Ionian bareboat charter – cruise report

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Thought you might be interested in a quick run down of last week’s trip. Photos to follow later!

I’ve sailed in the Ionian a couple of times (pre pandemic), but always on a friend’s boat. This trip was the first time out as bareboat skipper, with a crew of university friends and partners.

We arrived at Nidri late on Sat, fortunately the yacht club bar was still in full swing! The boat, a 43ft Benateau was in good condition and fully stocked with food, so after a short briefing we set off on Sunday morning. Key information provided by the yacht club was that what appeared on the weather forecast to be a moderately windy night due mid week was likely to be quite a bad blow when it arrived with some suggestions of where to moor to miss the worst of it.

Headed out around Skorpios and spent some time doing fender overboard practice to give everyone a go of handling the boat. After that, given it was more or less flat calm, we decided to try to visit the Papa Nicholas cave on the W tail of Meganisi. We anchored in about 15m just slightly S of the cave, and with a competent person remaining on the yacht went in pairs to explore the cave – worth a trip! Wind filled in slightly after lunch so motor sailed over to Port Leone on Kalamos, one of my favourite places. Found a sign on the pier suggesting that you could no longer anchor and take a line to it, but spent a comfy night anchored in the bay adjacent and rowing over to explore the village.

The following day the rain set in, so we had a drizzly crossing to Spartochori on Meganisi. Some wind in the channel but mostly motoring or drifting. I’d not been to Spartochori before but found it really nice and tranquil, with lazy lines now fitted to the quay. (Found many places shown in the pilot book as needing to anchor moor were now fitted with lazy lines). Great food in the taverna and an interesting night watching all the bikers congregate ahead of the last ferry off the island. Prior to setting off the following morning we opened the engine hatch to do a quick visual check and found the bilges full of water! Quick tase test verified it as fresh, and explained probably why we’d been hearing the water pump cutting in at odd times. Pumped it out (limber holes quite blocked so some bailing was also necessary in some compartments), and re filled the bow water tank which took about 300L more than anticipated.. although we never found any wet patches its likely the leak was from the transom shower. Spent the rest of the trip with pump switched off when not in use and had no more problems.

Set off North towards Preveza, and had a nice motor up towards the Lefkas canal – and some sun, briefly! The pilot book suggests that South bound traffic has priority at the floating bridge, but we found that with only about 5 boats each side when the bridge opened, the bridge master waved everyone though simultaneously, and there was just about enough room for this to be a straightforward manoeuvre. The wind built steadily over the 5 miles or so from the canal to the Preveza channel ,and it was becoming quite an exciting sail. On attempting to put a further reef in the genoa, we found the furler completely jammed. I was unwilling to send anyone on to the foredeck to fiddle with it given the sea state, so chucked the sheets forward and turned the boat through several full circles to furl the remainder of the sail, which worked surprisingly well. Given the poor forecast overnight we’d splashed out and booked a berth in the Preveza marina. The wind was blowing directly from the land down the aisles and out into the basin. We’d been allocated a space at the end (downwind end) of an aisle, on a pontoon which was somewhat shorter than its neighbours. As there was only about 1 boat length space to start a run up in reverse, and give the drag from the imperfectly furled genoa, I could not get the boat to line up into the space, the bow blew off downwind almost instantly. In the end, we backed up into the wind perpendicular to the berth, and handed some lines over to the marino who slowly sweated us in. In hindsight it would have been better to ask him to make off the lines so we could winch ourselves into place – however, nothing got hit and no one got shouted at so I recon it was a success overall.

I can thoroughly recommend the Celest restaurant at the entrance to the marina as some of the best and cheapest food around! Spent a rainy day exploring Preveza, with the intention to move onto the town wall mid afternoon. However, with a decent chop against the wall, and windguru, posiden and mark 1 eyeball all disagreeing about the forecast overnight, we opted for a second night in the marina and went out on the town instead.

Following day we had an overcast windless trip South through the canal heading for Sivota on Lefkada. Only notable event was spraining my ankle due to overexuberance of Irish dancing at the helm..

Sivota was lovely with a couple of places to explore, and lots of taverna pontoons making for easy mooring. The food everywhere we went was a real highlight, and the moussaka at Stavros’s was no exception.

The following day the sun returned, so we had a lovely sail over towards Ithica, and anchored in a bay for lunch and a swim, before carrying on to Fiskardo on Keffalonia. Glad we arrived early as there were only a few spaces left on the wall (though loads of room at anchor), and enjoyed an ice cream and few beers before tea.

On leaving the following morning we found we had crossed an anchor chain, however they were leaving at the same time as us so no drama ensued.

From Fiskardo we motored towards the small island of Arkoudi for lunch (but no swim as there were some jelly fish around), then as the wind filled in enjoyed a downwind sail all the way back to Nidri, spending our final night on board on the town quay. Total distance run: 123 miles.

Cons – weather wasn’t great,

Pros – really enjoyed the bareboat aspect and freedom to go where we felt like. All in all a successful trip, and going back to work this week was a bit of a wrench!
 

E39mad

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15 Mar 2011
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Thanks for posting - it's an area that I am looking to bareboat in next year.

Which charter company did you use and where did you fly to?
 

Wandering Star

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Timely report - thanks. We’re flying to Preveza tomorrow at cocks crow for a 10 day holiday on my sons shared boat. Looking forward to it, I don’t know the area bit I have been watching the weather and it looks as though it’ll be warm but without seeing the son so a bit disappointing in that respect! I gather the mossies are in biting mood so loaded up with “off” which hopefully will cause the mossies to bite others and not myself.
 

oldbloke

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24 Jun 2018
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It won't always work but, sometimes clouds and rain in the Ionian can be very localised. The small islands especially can be sunny ,while Levkas and Cephalonia are raining. So rather than have a detailed plan, look for where the blue sky is and head that way
 
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