Now if you have been keeping up with the plot, you will have realised that these posts are a good week behind where we actually are - and I'm not going to tell you where that is as it would give the game away. Nothing like a bit of suspense then!
Well last Monday we were still stuck in Kioni. We arrived about 5 days before with the wind picking up from the east and driving some swell into the harbour. It felt fine when we arrived but by Thursday night the wind cranked itself up to a good F7 making Kioni a rather bumpy place to be.
The picture above is Kioni on a calm day! This is a bit of a cheat as it was taken first time we were in in August when Liz and Ju were on board. Note the large saltire - that's us!! This trip however went from bad to worse. By Friday not only did the wind keep up it's easterly blow, it clouded over and the heavens opened. It rained hard for 36 hours - time to dig out the long sleved shirts and long trousers for the first time in 3 months!! We were parked on the main key - pretty much where we were in the picture so out of the really choppy stuff. The boats on this side did not do so well. By Saturday, the place was rather empty. All in all it was weather equivalent to a good summer in Scotland.
Most of the tavernas were still open so we spent each evening trying out different ones although I think we managed to eat in the one that does the spit roasted sucking pig 3 times. Once again if you don't know the place this will be meaningless - you will just have to try and get over here. The downsides of Kioni are that it is a bit isolated between big hills so no signal on my Greek vodaphone PAYG phone and only a very slow internet connection in one of the bars. There was also no hole in the wall to extract money from so we almost ran out of cash.
Given the wind direction, we gave up on our plans to head the 6 mile south to Vathi which although better protected than Kioni meant us going out into the waves. We have given up doing that so we just had to sample more of the spit roasted sucking pig.
By Sunday the rain stopped and by Monday the wind had both dropped and turned northerly so again the place returned to it's normall busy self with the hoards of charter boats returning. Once again the temperatures were back up to 25 deg C + and the sun shinning. It had been a pretty awful week weather wise and there must have been some pretty depressed holiday makers out for just a weeks sailing.
Our plan was to head back to Messolonghi on Tuesday as there was some northerly wind forecast and tie up for the winter and say goodbye to Tony and Margaret on China Blue who were heading back up to Preveza to have the boat lifted. More in a day or so.
Comments