Greece!
4 December 2023 – Zakinthos, Greece
We made it to Greece! We did a thirty-six hour passage from Italy, leaving early one morning and arriving late the next afternoon. We were able to sail both days, though we had to motor overnight, and the waves were calmer than they had been at the marina in Messina.
Passage to Greece – Ionian Sea
We landed in the port of Fiskardo on the island of Kefalonia, part of the legendary kingdom of Odysseus. His home island, Ithaca, was right next to us. Fiskardo was a great place to stay. We were only there two nights but I could have spent months there, even though there isn’t much to do. It is a tiny town with most things closed up in the off-season, but the view of the mountains and the sea was beautiful and the town felt very peaceful. On arrival, we Med-moored off the town quay and quickly took Sirius for a walk before he burst. There were cats everywhere which were super cute but meant that Sirius kept going crazy over them.
Fiskardo, Kefalonia, Greece
Fiskardo, Kefalonia, Greece
My birthday actually fell on one of the days that we were at sea but we postponed it to the first day that we were in Fiskardo so I got to celebrate it in Greece. We also went for a beautiful hike through the woods and visited the ruins of a Roman cemetery by the side of the road.
Oreo ice cream birthday cake that my mom made – Fiskardo, Kefalonia, Greece
Fiskardo, Kefalonia, Greece
Ideally we would have spent a few more days on Kefalonia and Ithaca, but we were worried that we would be caught in unpredictable katabatic winds funnelling through the tall mountains so we sailed around fifty miles to the island of Zakinthos instead.
The place on the town quay where we were told to dock was a tight fit between another boat and the thick docking lines of a ferry, but my dad managed to maneuver Festina Lente alongside without any issues. The only problem was that it was super shallow and when wake came we bumped against the bottom. This wasn’t that much of an issue on the day we arrived but this morning we ended up aground. We moved the boat forward a little and realized that it actually wasn’t too shallow except for a rock right where we had been docked.
Zakinthos is a beautiful town, with pretty Christmas lights and Venetian arches on almost every building. This morning, my dad took the two stainless steel aft cleats to a welder and had them fixed because they were cracked and no longer sturdy. We went out for gyros tonight, which were delicious, then walked around town.
