It's just a little squall...

We have two additions to our crew: Chuck and Judy Martin.

Chuck and Judy made it to the boat without a hitch after traveling Italy together by land.  We spent their first day as crew grocery shopping and getting our laundry done.  An authentic Greek dinner at Zorba’s Café right outside of the marina initiated them into the crew. 

While filling up our water supply, Dad and Chuck ran into a guy named Andrew that knew the islands and gave some great advice about where to venture next.  We were going to try and do a straight shot to Preveza, but it would’ve been at least a 10 hour day and the fuel dock didn’t open until 9:30am the following morning so we would’ve arrived at night for sure.  Andrew recommended stopping at a little anchorage at Paxoi, a small island between Corfu and Preveza so we chose to do that, which was an excellent choice.

I took a Dramamine because it looked like it was going to be a bumpy trip, and I crashed for one of the best naps of my life for about 3 hours on the way.  When I woke up, there were clouds in the sky and it was beginning to drizzle.  The drizzle turned into a nice sized rain storm that reduced visibility to almost zero and called for heavy weather gear.  Dad and Chuck were already on deck so Dad suggested that Judy and I stay down below so not everyone gets soaked and it gave me a chance to finish “The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy” which I enjoyed. 

Welcome to Greece Chuck and Judy!  This is after we anchored and were hiding under the bimany to stay dry and let our rain gear dry a bit before going down below.

This is what lowering the main sail in the rain looks like through a “port hole”.  Dad and Chuck lowered the mainsail before we got into the anchorage and you can see… it was wet.

When we started to come up on the anchorage, all hands were needed on deck and I put on all of my heavy weather gear (Chris’ jacket and George’s pants… thanks guys!) and went up.  It was raining pretty hard, but we could at least see the boats around the anchorage and where land was.  Chuck and Judy got everything out of the storage locker where the anchor chain is housed and I was on the helm making sure we didn’t run into anything and to put the boat in gear so the anchor would catch.  Dad let the chain out and I started going in reverse.  Sure enough the anchor chain went tight and the boat began to move with the current to face the direction of the other boats.  A perfect anchoring. 

Dad and I happy that we had a great anchoring… rain or no rain.

I made pasta and sausage for dinner that night and we all turned in pretty early.  I don’t think anybody slept well because of the rocking and rolling of the boat, and the fear that lingers in the back of your mind about whether or not the chain will hold and the boat will be where it’s supposed to be in the morning. 

Everything turned out fine though and we left for Preveza the next morning.  Everything was still pretty wet and it was raining a little so we put on our weather pants to sit without getting a wet butt and to scare off any bad weather that wanted to sneak up on us.  At one point it looked like we were going to get some nasty rain again, we were motoring right into a dark wall of rain and clouds, but we took too long to get there and it dissipated before we got there.  Overall the trip to Preveza was uneventful.  I started “The Girl who Played with Fire” by Stieg Larsson and ended up reading about 200 pages.  So far it’s great and a good continuation of “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”. 

Once we began our descent into the Cleopatra Marina, yes that is the name of where we are staying in Preveza, we were all happy to do a daytime docking.  There is a channel that is dredged out for boats to enter and it’s lined with lit buoys that form a line and that were hard to find during the day.  One could only imagine coming in at night.  This is of course the one place in the area with any sort of current and the wind picked up once we entered the marina and were trying to dock of course.  The spot they had for us was almost impossible to get to within at least an hour because every time Dad would get the stern of the boat to go in one direction, the wind would swing the bow around and erase any progress that had been made.  So they let us go to another berth and helped ease the boat in nicely. 

Once everything was secure we went in search of a cold beer and came to the café at the marina which ended up being where we ate dinner and spent 4 hours of our night.  It’s a great place that served wonderful tzatziki, Alfa beer on tap, and olives.  I ended up with chicken Schnitzel for dinner, not quite Greek, but really good none the less.  The best part of the night, we learned how to speak a little Greek