Lefkada, Greece

Although it seemed like a big deal, being in the water didn’t change much to begin with. Our routine remained intact but we were able to begin the process of getting to know the boat as she’s meant to be, in the water.

Day one on the anchor we almost immediately ran out of power. The convenient alert our boat has for this is the gas alarm complaining that it is about to stop working. We now know that 200Ah of battery and 100W of solar isn’t anywhere near enough for a home. Luckily we had three old solar panels from our generous and eternally helpful and cheerful boatyard friend Shlomi that we strung up on the bimini and soon we were making more power than we could store. 

Our first shake-out sail was over to Palairos to go to the fabled ‘only Indian restaurant in the area’. We drifted along happily with all sails for a couple of hours until turning the corner of the bay we got hit with a 30 knot headwind. After a hasty lowering of everything we had worked hard to hoist we motored up to the bay for dinner.

At about 23:00 that night the wind started picking up, a blazing hot growl of  wind. We spent the night heeling and needless to say, did not get much sleep.

In the morning, the situation worsened, in addition to the howling 40er, the sun was hiding behind a curtain of orange dust and the air smelled of smoke. We picked up our anchor and motored out of there.

The two hours journey back to our familiar Nidri was the kind of surreal one can only deal with by laughing. The engine almost immediately wanted our attention. It decided to let us know by shredding the alternator belt all over the engine compartment, filling the boat with the odour of burnt rubber and chafing a chunk off the seawater pipe.

As a first day out it was less than auspicious.

We did manage to have some days of less frightening adventures too, such as when we took a day drive with Shlomi, Neomi and Anat (who had suddenly appeared like always) over to the west coast to see white stone beaches that look straight out of a Wes Anderson movie and a sunset, boat deck dinner with Peter, Lee-Fay and their son Leo.

Finally, before heading out of the protection of our little cove, we also stayed a couple of days in Lefkas Town with its cute carribean-esque corrugated tin architecture and incredibly cheap public quay. We befriended Jörgen and Korin, a lovely Swedish couple, on the beautiful boat Waterloo trying to find a place to store it for winter before the end of the summer. We hope they made it to Athens on time!

We woke up early for the first opening of the Lefkada bridge at 8am that allows boats out to the Ionian and sailed North out into our first taste of open ocean.