Moonshine - Part I

No, I haven't got a new job running illicit alcohol. She's my Uncle Ron's yacht and we've just had a week visiting her in the Ionian along with my mother, my sister and her two kids. She's bloody lovely - a Bavaria 44, teak decks, twin helms, cockpit table, three cocktail cabinets, all the gear you might want (except an auto-helm and radar...); handles well under engine or sails, a little reluctant to reverse.

Getting There...

Wasn't easy. If you were planning to close a major motorway at a certain junction on a certain day, you'd probably post signs and notices well ahead of time and well ahead of the junction that's closed, wouldn't you? Well the Germans didn't. Junction 51 of the A5 was closed at noon on Saturday 18th September for 36 hours. The first to tell you this was after junction 52, which meant you didn't have a chance to change your route (the French A35 is just the other side of the Rhine and pretty much runs parallel) until it was too late! It took us four hours to go five kilometres which meant we missed our direct flight from Stuttgart to Preveza. Disheartened, we headed home to Basel whilst the UK-based contingent tried to come up with an alternative.

Getting There Part II

Leaving ourselves an extra four hours to get to the airport and having planned an alternative route up the A35 in France, we set off for a two-legger: Stuttgart to Thessaloniki on the mainland, transfer to a little internal flight back west to Corfu. Then maybe a ferry down to Preveza if we could or maybe the UK contingent would sail up to meet us. To be honest, I wasn't hopeful. Firstly that we'd get on the first flight but once we'd managed that I was pretty convinced that our bags would get lost in transit. As it turns out, it all went smoothly and we got ourselves checked into the Hotel Hermes with our bags in Corfu Town by about 1700 on the Sunday, having had about an hours sleep. But we were there, which is the main thing. Now we just had to figure out how to meet up with the rest of the crew...

Corfu Town

It's got a lot of history, has Corfu Town. When I've been there previously, it's been late arrival and then early away. So having a whole day or so to explore so was quite nice. Lots of little narrow streets with all kinds of little shops and quirks. They actually have a cricket club. We had dinner in a charming little place which I could probably never find again if I tried, the Taverna Pergola which I believe to be on Agias Sofias but you can never be sure... After dinner, bed, rest and looking forward to the next phase of the journey, meeting up with Moonshine.

Meeting Moonshine

Reports from the crew [as a little aside, this trip would have been completely impossible without the magic of cellular communications] were varied through the morning - weather leaving Preveza not great. Claire and I were poised to do one of three things: stay in Corfu Town; taxi to Kavos; or ferry to Parga or Gaios. Of the three, my favourite was to stay in Corfu although jumping on a ferry would've been exciting. In the end the weather cleared and Moonshine was heading to Kavos. So a taxi it was. After some negotiations with the driver (basically us refusing to pay more than 60 euros; I was happy to get on a bus for a tenth of the price) away we went. It turns out Kavos port isn't actually at Kavos, but at Levkimmi, about 3km up the coast so I'm glad we managed to communicate our needs. Amazingly, our cab pulled up at the dock just as Moonshine rounded the harbour mole. And then she promptly ran aground on an uncharted little sandbar probably thrown up by the tripper boats. I don't think I'm supposed to tell you about that. Ron got her off and we got tied up, got the bags aboard and decided that it wasn't very nice there so we should run up to Petriti, about an hour up the coast.

Sadly, it wasn't so easy. The wind was pushing us against the quay so I had the idea of pushing the bow off with the tender. Which needed inflating first. We hit the sandbar again. Tried again. Hit the sandbar again. Decided to wait til morning when hopefully the wind would be blowing the other way. Had a visit from the harbour master who told us we had to move because a boat was coming in there. Told him we'd tried and couldn't. He told us we had to. We told him we'd tried and couldn't. He told us we had to. The conversation went back and forth. I'm pretty sure he understood what we were saying, just didn't care and didn't want to help get us off. I suggested one last go, pushing the stern out with the tender instead, to show the git that we were stuck. We got off with no problems! Off to Petriti we went. Nice family meal in a taverna with no electricity.

