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Anchored next to Lazareto Island at Vathy
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After the events of mid September, it is not hard to fathom why it took the King of Ithaca, Odysseus, so many years to return home. Our near brush with drama there was averted through a healthy dose of luck and some judgement, I would like to think. We were in Vathy, when we saw the low pressure system off Libya develop into Category 1 storm Cassilda (alternately named Ianos) and, as sheltered as our position seemed, we realised that if either of the weather models we were following were correct, this was not the place to be. A subliminal clue too, which I admit to missing at the time, was that the chapel on the islet, Lazareto, next to which we were anchored is named the 'Transfiguration of the Saviour'. Beware of omens, sailor! The German and European weather models diverged as to how far north the eye of the storm would travel, so deciding not to bet either way on that, we headed for the best shelter as far east as we could reach in the time we had available.
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| Messolonghi 'Channel' marker |
Despite being the place where Lord Byron died, we felt that present-day Messolonghi probably offered better succour than it did him. Getting there was bumpy though as the wind funneling out of the Gulf of Patras proved to be as unpleasant as the swell and waves. We spent a long day outrunning the sense of foreboding if not the storm itself, which was still two days away. By sunset we approached the familiar entrance to Messolonghi, northwards in its narrow channel dredged for two and a half nautical miles in amongst expansive marshlands bordered by mostly derelict fishermen’s houses on precarious looking stilts.
The channel opens up into a basin that has not suffered from any town-planning. A muddy beach to the east overlooks the industrial town quay where heavy machinery is strewn waiting for a tanker to arrive: while to the west the marina with its run down brutal architecture hardly looks like the safe haven that it purports to be. As we had a day in hand now, we anchored with 5 or 6 boats that looked like they were there for the duration. The holding is fantastic and the bottom is heavy clay that would surely hold in just about any wind. Despite this, we opted to go into the marina the next morning, the prospect of not leaving the boat for a few days to get any respite from the storm and being at constant anchor watch, swaying us.
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| Banksy's Byron Pilgrimage |
By the time we entered the marina there was already a fierce North Easterly fuelling the Medicane and mooring up was a challenge in the cross wind. I reversed in and Catherine took the mooring line to the bow after which we switched positions and I went forward to pull it in. These ropes are not called slime lines for nothing and it was a task getting it tight in the increasing wind and chop. Someone jumped on board to lend a hand and we tugged at it together. All secured we looked at each other to shake hands, but we were both covered in thick slimy mud. I introduced myself and thanked him. 'I am Dimitrious', he said, 'but my hands are full of your mud, so call me Mimis, we are friends now'.
It is not always safer to be tied up, but the Marina Sunset Cafe run by Mimis just near the pontoons provided welcome relief from the incessant howling of the storm. We secured ourselves to the pontoon with more lines than really necessary and observed the approaching eye of the storm on the weather radar from the comfort of the bar. It hovered over Cephalonia and Ithaca for hours with very high wind speeds and biblical amounts of rain causing havoc. Boats were tossed on their sides and crushed in Argostoli and in Euphemia a number ended their sailing days as they were unceremoniously planted on the town quay. The resulting four casualties were from the flooding in homes and a car buried in rubble - miraculously no one on a boat. Some of our friends suffered recoverable damage to their yachts, although they remain shaken.
 | Euphemia
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 | Fiskardo
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 | Argostoli
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At anchor in Petelas
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As we drew breath after the storm we headed back into the Ionian via Petelas, which is a little island inhabited only by goats and which provides great shelter from the prevailing winds in an eerie lunar-like setting. The silence there leaves your ears ringing and is the perfect place to escape to. In the night of our third day there, another storm came in from the north and transformed the calm into a cauldron for a few minutes. Sudden horizontal rain accompanied by high winds and lightning left us with no visibility and in an instant one is completely disorientated. Our anchor dragged a hundred meters or so and just as I re-anchored it was completely calm again. That same night in Corfu a number of people ended up with their boats on the beach in the squall measuring over 60 knots. In the long summer days you are easily lulled into forgetting the forces at play here, but in the space of a week we were provided with some stark reminders.
The next day we gingerly headed back to Vathy and anchored in just over 5 Meters, letting out much more chain than was necessary. We met up with friends for dinner at Nikos' famous restaurant and plotted the end of the season together over hearty fare and average wine.
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| Tranquil Kastos |
Some friends saw a gap in the weather big enough for the three day passage back to Sicily and promptly left the next day. According to them, they had a “lively” sea, which we were not at all sorry to have missed, our appetite for unpredictable weather being somewhat diminished.
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Late breakfast Kastos
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Mid-summer-like conditions invited us to make a brief return visit to Kastos, an island which has taken on the moniker of 'our happy place'. Turquoise water, good company and the odd Monemvasia wine filled our time. Its protection from the SE is not great though so after a few days we sailed north through the Lefkas canal to the Amvrakikos or Ambracian gulf to enjoy some time in its lagoon-like surroundings while we patiently waited for a good opportunity for our crossing to Sicily.
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| Fixer-upper opportunity |
We stopped a few miles west of Preveza at
Vonitsa, a small town of around 5,000 people, which is dominated by a Venetian fortress on the hill above that has presided over nearly a thousand years of occupation by different rulers, most notably the Ottomans and Greeks. The last of the hostilities were towards the end of the Greek war of independence when the Ottomans finally departed in 1828 leaving behind crumbling ruins in an otherwise beautifully verdant setting. Little information is available after a millennium of history and preservation is obviously not near the top of the application list for EU funding. For such a small place, it has a surfeit of good tavernas and we ate really well for very modest amounts of money. By this time the charter yacht fleets had thinned out and we mostly had familiar neighbours in the anchorage. We had a 'Braai' (South African BBQ) with Saffers we know who were just near to us and tried to avoid too much discussion about storms and weather windows. We were more or less successful in that regard and wrapped up what felt like being close to the end of the season by leaving for Preveza Marina in the morning.
 | | Remnants of the Garrison's quarters |
|  | Looking East to the Vonitsa anchorage
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| Cleopatra's Thousand Sentinels South of Preveza |
