CRUISING IN THE IONIAN SEA

Envoy is now cruising around Zakynthos Island with our daughter Amy aboard.

Before Frank and Marie left us we saw this stunning Maltese cruise ship

When we started our water maker for the first time this season it ran fine but the second time it had some problems. The salinity was high, the fresh water produced seemed warmer than usual and the pump rpm varied by about plus or minus 5 bar. I don't know what it is about water makers but lots of cruisers seem to have issues with them. While in Mandraki Marina technician Angelos made a few checks and cleaned the intake water seacock but it made little difference. We met him a few days later and he installed a new high pressure membrane. This also made no improvement so he removed the main pump to check in his workshop. We're awaiting the result of this and meanwhile having no problems finding plenty of free fresh water from the shore.

Angelos installing a new high pressure membrane

The water maker's main pump

After Frank and Marie departed at Mandraki we cruised down to Igoumenitsa Creek for a couple of nights and met up with our friends Bruce and Lesley aboard their catamaran, Midi. Also aboard were their friends Nick and Robyn who know other friends of ours from home – Christine Eden and Karl Koller. A small world as they say.

Igoumenitsa Creek is a great protected anchorage

Washing day aboard Midi

Bruce and Lesley had wintered Midi at Turkey's Albatross Marina near normally busy Marmaris and they confirmed what we'd heard - that it's all very quiet there now as cruisers and charter operators have left in droves. This is due to a combination of recent terrorist activities, a perception of political change and instability and negative changes to cruising regulations. We've had wonderful times cruising in Turkey and it's very sad to hear that conditions are now less favourable.

Spending a night anchored off Mourtos was not so enjoyable usual because of large numbers of local tripper boats traveling at high speed close-by and putting up large wakes. Home in NZ you're not allowed to exceed 5 knots within 200 metres of the shore or within 50 metres of a swimmer or another vessel, but no such regulations seem to exist here and we saw tripper boats at high speed within a few metres of people in kayaks and small dinghys.
Lots of people do bow riding here - a practice which is illegal in New Zealand due to horrific injuries and deaths when people fall in and the propeller hits them

Highly dangerous bow riding

Amy joined us on 1 August in Corfu for a six week stay. She has now finished living in London and will move back to Auckland later this year.

We normally swim at least three times daily in the beautiful 26 to 28dC water but our “swim” normally consists of a leisurely paddle around the boat. Amy had an excellent idea that she and I start some long distance swimming and this has been great with us now achieving swims of several hundred metres.

We headed south with Amy calling at favorite places like Petriti, Mourtos, Gaios, Loggos and Parga and spending the days strolling ashore, swimming and cruising the short distances. 

Beautiful garden bar at Petriti

They sell a selection of hand painted olive oil jars for just five Euros each

Below the bar is this awesome swimming cove

Most everywhere has been light winds and seas so calm that we didn't use our stabilisers for days. But that changed when we cruised 32 miles in five hours from Parga to Preveza. We had winds over 25 knots and breaking, closely spaced two to three metre seas on our starboard beam. The stabilisers had trouble coping with these waves and several times we had to “tack” to take the seas at more of an angle to the beam. At times the autopilot also had trouble coping with the vicious movements and I had to steer by hand for a few short periods. Normally Envoy is so stable that it would be rare to spill a coffee – but on this trip the cups sure were sliding!

Close-by to Preveza we found a bay called Panayaia that we'd never visited previously. It's well sheltered with a nice uncrowded beach and a rustic beach bar playing a good selection of music from blues to jazz to reggae. It's owned by friendly 30 year old Manioti born in Melbourne to Greek parents who came back to live in Greece and we enjoyed meeting him for a chat over a few cold beers.

Manioti's beach bar

Envoy at anchor viewed from bar

Manioti with Amy and Laurie

Laurie and Amy enjoy a cold beer

From there we headed through the canal that makes Lefkas an island and into the marina to get a temporary Plexiglas window fitted as so far we've not been able to locate a supplier for a new Triplex glass one. While maneuvering into the marina we jammed the tail end of our RHIB's painter in the bow thruster's propeller and couldn't use it, making for an interesting time berthing in the confined marina spaces. Next day a diver tried unsuccessfully to free the painter so we had to lift Envoy out of the water and were then able to free it quite quickly. Unfortunately the bow thruster's sudden stop caused some damage to the 24V motor so it's been removed and is currently ashore getting repaired while we carried on. We've since heard that it's successfully fixed.

Rope jammed behind bow thruster propeller