon Peres had dinner. It was a quit evening and we were happy with our central location. On the first bay (of two) on the entrance to Fiscardo we spotted a cave that needed exploring. We took the kayak and rowed over there. The innocent opening hid a net of tunnels that was interconnected and we dared not walk in more than 150 meters into this grave-darkness with our flashlight. Background information on that cave needs to be retrieved...
We had a great Friday night dinner with kiddush, freshly-Roy-baked Challa and all. We had coffee at the caffee opposite the boat and set to go to sleep when the eastern wind started to rise. we took a hike and by the time we were back, it was a real wind and we took the boat a couple of meters away from the quay.
All the ship owners and crews were now on board looking at the wind and neighboring boats. It was towards midnight that boats started to drift to the quay. Some just putting fenders between stern and quay, others shortening anchor or going out to drop it again. The wind was now 15 knots with gusts of 25 knots. boats were moving around and the slippery bottom of the bay made a few boats go out to reposition. Some were next to us, leaving us awake in the freezing wind till 3 am.... then, when got to bed, another boat came, with a Spanish crew that kept us awake for another half an hour...
On the next morning, still windy, we set sails through the canal between Ithaca and Cephalonia, towards the next island - Meganissi.
Meganissi is an island with lots of small bays. It also has beautiful cliffs spotted with caves. We sent a search team to the caves and meanwhile hoisted full sails for the search team to take photos of... We then went past the marina of Spartachori and then past that of Vathi, into a magical small bay, exactly the size of Princess Nayeli.
We dropped anchor and tied ourselves to the old olive tree on shore. There we spent a few moments relaxing on the chair a fisherman left. After a quiet night we spent the day in that bay, running, fishing, swimming, kayaking and relaxing.
Around noon we had some fresh baked pitta bread for breakfast and headed to our last stop - Preveza. On the way we crossed the canal of Lefkas - crossing the swamp area and eventually the bridge that opens every round hour, turning Levkas from a part of the land into an island.
We sailed through another canal into the sea of amvrakikos. We tied long side to the pier in Preveza, opposite cafe Restia, near the hose and started washing the boat, dinghy, kayak etc.
The next day was rainy and windy - a true winter day to finish the campari (second bottle) and get ready to leave.

Dan Goldstaub


As usual, the photo album of this post can be found at:

princess_nayeli_2010_10_zakinthos_to_preveza

Argostoli to Sami

We found Argostoli to be a nice city with real local life besides tourism. A lot of small local shops and many nice people, a lot of them don't really speak English.
We sailed out of Argostoli in a variable wind for 0-15 kts from all directions. At some point the wind stabilized for maybe an hour where we could sail nicely, till we saw the white caps coming against us from the East. We dropped all the sails and wait a couple of minutes till it got to us. It started with about 25kts but dropped relatively quickly to around 17 kts. After getting close to the south cape of Kefalonia we've put up some sails (about 1/2 capacity) and went nicely, close hauled past the cape. We could then continue with full sails, side wind doing up to 10.5 kts speed with Oren at the helm!
We entered the small harbor of Poros a little after the cape but it wasn't deep enough near the quay for us so we left and sailed to Sami. We entered at night into the port. Entry and anchoring was very easy, though at night, to this port we know so well.

Unfortunately, no fish today...

I added today's pictures to the trip's album:

princess_nayeli_2010_10_zakinthos_to_preveza

Zakinthos and Argostoli

Today, on our first sailing day, we covered almost every aspect of a successful cruise.
We tested the new kayak for the first time, this was great fun.
We had a lovely swim in the blue caves and even found one cave that was really blue.
Then we caught a fish. The biggest Sparos I've ever seen.
Getting closer to Argostoli, we had a heavy rain with a squall of 30 kts on our head.
Then we entered the port of Argostoli and guess who took our mooring lines? Rod Heikell and his wife Lu. We spent a lovely evening on Princess Nayeli with them while it was pouring with thunderstorms outside.

