Monday 11th June Spartakhouri, Maganisi

Monday 11^th June

Last night as we sat down for dinner Roman Abramoviche’s old yacht Pelorus anchored up in the mouth of the channel, at 377 feet it’s one of the largest private yachts in the world and was like a floating hotel filling the bay. Once anchored it let out 2 speed boats, one water ski-ing and 5 jet skis and was lit up like a small town as it got dark, very nice. The following morning as we were sailing out it backed into the bay Gareth. Viv and I had camped in and seemed to completely fill the entrance. It is now owned by David Geffin a media mogul who managed Nirvana to fame.

We set off in our more modest vessel just before 10:00 but funnily enough one of the power boats from the Pelorus was alongside us for a while.

We had a really nice sail, motoring into the Kephalonia Channel then setting sail for Lefkas intending for Sivota. The wind was a bit up and down at first but later settled from the north-west force 2 to a good force 3-4 from the south. We were making good time so opposite Sivota decided to continue up the Meganisi Channel where we hoisted the spinnaker in a good force 3-4 getting up to 5.2 knots at times overtaking quite a few of the charter yachts. We had to drop the spinnaker when the winds started to gust around force 5 but had a great broad reach across to Meganisi at the end of the channel.

We returned to Spatakhouri for the night having covered 19 miles in just over 5 hours with some great sailing amongst quieter spells.

Once moored up a chap called Laurie Campbell came over as he recognized the Wayfarer and was interested to know what we had been doing, he now runs part of Nisos Sailing from Nidri. He told us about a friend of his called Steve Clark-Lens who wanted to re-create the journey made by Cleopatra when she fled the battle of Action. Steve ended up sailing a Wayfarer called Leon II from Corfu down to gulf of Patras then down the Pelopenese and across the Agean to Crete. Laurie met up with him in Crette and the two of then sailed for three days down to Alexandria where Steve then continued up the Nile. Later Steve sailed back via Turkey and other places. He has a lot of video and has written and account he is trying to get published. I said if ever they are in the UK and want somewhere to stay to give us a call and I would see if I could get them to do a talk about their adventures if they are able.