I’m pretty sure the seasickness I was feeling in the morning had nothing to do with the late night with new friends. There was a change in the wind and a swell was rolling into the anchorage. I assure you this was the only reason! We had dropped our lines and were underway by 7am for the island of Atokos, 7nm distant but looking so close it seemed like you could reach out and grab it, the air was so clear. Just enough wind was blowing to make killing the engine a simple decision; we sailed gently onward, at a time in the morning when we would normally just be rustling out of our bunk.
When the wind rises before you in the morning, you know it’s best to get up, get dressed and make a plan. After yesterday’s parade of boat arrivals in Kioni, we were wedged in tight with boats fendered off of us on both sides. We had seen how other boats had struggled during the strong side winds, and I skipped a morning run in order to get us out before the building wind made it even more challenging. With so many boats med moored around us, and plenty of variability in where they each dropped their anchor, we also wanted to slip our lines sooner than later in order to sort out any crossed anchor chains. We had seen plenty of examples this season of one boat lifting another boat’s anchor and causing a domino effect of boats become unhinged.
Let’s get one thing out of the way at the beginning. There is a particular island in the Ionian, Ithaki, that is not pronounced like you think it would be. It is ‘ehh-TALK-yy’. This came as troubling news to Karen, growing up as she did next door to Ithaca, NY, where natives would think you were from another planet if you didn’t say ‘ITH-a-kuh’. We had the good fortune of a Greek native with us, Theo, to break the news gently. There you go. Now we are ready to move on.
As we rounded the northern tip of Cephalonia on our eastward leg to the neighboring island of Ithaki, the winds started to build, just as they had been forecasted. We started off with both sails fully set, sending us gently along at a speed, because it is less than one could motor at, that can make one twitchy if there’s a long distance to go. Theo, just inshore of us, had a little less wind and more tonnage to move through the water, leading him to keep motoring. We soon had a bonafide breeze of 15 knots, cause enough to begin thinking about a plan to reef, as we skimmed across the water on a glorious downwind angle. The forecast called for higher winds into the evening and possibly over the next few days, so we sought protection on the eastern shore of Ithaki, with our first stop at the little cove of Ormos Nikolaos. Ormos means bay in Greek, but there was nothing expansive here on the scale of San Francisco Bay or the Bay of Biscay. I will be filing for a name change to Limanaki Nikolaos, as soon as I find out who in the Greek government will entertain my request.
The summer winds in the Ionian Sea are by-and-large quite mild. When it does blow, the wind comes onshore from the west. Therefore, most of the favorable, comfortable anchorages are on the eastern side of the islands. Cephalonia was no exception, with a range of options between quaint and bustling. As we motored into Poros under glassy calm seas, and we were the only boat in the anchorage, the town was feeling much more on the quaint end of the spectrum. A pronounced V-shaped gorge was cut into the ridge behind the town, hinting at a large valley inland and many decades of heavy spring runoff. A few multi-story buildings lined the shore, but otherwise, a long uninterrupted beach greeted us as we landed with the dinghy. Cephalonia was lining up to be a chill, low-key island, about as much of a polar opposite to Mykonos as one could get. A few teenage boys explored the rocky shallows, appearing to care less about what they might find and more about the simple companionship of a friend. Or perhaps Mom kicked them out and told them not to return until dinner time!
There should be no shame in a Plan B. Sure, there’s the difficulty in accepting one’s fallibility. But we’ve found that if we think ahead about possible Plan B’s, it’s easier to make the switch when Plan A develops an attitude. And, an attitude was what we were faced with as we rounded the northern tip of Zakynthos for Shipwreck Beach. As soon as we pointed Sea Rose towards the alternative of neighboring Cephalonia, the sea sickness subsided and the curiosity about a new island emerged.
As the island of Zakynthos came into view, we officially entered the Ionian island group of western Greece. Last year, we had toyed with the idea of visiting Zakynthos, as we made our way south from Croatia, but time was not on our side as we pushed to make a date with friends in the Aegean. This season, with neither Karen nor I willing to take the Covid risk of leaving Greece and tempting clearance into another country, we were staying local. We had six more weeks in Greek waters, which gave us carte blanche to see every nook and cranny in the Ionian.
Passage from Pylos to Zakynthos
There are a handful of iconic images that Greeks use to tempt tourists to their land. There is, of course, the Parthenon, and the windmills on Mykonos, as well as the cliffs at Santorini, and finally there’s Shipwreck Beach, which coincidentally resides on Zakynthos. If you’re an Instagram nut, Shipwreck Beach is likely on your short list, to pose with heart-shaped hands, a pouty face, or a simple thumbs up.
A couple of years ago, when Samuel Adams started hawking their ‘West Coast Style’ Rebel IPA, I was intrigued. Here I was a California-born living in Samuel Adams country on the East Coast. What could be a better beer to drink? If only one could solve the riddle of what ‘west coast style’ really meant. Beer aficionados touted its hoppier hops, but to a mere commoner like me, it was just a simple IPA. As we pointed Sea Rose up along the west coast of the Peloponnese peninsula, I wasn’t going to let a catchy marketing cliche get in the way of appreciating this region’s unique west coast style. If it meant a little beer tasting along the way, all the better!
It might help if you scrounge around ahead of time for the ouzo in the back of your liquor cabinet, but when I look at the layout of the Peloponnese coastline and bays, it reminds me of the profile of an American Bison, grazing on the plains of Yellowstone National Park. And with that spirit of the Wild West, we set off westbound from Limeni to cross the last 20 miles of open water to the port of Koroni.
The Peloponnese landmass branches out into three prominent peninsulas on its southern shore, forming two long, deep bays. These peninsulas are barren, dry landscapes, with steep ridge lines running their length, reminding me of the spiny, crusty back of a Tyrannosaurus rex. And perhaps it is the threat of a T-rex emerging from the dead that keeps the general populous away from this region of Greece. Or the lack of roads. What remains is a number of small villages and, in the summer, a preponderance of mini-campers driven by modern day hippies trying to find a momentary escape from contemporary living. Perhaps there were a couple people onboard Sea Rose looking for a bit of the same.
We launched our exploration of these deep bays and peninsulas after an early morning departure from Elafonisos. I was hoping that the concentration of large motor yachts around the corner were not going to hinder our escape from a contemporary state of mind. Thankfully, the four hour trip across calm flat seas to the Mani peninsula and the port of Kayio was blissful – dare I say transformative. After so many days of high winds and nasty seas, it was magical to rediscover sailing in benign weather.
Sitting at anchor in Gramvousa, on the island of Crete, with the prevailing northerly winds howling down on us, and a long upwind climb in our near future to get up to the Peloponnese, it felt a little like being stuck in a sink hole. Cruising down to Crete had only exacerbated our upwind challenges. But it was worth it. We had hiked the gorges of Crete’s interior, ambled through narrow stone-lined alleys of historic villages, sipped the nectar of its burgeoning wine industry, and swam through the rusting hulks of not-so-long-ago shipwrecks. Now we had to pay our dues.