Today's pictures:

princess_nayeli_2010_10_zakinthos_to_greece

Zakinthos with the Steinbergs

Zakinthos island was our finale, and what a finale it was.
This island is really beautiful. The Steinbergs rejoined us after taking a day off on a tour to Olympia while we sailed to Keri bay on the South tip of Zakinthos.
Then we motored to one of the most famous beaches in Greece - Wreck Bay. Most of the pictures attached to this post are from this super special bay. It surpasses in beauty the thousands of pictures that were taken there (including ours...). The huge cliffs, the florescent light blue water, the white sand, and the sunken ship also adds to it.
Passing through the blue caves we stopped for the night at Agios Nikolaos. There's a very nice family with their son, Dimitri, that runs a restaurant, a gas station, supplies water and electricity and in day time doing cruises to the blue caves. We had a few slices of the 35kg tuna fish he caught that day. The only problem was that East wind started and some swell made its way into this natural bay and we were pitching heavily all night... Other than that it's a great place to stay. The following day, after not being able to really visit the caves due to the East wind, we went back to Agios Nikolaos and then while searching for a swimming spot behind the island we found a charming little beach where we could anchor no more than 30m from the beach with very calm, crystal clear water. When you swim back from the boat, you'd see her rudder dozens of meters away. This was an amazing, unexpected last swim for the family in Greece.
Then, going back to Zakinthos town, our last leg with the family, we had a chance to put on the spinnaker and sail quietly and nicely into the sunset over Zakinthos. This is what I call a finale!

Yael, Noga and Yasmin, and the Steinbergs flew back home, left me here waiting for the crew to join me tomorrow. We're going to sail Princess Nayeli back to Preveza to be wintered.

And some great pictures of Zakinthos:

princess_nayeli_2010_09_zakinthos

Arrived to Zakinthos!!!

We're there!

We had a great sailing day from Katakolon to Zakinthos. We tacked all the way against the wind that luckily was not so strong and we're now anchored in Keri bay, on the West side of the huge Lagana bay, on the south side of Zakinthos.

We almost caught another fish on the way. We brought him all the way to the stern and then when we tried to get him into the net, he managed to escape! The 2nd one this week.

Strofadhes Islands

After spending a bit of a stormy and bumpy night in Pilos we woke up to a calm morning with just a few rain drops here and there.

We left Pilos and motored the 35 miles to Strofadhes islands in no wind.

The two islands lie about 30 miles away from any land. They are tiny islands, the larger one (Stamfani) is about a mile long.

We anchored at the South bay of the Northern island (Arpia). On one side we had Arpia and on the other the view of the monostry on Stamfani, about a mile away. This monostrey was built in the 13th century by a Byzantine ceasar because his daughter found shelter on this island after abandoning a sinking ship.

What was supposed to be a deserted place, turned out to be sort of a home to somebody.

We found some sort of a small hut at the bay on the other side of the island, a small power boat tied to a rock there, and lots of hunting gun cartridges. They say that this place used to be full of rabbits...

Later on, we found the guy who lives here: We saw him working around some ruins of a old house, later on he was in our bay doing underwater fishing, and at night he was going around us with his small power boat in total darkness within the hundreds of rocks that are spread all around here.

We also had an interesting incident: We all went to check the anchor while swimming above it. First Yasmin, then myself and eventually Shay.

We saw that the anchor chain was tied around a big rock. We knew it won't be easy to pick it up. We were also looking at repositioning the boat in the tiny bay.

While swimming in the crystal clear water of the bay, we found a nice mooring line in the middle of the bay. So we decided to struggle with the anchor in the evening and move to the mooring line.

The manouvre was not easy at all. Shay was in the water, telling us where to steer the boat so the chain would go off the rock. After a few attempts we managed to untie the chain from the rock and pick up the anchor.

The sunset in the bay was breathtaking. The sun was already behind the island and was painting the sky and water in deep red orange colors, as if the sky is on fire!

The night was a bit bumpy with 20kts winds and some waves in the bay. We also had some background noises of some animal that we couldn't recognize.

Today, we woke up to a 4 beaufort sea, and sailed close hauled all the way to Katakolon. Our Grand Soleil loves those winds and we were running more than 9 kts with reefed sails all the way to Katakolon.

