Vasiliki, Fiskardho and Vathy

After Sivota we headed south to Vasiliki and made a complete mess of mooring stern-to.  We were going to take the anchor out in the dinghy (which I had just repaired) to fix it but a nice guy on the quay suggested I give it another go with the boat and he'd lend a hand.  Securely moored, we wondered into town to get some spare fuel as I was not sure if the fuel gauge was broken or we just hadn't yet made a dent in the fuel that was already in the tank.  We had the whole afternoon ahead so we hired a beaten up little Citroen and went in search of the fabled Katsiki Beach:

The nice guy on the quay turned out to be Ken, who with his wife Sue were sailing their yacht for a couple of weeks and had quite a bit of experience.  They were heading the same way as us and the next day offered to sail with us across from Lefkada to Kefalonia.  This turned out to be an awesome downwind sail (a first for us) averaging about 6 knots. 

We arrived in Fiskardho and Ken came to the rescue as we anchored and tried to take long lines ashore in the dinghy.  Our line was too short and I was trying in vain to pull Bumblebee into the wind with just the oars while it was clear I could neither move the boat nor reach the shore.  Ken attached his dinghy to ours and together we rowed like crazy and eventually reached his line and tied up safely.  After this slightly stressful situation we made sure Bumblebee was safely moored and dived into the gin clear water for our first chilly swim.

Ken and Sue kindly invited us over to their boat for a few drinks and a debriefing then we took the dinghy to explore the area then headed to the quayside to find a taverna for supper. 

This morning we set off for Vathy, the capital of Ithaka.  The wind was forecast to be light so we set out with confidence but were soon met by strong gusts.  At one point we paused to reef the sails.  We were heading into the wind to make the change but lost speed without realising.  In an instant the wind caught the sails and pulled us suddenly round sideways on to the wind with an alarming lean.  No harm was done but our nerves needed a bit of gentle motoring to recover.  At this point I noticed our wind measurements were being displayed in metres per seconds instead of knots meaning every reading since the beginning was only half of the truth!  The storm on Julia's second night had been 50 knots not 25 and we were currently sailing in 25!!
The wind died down in the afternoon and we moored stern-to in Vathy where we plan to spend the next 24 hours as there is lots to see here and there's a bit of a blow forecast: