After some sightseeing in Corfu town, we - Rita, John, Achim and I - were off to the mainland. Our first stop was a little bay called Pagania which the handbook described as deserted and pretty. There were a lot of fish farms on the outer part of the bay, which meant the water was not for swimming. But inside, it was pretty indeed and totally quiet except for the cows that mooed for much of the night. Our main achievement was hiking up the local hill in the morning, although we found the vegetation to be very hostile to us discoverers….

The next stop was a little bay near Mourtos where we could catch up on the swimming. The water is still 24C, not bad! The next day brought some wind, which we used for a nice sail to the island of Paxos. The anchorage at Lakka was truly spectacular with turquoise water and nice tavernas ashore and some provisions to be had. This remains important, particularly given the consumption of local wines on board. We need to keep the stream of wine bottles coming to keep the bilge adequately ballasted, although we have discovered other liquid delicacies as well. There is, for example, Mastika, a bark liquor from the island of Chios in the Aegean, which seems to have found some aficionados and afficionadas on board. And then, Rita Schubert keeps the good stuff coming from the galley. She seems to like it! Gaios, our next stop, was also pretty, a little bigger place, better provisions ….

The next day was somewhat of a recent record. We left the harbor at 1100 (rather than 1400) and sailed for a full 8 hours, tying up at the town dock in Prevezza with the last rays of the setting sun. What started as a beat turned into a nice reach with the Code Zero up, champagne conditions! We felt like real sailors again. Prevezza is an unremarkable place but there were two attractions not to be missed. First, I finally caught up with my new debit card - it is hard to manage in Greece without cash and even harder to get something important delivered to a place before team Kincsem is off to new horizons! Second, there were some ancient rocks left over from the Romans to be visited. The place, called Nikopolis, was actually huge - there was no way to walk all the excavations in the few hours we had. And then, there is the airport so Achim can go back to London for his board meeting next week. We tried our best to talk him into attending per conference call ……