Tomorrow Shay is going to Olympia and we are sailing to Zakinthos from where Yael, Noga and Yasmin will be flying back home.

Pictures from Koroni to Strofadhes:

princess_nayeli_2010_09_koroni_to_strofadhes

In Pilos again

Hi,

We're back to Pilos. After a long round of the fingers of the Peloponnese, we've started our journey NW towards Zakinthos.
In short, we left Kalamata on Thursday the 23rd, spent a night in the bay of Limeni, and then the following morning visited the beautiful caves of Diros. Those are really exceptional stalactite caves. They took the 8 of us on a small boat through a path of 1500m with fresh water under the boat and natural tunnels just over our heads. You can see some of it in the pictures.
After Diros, we did a long sail to Githio which is a town at the North end of the huge Lakonikos bay.
From Githio, we were able to take a couple of taxis and go to Monemvassia. This is the place Yael wanted to visit for several years. Since we didn't make it with the boat, this time, we found a way to get there by land. Anyway, it was so nice there that we promised ourselves that we'll get there with the boat one day.
Weather is pretty warm, but was raining hard for a couple of nights.

From Githio, we sailed down to a very special bay called Porto Kaiyo.
You can sit on the beach, surrounded by high cliffs with scattered fortresses that used to belong to pirates.

A long leg to Korini, and then another 23 miles in a rainy day and we're in Pilos.

We're planning to spend the night in the bay here and leave tomorrow morning to Stefani islands, half way to Zakinthos.

We were also much more lucky with the fish. We caught about a fish a day on the days that we did try to fish. You can imagine how good the sushi was...

As usual, you can see some pictures at:

princess_nayeli_2010_09_peloponnese

Porto Limeni

Today, we sailed for the first time. We left Kalamata marina in no wind and as we went, the wind picked up at our back up to about 17 kts. Lovely sail in a winter like atmosphere with cloudy sky and a dark blue sea. When we got close to our destination at Porto Limeni, a heavy rain started for maybe 10 minutes. We got soaked, but 10 minutes later it all went away.

We' re now on anchor in Porto Limeni.

Kalamata and the transit log

We arrived at Kalamata marina on Monday at 4pm after a long travel that started at 6am in Ben Gurion Airport. We were lucky with all the buses so we made it all the way down to Kalamata pretty fast. After all, this is like the end of the world here. It's so far from everything.

Anyway, I had an interesting experience with the Greek customs that I wanted to share with everyone who sails in Greece.

Since we entered Greece on March 22nd (In KastelloRizo) , our transit log expired today, September 21st. It was valid for 6 months. A transit log is like a tourist visa for boats.

So I went to the customs here in Kalamata to extend the transit log (I was told back then in Kastellorizo that it shouldn't be a problem), and found out that I can only extend it by 15 days. I wasn't planning to leave Greece in 15 days!

Fortunately, I met there a very nice and helpful guy named Mr. Stavrianakos. First he said that he can only extend my stay in Greece in 15 days. I told him that I need to get to Preveza and it would take me more than 15 days. He checked all the regulations again and said that he can't find any way around it. As he started the paperwork I tried a different approach: I asked him if the fact that the boat was locked in the marina for over a month while I was at home, helps me get a longer extension. He said: "That's interesting. If you can get me a letter from the marina that you left the boat for a month, I can give you an extension of another month".

So I went back to the marina office, and then again to the customs office with the letter (I'm lucky to have bicycle on board), and after a long journey through paperwork, payment at the cashier, etc. I got the extension.

I tried to understand how this works so here is what he explained to me:

As a foreign boat, you're allowed to stay in Greece for only 6 months. Then you have to leave the country for 6 months, at least, and then you can come back for another period of 6 months, and so on.

Then, if you leave the boat for a long period of time, you can either surrender your transit log at the customs office or just come back with a letter from the marina that shows that the boat was left locked in the marina, and the that time off won't count against the 6 months. So actually the 6 months is the net sailing time that you have in Greece.

In practice, the bureaucracy is so heavy that I don't know if it's practical to go through it every time you leave the boat and go.

