Thursday 12 September 2019 – Spartakhori on Meganisi

I had a disturbed night when woken in the early hours by a strong wind.  I asked R to see we were OK and he said it was only 15 knots.  But it was noisy.   Having had our night disturbed we had a bit of a lie in and didn’t leave the anchorage until 11:15. We emailed Lefkas marina to reserve a berth for two nights and telephoned their engineers to get a fridge expert in to see what is wrong with it.  That being organised we set off to Lefkas.

The weather had changed a lot.  It was cool and completely overcast.  However the barometer was rising so it didn’t seem that rain was likely although there was still the warning about thunderstorms.   There was a force 4 breeze in the right direction so we put the mainsail up before lifting the anchor and sailed for about the first 30-40 minutes before the wind dropped off and we were motoring again.  However shortly after 1pm the wind started to get up. We had a nice 15 knots on the beam and were going along beautifully.  I noticed we were heeling well and teased Richard that we might need to take in a reef.  Well  that must have been a curse because within minutes the wind got up to 20 and then 23+ knots.  We had to take two reefs in and we were still battling with the conditions at times making speed of 7 knots.  We were approaching the entrance to the Lefkas canal and the lifting bridge and we were still battling with the sails.  Somehow despite the wind reducing only a bit to 17+ knots Richard managed to get the sails down just in time to make it through the 3pm bridge lift.

Even then we had problems. There was a large French boat behind us who kept shouting at us to speed up when there were boats in front of us in our way.  He even overtook us just inside the bridge when a boat coming the other way turned and took up most of the channel!  Luckily we were able to get out of the way and made it to the marina without further incident and by which time the wind had gone down to a force 4.

So safely tucked up in the marina we had a pleasant afternoon and went into town for dinner. However eating and drinking too much at dinner and all the excitement of the day I more or less collapsed in a heap on getting back to the boat and fell into bed and straight asleep at 10pm without writing this blog.

Woke up fairly early. The engineers here asked us to ring first thing to confirm where the boat was and agree a time for the fridge engineer to come.  Got through to them at 8:30 and they said the engineer would be with us in 10 minutes!

The news was not good. The pipes taking the cooling gas from the keel cooler are badly corroded and are leaking gas.  This can’t be fixed until the boat is out of the water because it involves replacing the whole unit, which of course goes through the hull. The only thing we don’t know is how slow or fast the leak is.   He re-gassed the system and we shall see how long it lasts.  From what I can tell so far that will only be a matter of days at best. After that I will try buying bags of ice when I can and otherwise drink warm water and eat food from the store cupboard (lots of pasta it looks like).

Despite the fridge problem and trying to be optimistic we went into town to buy a few provisions. As the work on the fridge finished so early we decided not to stay a second night but to go south and use up our last free berthing night in the Marina on Sunday when we start to head back to Corfu.

With this in mind we set off just before noon.  Right away there seemed to be some wind in the right direction and as we were in no real hurry R put up the sails as we left the canal and we sailed most of the way to Meganisi Island.  For the last half hour the wind died and we took in the sails and motored the rest of the way to Spartakhori, a port highly recommended on the Cruising Association website.

One problem is that the wall is said to be shallow and you have to berth bows to.  That is a major problem for me because on the only two times we ever moored bows to I had terrible trouble getting on and off and only ventured forward once.  When we approached there was a man directing us who said that as we only draw 0.7 of a metre we could moor stern to.  We had a heck of a time mooring.  The man was shouting at us all the time and gave us a lazy line that took us right against another boat and I had to fend off as he complained I wasn’t pulling the lazy line in enough.   He also said he didn’t want us ever to come back again!   So much for the Cruising Association’s claim that people here were friendly and helpful!  But in the end we moored up fine and can walk off the back of the boat as I watch others leaping off their bows!

We went to look at the harbour.  The village is a trek up the hill and bearing in mind that it is 32C we gave that a miss. There seems to be only one taverna in this part of the harbour.  It is the one recommended by the CA.  We have an iced coffee there and book for dinner.  The so called free WIFI isn’t working.

On board we have a quiet time and shower.  Fingers crossed the water heater seems to be working properly.  Dinner is OK, but nothing to rave about.  In the middle the wind really gets up and I thought we might be in for a rough night, but it quickly died down again.  There is a beach here and if we were staying (they only let you stay for one night) we would use it.  Instead we will find an anchorage for tomorrow night.