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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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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:

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