Lefkada, Nidri and Sivota

After the storm we spent a couple of days in the shelter of Preveza Marina then headed over to say fairwell to Dirk and Anneke over at the boat yard.  We were drinking coffee onboard Narid when we told them our plan to hire an instructor that afternoon for 85 Euros, Dirk spat out his coffee, told us we were mad, then offered to take us out for a lesson for free!

We spent an awesome afternoon sailing around different points of the wind getting to grips with tacking and gybing.  We then returned to the yard and tried several times to moor stern to but struggled to get the anchor to hold as the wind blew us around.  Eventually we dropped the anchor a little further out and returned them to the shore by dinghy.  Our GPS track was a complete mess!

After dropping off Dirk and Anneke we plucked up the courage to head out to sea and made our way to Lefkada.  The waves were large and sideways-on which made the passage a bit sketchy.  After an hour or so we arrived at the entrance to lefkada canal where we waited for the bridge to open with another yacht, then we made our way down to the town quay.  After our first successful stern-to mooring we were invited for drinks on the big catamaran next to us by the owners Steve and D.  Here we met Barrie who owns SailingHolidays.com and their fleet of 160 yachts.  He’s a notorious character around here and has pretty much been running the place since the 80’s.  Little did we know we were to keep bumping into him at every port for the next four days!

​Lefkada is a very interesting town with a history of destructive earthquakes.  As a result most of the building are made from corrugated steel from the first floor up.  From Lefkada we headed to Nidri but not without snagging someone else’s anchor chain on the way out.  We were off to meet up with some great family friends Mike and Sue S-T at their beautiful hillside house that they built from scratch.  We had a couple of Ouzo’s in town then they took us up the hill for supper and breathtaking views.

​The next morning was Julia’s birthday and we set off early to hike up to a famous waterfall.  Then after ice coffees we headed back to the boat, released the lines and headed out of Nidri.  For the first time it was just the two of us and perfect sailing conditions.  We started with the sails reefed right down but before long we had full sails up and were tacking happily into a south westerly breeze.  I put my little spinning rod together and began trolling a lure at a steady 5 knots.  Almost straight away a speed boat passed out stern, caught my lure and ripped three hundred yards of braid straight off the reel (I’m heading out this morning to but some proper fishing kit).

​Later in the afternoon the wind died down and we were forced to motor as we made our way to the little village of Sivota, where it is now Monday morning, I am sat writing this and Julia has gone for a hike to the top of the hill.