When Fraser finished his blog, we were still in Trizonia, and there was a danger we’d never leave because there’s such seductive magic to that little island. The ferry taxi that runs regularly every day is a lifeline for the small number of residents, carrying provisions for homes and restaurants. We shared a ride on a couple of occasions with boxes of fruit and veg (I managed to save a box of beetroot from getting salty in a big sea once), but the ferries (there are three of them: red, yellow, piloted by the island’s mayor, and blue) also carry essentials such as prescription medicines to the islanders. If the recipient isn’t there to meet the ferry, the skipper hangs the pharmacy bag from a lamppost ready for collection. And no one even thinks about stealing it!
While we were in Trizonia, we managed to get our laundry washed at a local hotel, and then we dried it on the boat, strung from every line and railing. While we were in the hotel, we had a cup of coffee and used their toilets. Fraser usually goes first to find the way and to warn me of any hazards such as low doorways or unexpected steps. This time, he warned me about a dark corridor but he failed to notice a small down-step in the dark corridor. I found it the hard way, and when I say hard, we’re talking Greek marble floors hard. My Apple Watch detected the fall and tried to call emergency services, but I was able to cancel it in time, which is lucky, as I’m pretty sure there aren’t any on the island. After lying in the dark, swearing quietly for a few minutes, I finally managed to get up and hobble to the loo, only to discover (way too late) that there was no toilet paper. Not my happiest experience.
As a result of the injury, I spent some time writing over the next couple of days while Fraser explored the island, hunting down tortoises and discovering nubist beaches (he really shouldn’t be let out unsupervised).
Eventually the swelling went down enough (I’m talking about my leg, so drag your mind back out of the gutter!), so I decided I’d quite like to see the tortoises. Fraser said it was a decent enough trail except for one slightly steep bit. He has a gift for understatement.
The steep bit was a climb so precipitous that I had to resort to all-fours at times. It didn’t help that there were clear traces of wild pigs who had been earth-moving in places, digging for food. Judging by the size of the stones they’d moved, I wouldn’t want to meet any of them face to face. It explains why the pork chops they serve here are so enormous, at least.
Once I’d recovered from the climb and the shock of seeing wild boar activity, I started looking out for tortoises. We spotted four that morning, but they were quite hard to see when they were off the track, because they just looked liked rocks unless they moved. There were plenty of false alarms. “Oh look, there’s one!” followed by, “Oh no. It’s just a stone.”
Another of our favourite activities on the island was the afternoon swim and shower. There are several swimming beaches on the island (not all nubist), and we tried most of them, but decided that the little town beach was the most enjoyable. It was a short walk from the boat, which we did in swimsuits with a t-shirt over, wearing beach shoes that we could swim in. We usually had the beach to ourselves, snorkelling and diving down to chase fish. The variety of sea life here was impressive. Fraser has a book for identifying fish of the Mediterranean Sea, but it doesn’t list all the variations we found.
On one memorable swim, we found a shy octopus, hiding inside an upturned crate on the seabed. If you floated quietly on the surface above, he’d cautiously emerge only to retreat rapidly if you twitched a finger. We also saw something very like a Barracuda (but probably wasn’t), some stick-like fish that shoaled near the surface, a cuttlefish, and scariest of all, a couple of Stargazer fish. These critters hide, partially submerged in the sand or gravel, then pounce on any small fish that pass close enough and either shoot them with venom from spines or electrocute them to stun them. Unwarily, I poked one with my toe (wearing shoes, luckily) to see if it was dead or alive. The next day, Fraser made me do it again so he could film it with the action camera, and this time I knew the risks but still did it.
We really enjoyed our time on the island, and especially chatting with other sailors we met. It’s a big, international family, the sailing world, and we both love hearing stories from other countries as well our own. Luckily, English seems to be the standard official language for radio communications, so most other sailors speak better English than we do German/French/Polish/Greek/Italian/etc.
Eventually we had to leave the island and move on. It would have been so easy to just cancel our flights and stay, but there are so many wonderful new places to explore, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. On our last night we shared a delicious meal with Frank and Lin of Hamble Dawn III and discussed plans. We were all heading the same direction, along the gulfs to Messolonghi, so we decided to meet up again there. They set off ahead of us by about 15 minutes and by the time we’d rounded the island, they were out of sight in their bigger, faster boat.
