THE IONIAN ISLANDS
For the last 10 days we have been cruising the Ionian Islands – The islands are a lot greener and a lot lusher on this side of Greece and the sea can be a beautiful turquoise. The good news is we have finally got some wind, well 10 knots so for the first time since we have left Turkey we have sailed without putting on the engines!! The down side to the area is the large number of charter boats. At any one time you can see 50 boats sailing around. Not a problem until you go into one of the anchorages and it can be a bit of a nightmare trying to anchor. We were told that later in the season, when it really gets crowded, the boats going stern too are stacked 3 deep. It must make for a very interesting morning when everyone pulls up their anchor.
We have managed to do some land travelling – In Levkas we hired a scooter and toured the island. My scooter skills couldn’t have improved that much as I still had one near accident and also got shouted at for not moving over. Its amazing how casual the Greeks are with road safety – no one seems to wear crash helmets, everyone drives on the footpath and there seems to be very few road rules. Maybe that’s the way to go and Australians are just a little over regulated.
So much for saying in my last log that marina fees in Greece are cheap – we had to go into Gouvia Marina here in Corfu to get the mechanic to look at our port engine which was smoking. After paying 89 euros for one night in the marina the mechanic charged us 800 euros to change the injectors and clean out a couple of cooling pipes, that’s after I had already complained and got the bill reduced from 950 euros. I’m sure as soon as they see a foreign boat they double to cost as they know that you will be just passing through. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but their work didn’t fix the problem.
Subject to weather, on Monday we will be leaving Greece and heading for Montenegro, its about 150 miles. I don’t think Penny is looking forward to our first overnighter for over a year. Oh well there’s lot coming up so best we start getting used to it!!!