Kassiopi

Our next port of call was Kassiopi, right at the north of the island. My sister was especially keen to go there as a friend she's known since she was five has settled there and runs a restaurant with her husband. We went via Corfu Town again, as Ron wanted to see what the marinas there are like - there are four or five of them; and then up to Gouvia Marina (the largest in Greece? Or is it the Med? It's HUGE!) as we'd be able to get diesel and water there. The queue for the fuel quay was five or six vessels so we decided to skip it and go in on the way back. It turns out that the reason for the long queue is it's about the only place in the Ionian that actually had any fuel - there was yet another strike on.

Into Kassiopi in a very seamanlike fashion and my sister was straight off to find Gaynor. Provisioning, chilling, maybe a couple of beers, hoisting Claire's Welsh flag and my Spurs flag and generally finally relaxing. It had been a somewhat stressful few days. Dinner aboard of a very nice rigatoni bolognese, the kids (6 and 9) volunteered to wash up but I got fed up of waiting for them as I wanted to get ashore and find a pub that had the Carling Cup game on. Wish I hadn't bothered now, of course!

Oil!

The plan for the next day was to head down to Mourtos / Sivota on the mainland. I call it Mourtos / Sivota because, whilst the Pilot book calls it Mourtos with an island off it called Sivota, the Imray chart seems to call it Sivota with an island called Mourtos. Anyway, we didn't go because Ron checked the dipstick in the engine and it was reading as empty. I looked in the bilge under the sump and there were two inches of oil in it. We were quite pleased that we had local knowledge handy in the shape of my sister's friend and her family. We were convinced it was a gasket, which would have been disastrous in terms of getting back to Preveza in time to fly home. The plan that was eventually concocted was to get rid of all the oil from the bilge and clean it up as best we could, shove another gallon or so in and see if it would stay in for an hour, then try running the engine for a while to see if that started it leaking again, then take a view if we could try to get down to Gouvia or Corfu where they might have parts. In the meantime Aki, a local engineer, came and had a look and didn't seem to hopeful, as did Gaynor's husband Tasso, who also brought along every hosepipe he could find and connected them up to the fishermen's water tap (cunningly hidden from the yachties under a manhole cover) so that we could finally top up with water (we'd been out since that morning).

Sarah took the kids off to the beach to get them ou tof our hair. Mum went off to do some shopping. It took about two hours to bail, then sponge, then finally mop up with kitchen roll the 5 litres of oil from the bilge. Not an easy job with about 4 inches of gap to get the "bailer" (a polystyrene cup) into. Interestingly, the engine is only supposed to hold 4 litres. Having done that, we added the oil and waited. It didn't go down. We ran the engine. A little dribble of oil appeared, in the area of the oil filter. Maybe that was it? We cleared it away and no more appeared. We decided to try and get a new filter from an engineer down in Corfu the following day, seeing how the leak progressed as we went.

After a well-earned, but not entirely cold, beer, Claire and I took the tender around to the beach to have a swim and play with the kids (and swill off the huge quantities of oil on my hands!). They were a little frightened of the sea at first but we managed to coax them in gradually and then we took them back to Moonshine, which they thoroughly enjoyed, while Sarah walked back.

We went to Gaynor and Tasso's restaurant, Strofilia, for dinner. Now, I've been to the Ionian a number of times (about 10?) and have had lots of very nice meals. This was the best meal I have ever had in Greece. I'm not saying this because it's run by friends. It was fantastic. My meatballs were served in the most delicious, meaty, tomato sauce and when I ordered the pork steak (my personal favourite Greek dish which I have at least three times a week when I'm out there), it was recommended to me that I try the pork steak marinated in honey and garlic. Out of this world! We all had something different, we all loved our food. Seriously, if you are ever in Kassiopi, go there.

So that takes us to Wednesday. I'll post the rest of the week later...