Back over to mainland Greece

Friday 25th April...

First full day back on the Greek mainland, and day 2 in Plataria. Overnight, as per the weather man predicted, we had a good downpour of rain with some distant thunder and lightning. It was all over this morning and it's been pretty calm all day. 

The marina here has electric and water included in the price of just 48 euros for two nights. We think that's very reasonable indeed, but of course it's still April and they are still charging winter rates until the end of the month. About 11am we went to the bakery for fresh bread and then to the fruit shop for essential supplies of cucumber, oranges, apples, bananas and potatoes. We are quite fruit-o-holics here on Thésee.

Dean's jobs today.... fixing the anchor chain sensor (we hope), and 're-ironing' the edging around the deck windows, because it's coming away from the windows in places. 

Not much else going on. An easy day keeping our eye on the quay's resident cats and dogs, and watching the world go by...

Dean re-ironing the the window edging

Our scraggy but chilled out kitty

hanging around

It's a dog's life

Kitty now asleep on the neighbours passarelle

Saturday 26th April...

Thunderstorms still threatening for another two days. Pretty much done in Plataria, we cast off the shore lines at 11am and popped just around the headland to our next destination.... 

Sivota Mourtas. It's luuuuurvly. 

Our second time here and we were looking forward to coming back. We arrived just after midday and took a place in the small marina.....cleverly still taking advantage of the cheaper winter mooring charges!

It's been a big photo day, plus a bit of shopping, checking in with the Port Police, and two short walks around the quay which is well open and trading. A stormy squall came through late afternoon but we managed to get back to Thesee before the rain arrived. 

A sad bye bye to our quay cat this morning in Plataria

Nice new apartments on the hillside in Plataria

The weather brewing, where we left

.... and where we're going too

All around us in fact

Now in Sivota, a lovely pizzeria here on the quay

Easter Egg hunt maybe??

Thésée in the marina.

It's quite small, Dean reversed all the way in.

At the Port Police office (Hellenic Coastguard)

View from the Coastguard office

Crossed anchors sign

Back in gift shop land

Yay, Sivota

Beautiful flowers at the Ice Cream shop 

Mine's banoffee, Dean's is some sort of everything

Lovely flowers above the shops

And what a fabulous tree

Bloomin' amazing

Uh Oh, we spot the storm approaching

Almost back in the marina now

This evening's short walkies to a nearby beach

We followed the Path of Love to get there 💖

... and now the sunset

Night Night from luuuuurvly Sivota 💛

Sunday 27th April...

Another wonderful day spent here in Sivota. The weather is really just perfect at the moment. In fact, I was a little overdressed in jeans when, this morning, we took a 30 minute walk across the back of town to reach a beautiful small inlet called Zavia Bay. And yes, it is an anchorage of course, so needed checking out for future reference.

Old water pump sitting in the back streets of town

More lovely flowers and bushes

This one had brushy type flowers

Here's a little chapel

Arrival at Zavia Bay.... wow 💙

There were a group of divers here, it looked like they were practising in the clear shallow waters. Plus two holidaymakers who arrived and immediately entered the water for their morning swim. It was a shame the cafe bar wasn't open because we would have stayed longer. 

I don't think the bay would be suitable for Thesee as it is quite small, and as you know, Thesee is quite big, ha ha.

So, I took Dean on a different walking route back to town, at one point, ending up following a dogdy overgrown path which we somehow managed to get through without bare arms getting scratched by the brambles. I could have done with my secateurs. Oh yes, and we also saw a small snake which immediately scurried away sideways on the first glimpse of us. We're really not that scary are we?

Beautiful new apartments with private pools here

Our dodgy pathway was worth the effort to get views like this looking south

... and the biggest geranium I have ever seen in my whole life

Should we really go down there? 

More lovely apartments as we re-enter town

Well, we are not Thesee-no-mates here in Sivota. Roman, Alli, and Milly dog are here also on their beautiful catamaran. We've crossed paths occasionally since we first met in Licata, Sicily in 2020. And tonight the four of us went for sundowners and dinner on the quay at Georgeos Family Restaurant. It was such a great evening, the time flew by. And the food and drinks were excellent too. 

I luuuuurv Sivota even more now! 💛

Here's Roman and Dean

All together now.... YAMAS !!

Yamas is the Greek word for Cheers, in fact it means 'To your health'

Alli & Myself

Monday 28th April...

Oh My Word. The harbourmaster here is looking after us. Yesterday, he brought us some fresh Salvia stems. That's sage to you and me. And now, this morning he brought us two goose eggs, from his own pet goose! Yikes! Just look at the size of them against a normal chicken egg from the supermarket.

