After our overnight trip into the Ambrician Gulf, we spent one night back in the marina at Preveza (where a month’s contract was the same price as the 12 days we needed to keep the boat safe while we fly home in September). We used the time to do all our washing, top up our water tanks, and charge everything electrical while we had a mains connection. Drying our laundry took no time at all. By the time I’d pegged everything out all over the boat, bed sheets flapping from the boom, the first items were dry enough to fold and put away. It was around 32 degrees (C) with a hot wind, a sort of natural tumble drier but with no carbon footprint. After that, we went to bed ridiculously early (even for us) in readiness for an early start as I wanted to reach the temporary swing bridge at Lefkada for the 0800 opening.
A word about the Lefkada bridge. Lefkada (or Levkas) is an island. This gives them certain status and advantages that they’re loathe to part with. However, the biggest income in this part of Greece is from tourism, and Lefkada needs a way to get all the tourists, and all the people who run touristy businesses, onto the island. Their way of doing this without losing island status is to use a large boat as a pontoon bridge. This allows road traffic across the narrow strait onto and off the island, but can swing sideways to allow boat traffic through at specific scheduled times during the day.
Without the Levkas Canal, sailors like us need to go around the outside of the island to the west, which involves a 6-ish hour sail along a lee shore with no safe anchorages. It’s beautiful, but a real bind when you can just nip through the canal in a fraction of the time. Unfortunately, being Greece, no one had bothered to carry out any maintenance on the pontoon swing bridge, as required by law, so they were forced to close the bridge to boat traffic while the officials scratched their heads. Finally, the bridge-boat was taken away to dry dock for maintenance, and a ferry was moved in to take its place. This is similar to the Strangford Ferry (for those from Northern Ireland), but is now used as a bridge that occasionally moves. It only stays open to boats for a short time, so huge queues build up at both sides just before the popular opening times (10:00, 14:00 and 19:00), but fewer boats make the 1-2 hour journey from Preveza to catch the 08:00 opening. That’s why I chose it (Fraser prefers the leisurely breakfast approach).
After an 05:45 alarm and 06:00 departure, we were the first boat to arrive for the opening, followed immediately by two faster boats who’d probably had a nice lie-in before leaving! There was also a giant motor catamaran anchored just outside the channel, and the skipper must have set his alarm for just before opening time after spending a bouncy night at anchor there. He woke up and fired up his engines, barging past all of us to the front of the queue, but when the bridge opened, he was faced by a couple of yachts wanting through from the other side. Having overtaken the rest of us, he was now on the wrong side of the narrow channel so they were forced to pass him starboard-to-starboard (instead of the correct port-to-port). They were followed by an enormous super yacht, which (quite correctly) held its ground and blasted the catamaran with its horn until the skipper finally moved across to the correct side. He’d ignored the bridge staff, who’d been shouting and waving their arms, but he really couldn’t argue with this big boy!
After this, we all managed to sort ourselves out. I should add that Fraser was helming Barberry that morning, his first time through the narrow and challenging channel. He managed to keep his cool (at least on the surface), spinning Barberry in her own length several times to stay out of the way of all the other boats. The pushy catamaran continued to motor down the centre of the narrow buoyed channel the whole way after that, causing all boats coming towards him to move outside the channel into unknown depths to let him by. He had a good, clear boat length’s distance between him and the edge of the marked channel on his own side, but maybe he wasn’t confident about the width of his craft, and was playing safe. That’s me being polite. I don’t think the other boats were one bit happy, especially as most of them had far deeper draught than the catamaran.
There were a couple more challenges before we made it into open water, including a couple of boats anchored in the narrow channel that everyone had to manoeuvre around, but it felt good to be back in the Inland Sea again, with Meganisi Island a soft blur on the horizon. We were flying our new “defaced ensign”, which snapped in the breeze as we cruised downwind under a full genoa. The reason for this ensign is that our old red duster (the ensign that must be flown by British registered boats abroad) was tattered and falling apart, but also because the Greek officials often look extra hard at British boats, more so than at European registered ones. Our new ensign is a variation on the red duster and can only be flown with permission and a certificate showing we are entitled to fly it, which we are lucky enough to have through our membership of the Cruising Association.
We timed our arrival in our favourite anchorage, Abelaki Bay, for just after 10:00, when most boats are upping anchor and heading off for the day. The strategy paid off (despite Fraser’s mild but ignorable complaints about the early start and no breakfast), and we found our usual spot free, with a perfect onshore breeze to assist us anchoring. We like to tie ourselves to the shore with a couple of long lines, because it reduces the risk of swinging into other boats, as well as providing us with a safe swimming area between us and the shore. With our new Rocna anchor down, the wind held Barberry perfectly in place while Fraser made the long lines ready before swimming ashore, scrambling around and tying them to suitable rocks. Once secured, we let out more anchor chain, taking up the slack on our shore lines, and dropped back into the perfect space before tightening everything up. I wasn’t far behind him, falling backwards into the cool water with a sigh of relief, and renewing my acquaintance with the local fish population.
Not long after us, a familiar boat dropped anchor not too far from Barberry. It was Marilyn and Malcolm with their beautiful boat, Reverie. We swam over to say hi and stayed for chat, Fraser sitting on their paddle board while I floated effortlessly next to him. There has to be some benefit to obesity, and this seems to be the only one: I can float like seal, vertical in the water with no frantic kicking or arm waving required! Later on that evening, we joined them for a drink in the restaurant (we’d already eaten as we’re early birds when it comes to dinner and bed!).
It took no time to fall back into our old habits. We dinghy across to Minas Taverna for coffee after breakfast and forget to leave. Tomorrow we intend to take the ferry across to Nidri, just for the fun of it, and the Taverna owner has offered to give us a lift to the ferry after our morning coffee! His wife’s cousin drives the bus, so we should be good for the trip home, but it’s very kind of him to take us there as we don’t know where to catch the bus in Vathi. Fraser can tell you about our excursion next time, along with any accidental adventures that might befall us!