There is still the question of the reciprocal tax that I need to pay every 3 months. I still don't understand how it works and feel like I'm the only boat owner paying it. Once I understand how it works, I'll share it in this blog.

Eyal

Ionian Islands, Again

Hi All,

I didn't get a chance to write anything in the blog yet. We've been sailing the North Ionian see since July 7th first with my Brother's family (Dror, Gila and Nadav) and then with Roy and his kids Naomi and Yoav. I need to find the time to write about the past 3 weeks (or hopefully one of them will...)

In the meantime, you can see some of our pictures on:

princessnayeli_2010_ionian

Passover trip from Kos to Galaxidi

We took a two week vacation and had a family trip on Princess Nayeli from Kos to Galaxidi. A total of 290 NM.
The weather forecast was quiet good. There was a SW storm that was supposed to end on Thursday (a day after we landed in Kos), and from then on, nothing much.
It turned out that the weather is more difficult to predict this time of the year.

Kos for itself, turned out to be an interesting place with a lovely old port, an a lot of archeology from the days of Hippocrates.

So, sitting on the boat in Kos and reading some tour guides, we understood that the best place to see a Pascha celebration is in Patmos, an Island just North of us. So we decided to change plans and go North first. This turned out to be a great decision as we went up in a stong SE wind (23kts) and by that we gained enough upwind milage to start going West against the NW wind.

We stayed in Patmos for 3 days. Unfortunately, we had to see the midnight celebrations from the boat. Noga and Yasmin were too tired to make it till midnight in town. Anyway, the fireworks show was perfect to be seen from the boat.
The one thing that was annoying, is the earsplitting explosives.
One anecdote from Patmos: Going down from the monastery to town, we took a taxi. Once he realised we're from Israel, he put on a disk of Noa (Ahinoam Nini). It turned out that his wife, who's German, works for an organization in Athens that preserves Jewish heritage. He drove us through his house to meet his wife and kids. Such a thing could not have happened in the summer!
After Pascha, we stayed another day due to bad weather. Yes! The Meltem wind already started blowing (only force 5 at this time, but we didn't want to do a whole day's sail in 20+ knots of winds).

Next stop was supposed to be Mikonos. Or actually, Delos. We started sailing at around 8am, and quickly we found out that the wind is coming from Mikonos and it wouldn't be easy to get there before dark. The wind directed us to Maxos, so there we went.
In Naxos, the first time in Greece, while we were in a restaurant, celebrating the end of Passover, someone opened our gangway, walked on the deck all the way to our bedroom window, opened it (it wans't locked), and fortunately, something scared him off and he left before making it into the boat! We were lucky this time.

So the next morning, we left Naxos and headed to Delos. It was all nice and quiet before we got there and we were planning to go into the small harbor and visit ancient Delos. Once we approached Delos, the wind started to blow hard. According to the pilot, Delos, which is very small, gets dangerous with the strong North wind. So being prudent, we changed course and entered the adjacent port of Mikonos.

Yael, being in Mikons for the first time, loved the place. The city is beautiful and very well maintained. It's mostly shops and restaurants, but all in good taste. And the best part is that it was all just for us as there were very little tourists.
It also gave us the opportunity to visit old Delos the next day. We just took a tour boat (that fought the wind and waves for 45 minutes to cross the channel to Delos), and a wonderful English speaking guide. It was very interesting.
We could also see with our own eyes how small the bay in Delos is, and that there's no way for our 45' boat to get in there next to the tour boats. The only way is to anchor out and take a dinghy to the entrance. I think the pictures show it quiet well.

After checking the forecast carefully, we realised that the Meltem wind (North wind) is gathering strength towards the weekend, and the more West we go, the lighter the wind is and is coming more from the East which is good for us.

So we started to run fast. We left Mikonos at 4:30PM and put up some sails to let us run in 8+ knots to Ermoupolis, Siros. In Ermoupolis, we have our dear friend Charles, that waited for us in the port and helped us moor the boat.
The following day, again we waited for the afternoon hoping that the wind would go down (which never happened), to leave to Loutra, Kithnos. This time, we had a side wind, 20-23kts, and had a beautiful sail going there. Noga, at this point, got so used to sailing that she kept singing and laughing all the way. Yasmin just went to sleep and woke up when we got there.