Boys will be boys....

We'd been planning on leaving today, but decided to stay just one more day. So we set off on another short but hilly walk across to the beautiful bay in which we tied to shore last time we were here. I think this is where the rich people live because the apartments and houses were amazing. 

Not another path to nowhere??

 Bella Vraka Beach

The boat in the background is where we anchored before

It's so shallow here you can wade across to the island

On the way back we found ourselves at Karvouno Beach. It looks very posh but the cafe was disappointing. Anyway, it's very pretty.

New apartments

Karvouno Beach

Today, we bought crusty bread, chilled out this afternoon, and ate dinner at Georgeos Family Restaurant again. Their wine is sooooooo good, Dean got the name of it so tomorrow we are on a Wine Hunt before we depart. 

Tuesday 29th April...

We are wine-less 😕!!

OK OK.. so that might be an exaggeration. We couldn't find the nice wine in any supermarket in the resort, and believe me there are numerous supermarkets here. So we had to leave Sivota empty handed.  Well, with just a packet of cranberry biscuits, that's all.

But now we are 10 miles down the coast, anchored in Parga. It's a beautiful blue water bay with a nice castle atop the big rock. On arrival there was a HUGE superyacht anchored here. It's name 'Emerald Azzurra' -  30 million US Dollars brand new. If it's worth that much, then how much must the handsome Thésée be worth??

Here at anchor, Dean has been doing 'boat maintenance in exotic places' again. The anchor chain counter was still playing up, and I have to keep going to the bow to use the forward windlass control to drop the anchor chain. I'm getting pretty good at it. Though the skipper would probably say otherwise. You know how grumpy skippers can be😏.

Anyhow, I have a super duper skipper and he can fix ANYTHING and EVERYTHING. And of course, my skipper has spares for spares, and today one of the spares came in very handy for fixing the anchor chain counter for good.... We hope. And also my super duper skipper fixed the leaky water pump too. I bet you all wish you had a super duper skipper like me.

It's been a windy afternoon and there's a lot of charter boats around here. We are sheltered here in the bay at Parga so all is well and the wind's dying off now at 7.45pm. I would be happy about that, only the charter boat that is anchored right in front of us has disgusting men who insist on pee-ing straight off the back of their boat. It's very disgusting, right here in the anchorage where people swim. You might like to think twice next time you go swimming off the beach.

Today's photos coming up....

Emerald Azzura in our anchorage

Skipper working his magic on the anchor chain counter

I have no idea what he's actually doing

Our blue anchorage with castle 

Wednesday 30th April...

The anchorage at Parga last night was quite rolly-ish. Nevertheless, we slept like logs. I don't know why I'm so tired at the moment. This hay fever thing is getting us both down, even though we are taking anti-histamines tablets. It's so annoying to sleep all night then wake up for five massive sneezes out of nowhere.

At 8.30am Dean decided we should move on early. We only intended to stay here one night anyway. So we motored south for about an hour to a bay called 'Two Rocks'. This is a new destination for us, and strangely there are more than two rocks there! Anyway, it's absolutely beautiful. Nothing there except for blue water and scenery. Just Bliss. 

Two rocks Bay

The 'three rocks' 😏

It's not a massive anchorage, but the depths are quite good all over (5 metres or so). There were four boats already anchored from last night, but still plenty of room for Thesee, so we dropped the hook and sat there for about an hour drinking coffee and enjoying the scenery, as the day's temperature began to rise. 

However, we had already decided that tonight we would be in Lefkada, so at about 11.30am we left 'Two Rocks' and headed south for about 30 miles to the Lefkada canal. At this time of year they only open the bridge through the canal every two hours. We had managed a couple of hours sailing and a couple of hours motoring, and reached the canal about 3.25pm so had to hang around until the bridge opened at 4pm to get through into Lefkada town. There were another five boats with us going through the canal today.

Sailing south, wind on the beam, doing 4-5 knots

Entrance to the Lefkada canal

Boats behind us lining up to follow us through

Just one boat in front of us as the bridge swings open

Directly after you leave the canal, Lefkada town is next. They have a lot of charter companies here, but mid-week when the charter boats are out you can use their pontoon spaces, which is very useful for us because the next-door marina is too expensive for mere mortals like us.

The mid afternoon breeze was blowing through, but Dean expertly moored Thesee on the pontoon like the expert that he is. And guess what? They have a self service laundry in town too, open 24 hrs a day. Guess what we'll be doing tomorrow...

The next blog post will be called 'Southern Ionion Adventures'