The weather forecast was for light, variable winds picking up in the afternoon to a brisk headwind. The harbour in Trizonia is so well protected that we got a shock when we hit more than 16 knot headwinds as soon as we were clear of its lee. Despite that, we managed to find a better wind angle, hoisted the sails, and had a very fast run indeed (for us), making close to 8 knots over the ground as we approached the Rion-Antirion Bridge.
We reached Messolonghi Marina in very good time, but not as fast as Frank and Lin, who were well settled in by the time we got there. Frank wandered over to help the marinero, Panos, catch our lines as we reversed into our space.
Med mooring is an acquired art, and I reckoned I’d got reasonably confident by then. Maybe that’s why Messolonghi Marina decided to spice it up a bit for me. As we arrived, we radioed the marinero to ask where he was putting us. Eventually we spotted him, waving at us from the end of a jetty and pointing to indicate that’s where we should turn in. There’s less space between the jetties than it appears in the above photo so when going in forwards, if you don’t know how far down he’s going to put you, can be a bit risky. There’s often barely room to turn between the mooring lines of other, bigger boats. So I decided to go in backwards instead. And THEN I saw the rows of tiny orange buoys littering the fairway. It was fun, in retrospect, once my heart rate returned to normal, and somehow I managed to miss them all, even the two divers I didn’t see at all until later!
We’d decided to spend only one night in Messolonghi, heading off early the next morning for Poros on Kefalonia. After another lovely meal with Frank and Lin, which they very generously paid for, we had an early night. The alarm went off at 06.45 so we could leave at 07.00, when it’s just about light enough to see the buoys in the fairway. At times like this we get as much ready as we can the night before, including singling up our lines and stowing the gangplank away at the front of the boat. When it’s time to leave, we have an established routine, with Fraser getting ready to release the lazy line forward (or anchor, depending where we are) and me releasing the two stern lines before slipping out from between the other boats.
We were extremely lucky with the weather for this passage. The forecast (which seems to be a mere random scattering of colours and arrows that bear no resemblance to reality) had predicted light, fluky winds until we reached Poros, when the wind was due to pick up and turn (unsurprisingly) onto the nose. What we actually got was a nice, steady wind that moved from one side of the boat, then around the back of us, to the other side. Perfect sailing conditions, so rarely experienced anywhere in the world but least of all in the Med, when it’s usually far too much wind from the wrong direction or no wind at all.
We made another very fast passage. We always passage plan for an average speed of 5 knots, but we were doing a steady 6 knots or more on this passage, often with no engine, but sometimes deploying the Iron Sail to give the canvas a bit of a boost. We were anxious about arriving in Poros to find no spaces available, and had hoped to arrive before the rush which starts around 14.00 with flotillas and charter boats all piling in, competing for space. We managed it, and were the first to arrive, closely followed by the expected fleets of novice sailors, all busy crossing anchor chains and getting excited.
The harbour here is fairly small, and the town quay has a few bends in it, which makes reversing in as you drop your anchor like a giant game of Jackstraws. As the first boat in, we were told by the super helpful marinero, Spyros, to drop our anchor very close to the anchor buoy of a small motorboat that lives there permanently, to reduce the risk of it being overlaid by the next boat. That was fine but the boat that arrived after us really struggled to get their anchor in the right place, and Spyros kept sending them back out to do it again and again! Finally they got there and turned out to be a really friendly group of Poles. One of them admired Barberry so much that Fraser felt the need to tell him she wasn’t for sale, and wasn’t likely ever to be for sale!
Poros is lovely but mostly a ferry port, with the giant yellow ship you can see in the background of the above photo arriving and leaving several times a day and well into the night. There’s a beach with a shower a 10-15 minute hilly walk from the harbour, but the sea-life here isn’t as rich as in Trizonia. In case you’re wondering why I keep on mentioning showers in relation to beaches, it’s because we don’t really have great showering facilities on the boat and the remote destinations we favour rarely have any facilities at all, so a nice swim in the sea cleans off most of the sweat, then we shower and shampoo in full view of the public at the beach shower. Wearing our swimsuits, obviously. What sort of exhibitionists do you think we are?