Charles told us to make sure we go to the hot bath in Loutra. When we were there, with our coats, hats and gloves, we didn't think it would be possible to take off our clothes and go into a hot bath which is in the sea (it's a mixture of a hot spring and cold sea water). After asking a few people who returned from it, and absolutely recommened it, we decided to go.
I must tell you, this was the best experience we had all this trip. The water was so good that we could have stayed there forever. It's hard to describe the feeling of sitting in a hot natural bath, in a lovely bay, surrounded by sea water and stones, with cold wind blowing in your nose. It was divine! For all of us!

Next stop was Epidavros. Again, we originally planned to stop at Poros, but Epidavros was new to us so we decided to go there and visit the ancient theater of Epidavros. The theater is very impressive. The view, its size, the phenomenal acoustics, the way it was preserved, etc.

And now - the Corinth canal.
We've been here same time last year, but it's always exciting to go through the canal (maybe because it costs 220 Euros...). Anyway, past the canal, we tried to go into Corinth marina for the night. It's only 2 miles away from the canal and looks promising according to Rod Heikel.
So going in there was a nightmare! The whole marina including the approach is very shallow. Some rocks are maked as 1.9m (while we are 2.3m deep).
So with the West wind blowing, and shallow water, we could not find a place to tie our boat, so after spending maybe an hour there, we decided to go to the commercial port. It was a little more bumpy, but we had 8m depth, and after 9pm, the whole port for ourselves!!!

So, Galaxidi, here we come.
Another 35nm, (first time on engine), we were anchored in Galaxidi.
We know the place well, after spending Pascha there last year. We also know someone there that could keep an eye on our boat. When we got in, there was only one other yacht there (you can see it in the pictures). It belong to a British family that is going around the Mediterranean and will hopefully come to Israel soon on their boat.
We had 1.5 days left, to prepare the boat for her stay in Galaxidi. Noga and Yasmin were very helpul this time. They even helped me fold the huge jib!

Eventually, we took the 3 hour bus to Athens....

We have a lot of pictures this time. Many of them were taken by Noga and Yasmin:

PrincessNayeli201003_kostogalaxidi

Sailing from Herzliya to Kos

Passover is coming and it’s time to start the sailing season. We’re planning to start sailing with the family right after Leil Haseder so we wanted to get the boat to Greece. Kos Island, this time.
We had a big debate over the decision when we should start our journey. We were planned to leave on Thursday the 18th, early in the morning but there was bad weather (2-5m waves) expected on Thursday so we kept checking the weather and debating which is the right forecast (as we had a few different ones) and what we should do.
Eventually we decided to leave on Wednesday night, to Haifa, get there in the morning and then make the decision if to keep going or wait for the weather to pass.
The night sail to Haifa was interesting. We had a 15-30kts wind that varied from SW to NW, accompanied by some rain and some thunderstorms. After having the mainsail with one reef and the jib furled as much as possible we had to reef even more. Since Danny was the only crew that was healthy and awake, and since this was his first night on the boat, we decided to just drop the mainsail and not mess up with going forward on deck to prepare the 2nd reef.
With a tiny jib alone we kept doing 7.5kts. The boat went steady, and Danny and I who spent this shift together enjoyed it very much. We were both very tired after a long day of preparations but we were excited.
Before entering Haifa, we called RCC Haifa (Haifa Radio) to ask where we need to moor for immigration and as a response he said: “I don’t think you should leave to Cyprus today, there is a storm with 2-5m waves expected.” He then called all ships and finishing boats to announce the coming storm more explicitly…
So we entered Haifa in the morning as planned and after long debates we decided that the storm is not as bad as it seems and is mainly on the southern part of the Mediterranean and we’re sailing on.

