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