We left Haifa around 2pm. Weather was nice and the crew sent me to sleep.
After about an hour of nice sailing (and a good sleep I had), I woke up to the sound of the jib flapping fiercely. I went out to see that we were caught under a cloud in a 35kts wind, the sea is white and Roy, Oren and Danny fighting with the jib trying to furl it. Fortunately the main sail was already reefed to the 2nd reefing point. By the time the jib was furled, about 3m of the leech line were torn so we couldn’t use the jib any longer. After some debate and failed attempts to call a sail repair guy in Israel, we decided to move on with the storm jib or engine and keep going to Cyprus. If we went back to Haifa, we would have missed our flight back from Kos.
We spent the night motoring against the sea. Roy had some fever and the whole crew was sick (either really sick or just sea sick), but still functioning. Danny even cooked rice for us!
I had about 3 hours of sleep in 48 hours, but wasn’t tired at all till we got to Cyprus.
In the morning, about 40 miles away from Limassol, the wind shifted a little and we put the storm jib on. The boat sailed beautifully with the mainsail and storm jib (as you can see in the pictures).

Entering St. Raphael marina in Limassol (Cyprus) was not easy either. With a 25kts wind blowing, it took us maybe 5 attempts to be able to moor the boat on the extremely crowded marina. I wasn’t here for 11 years, and now the Marina looked so small and crowded. There is not enough room to even turn the boat around.
Anyway, we were happy to find a very nice sail repair guy who took our sail in the evening and returned it as good as new the next day at 7am.

We left Limassol at 10am heading towards Kastelorizo ( Meyistri) in Greece. We had a good close hauled sailing till 4pm when the wind changed instantly to 25kts straight on our nose. We tried to motor against it and made little progress so just before darkness we were able to find shelter in the rocky port of Pafos and with much less fuel in our tank. At least we could have a good rest and a good fish dinner in a local restaurant.

Next day started at 5am with a quiet motoring in a calm sea towards Kastelorizo. We had about 24 hours ahead of us.
The main attraction was a nice dolphin show we had on the way. If you take a close look at the pictures you’d see that one of the Dolphins has a sucker fish (Remora) hanging on its right side. It’s still a debate (with the experts from the Dolphin Reef involved) if it’s a Remora or a baby Dolphin. In any case, the show was thrilling.
The night was much quieter that the previous ones, still motoring against some wind and sea. The weather was still very cold. I had 5 layers on, including a winter coat and a storm suite to warm myself up in the nights.

We entered Greece through the island of Kastellorizo early in the morning. The sleepy island has only 150 inhabitants, most of them are over 80 years old. But it’s still a nice place to visit. We skipped the blue cave this time. It was too cold to even think about swimming, and we still had a long way to go.

So, once we finished the entry procedures (immigration, customs and port police), we went on to Rhodes. The wind was on our nose again and we started tacking. We had little fuel left, so we tried to sail as much as possible. The boat sailed nicely, making about 3.5kts towards our destination, with the beautiful scenery of the Turkish mountains covered with some snow.
At 6pm, Roy encouraged us to furl the sails and start the engine. We don’t want to get into Rhodes at 2am, he said rightfully.
So, motoring against wind that’s increasing as you get closer to the Rhodes channel, we finally reached the entrance to the port of Rhodes at 11pm.
It was amazing to see the usually crowded port with tons of boats, empty. Only some wintering charter boats and a lot of room for us…
In general, the Greek islands we visited were still sleepy, preparing for the summer with almost no tourists. The Greeks were all extremely nice to us and always very helpful.

From there on, the sea was calm, almost no wind till the last leg from Simi to Kos where we could use some Spinnaker and could even try some combinations of jib + spinnaker or main + spinnaker. Eventually the best combination was to have just the spinnaker on.

On Wednesday afternoon, we made it to Kos!!!

Thanks to the great crew. Row, our frequent sailor, who hasn’t missed a single cruise, was key to our successful trip specially even though he had fever most of the time, and of course he was a great cook as usual. Oren was always ready to help and was with high spirit all the time (well, he did use some help of beer, cherry brandy and limoncello). He allowed everyone to sleep well as he was taking long night shifts.
Danny, who was the least experienced of all, was strong and positive all along, and was a very helpful crew and a great mate for the night shifts.

Click the link below to see all cruise pictures:

Princess_nayeli_2010_03_Herzliya_kos