Week 3. Croatia to Greece (245 nm)

Our trip to Corfu is the longest sail that Laura and I have completed to date (even considering other trips done with more crew) and we were really pleased at how well we coped with the challenge. We eventually ended up in Corfu where we rested and weathered some stronger winds before moving on southwards through unfamiliar Greek coastline.

On passage to Corfu

Our first proper passage on Serenity started in a bit of a rush, as I was forced to admit a mistake in my ‘voyage’ planning. We subscribe to a service called Predict Wind, which not only provides detailed weather forecasts for sailors around the world, but also helps them to plan their route to minimise the overall journey time. I had jumped at this chance to try out a fun new geeky toy without fully understanding how it worked, and duly announced to Laura the night before our departure that the trip would only take 24 hours – we’d be there before we knew it 😊…

The next morning, on a whim I measured the total distance of the trip and was slightly taken aback to find that our Predict Wind journey implied an average boat speed of 7.5 knots – this was close to our maximum speed! It turned out that my selection of a comparable boat was bullish (think of a Ford Focus driver expecting the performance of a Tesla Roadster) and a new revised journey time of 36 hours was a more realistic estimate, which would have us arriving in the middle of the night unless we left asap. Laura calmly tolerated the change of pace until I suggested that we forego the shopping trip for more eggs, at which point she gave me a stern lecture on the benefits of an egg a day and told me that I would have to adjust the plans accordingly – thankfully 36 hours also turned out to be optimistic!

We checked out of Croatia at Cavtat, where Laura was pleasantly surprised by the welcoming demeanour of the novice customs agent. I was not so lucky, as it was my job to explain to the hustlers on the quay why we wouldn’t be paying them £15 for the privilege of (just about) catching one of our lines as we moored. Thankfully Laura’s internet research had warned me this was likely, and so I combed my beard out extra bushy as a display of machismo against which the hustler was forced to concede defeat. And with that Croatia was left behind us, and we began to settle into a routine for the journey.

Night watch routines are the only area that I know of where having a significant other with different body clock preferences becomes an asset. Its important whilst sailing to always have one person keeping watch in case the wind picks up or another boat comes on a collision course, and whilst watches happen in an adhoc manner during the day, you tend to schedule a series of watches to help get through the night. Since Laura is a night owl to my early bird, she always takes the first watch of 9pm to midnight as I am more than happy to take the 6-9am slot the next day. We then split the intervening six hours accordingly, and it means that you are at least able to get some sleep (albeit some naps during the day are also essential to staying rested 😉).

The journey ended up taking 48 hours overall, as the forecast winds were often absent or too fickle for us to sail in. So we ended up motoring for around half the time, which dampened the mood on Serenity a bit. The upside was that there was plenty of free time to read, listen to music, play board games and fish, of which all but the latter yielded positive returns. Laura’s sailing skills were tested a bit more than she hoped as the wind had an odd tendency of waiting until I was asleep before rapidly increasing in strength. She handled this as best she could, but sometimes sailing jobs just need more brute force than she can call upon, whereupon she deployed a semi-conscious Alec to the cockpit with a combination of apologies and encouragement. This was done so skilfully that I didn’t even remember some of these night time excursions – Laura assures me that I was in no danger of falling overboard.

In fact, the only drama of the trip came during the early evening of the second night, and again shone a light on my less than thorough passage planning. I was just getting ready to sleep and wandered over to the iPad to check on the chart. Zooming in a bit to see the upcoming Albanian coastline, I wondered aloud what the purple stars mean on the chart that had appeared once the magnification increased. It was then that I found the note referencing an old Albanian mine field that was to be kept clear outside of the specified routes…but no routes were given. By this stage, we were more than 50% of our way through the minefield and it was faster to sail ahead than change course. Laura was not happy with this outcome, despite my assurances that there couldn’t really be any mines left and if there were then our fibreglass hull probably wouldn’t detonate one unless we hit it square on. She ended up finding some solace in a school of dolphins that accompanied (guided) Serenity for much her next watch, by which point we had observed at least four other tankers taking a similar route to ours. Still, I promised to do a better job looking for abandoned munitions on our next long trip, and we left it at that.

Arrival in Corfu Town

Waking up to see Corfu on our final morning was a welcome sight and after rounding the northern coast we made landfall in Corfu Town four hours later. Laura headed off to deal with what was becoming the typical immigration and customs faff (albeit this time with friendly customer service – a novel experience in Greece) and left me to mind the boat. We had temporarily parked in the commercial harbour and the surges from the ferries were the worst we had encountered and so we scurried out as soon as the formalities were complete. The marina options around Corfu Town were a little unclear and so we decided to head for Mandraki on the basis that it was the nearest one.

Fate was clearly guiding our hand as Mandraki turned out to be the best place we had stayed at. It is set right below a large Venetian fort, which you must walk through to make the short trip into Corfu Town. The facilities were towards the basic end, but at this stage we were happy with the copious hot water and comfy sofas along the quay. It was clearly more of a liveaboards’ marina than anywhere else we’d stayed (no doubt due to the agreeably low mooring fees), and this helped us feel right at home. As a result, when the wind forecast suggested a big storm coming through over the next few days, we were very happy to extend our stay by two more nights, which gave us more time to explore Corfu Town.

We couldn’t leave the Corfu commercial port fast enough

View across to Corfu town

The channel that separated the fort from Corfu town was home to some fisherman

Mandraki marina looked like a good choice from outside

Other random historical buildings were scattered throughout the fort

Sunset over Mandraki

The marina was overlooked by a music university to provide background music

Safely moored in Mandraki alongside the other liveaboards

View from the top of the fort

The feel of the town mirrored the marina –  it was fairly run down in parts, but more than made up for it in terms of the character of its winding streets where locals were as common as the tourists. In this respect, it struck a significant contrast to Dubrovnik and we were left in no doubt as to our preference for its greater sense of authenticity. The wind strength eventually dropped to a point where our feet once more began to itch and so after our third night there we headed off once more, restored and excited to explore what for us was a new stretch of Greek coastline.

Starting to explore Greece

Our next two days were spent working our way south, which is the recommended direction for sailing in the Ionian as 90% of the time you have the wind at your back. However, the wind was still sorting itself out after a recent low pressure system and so we ended up with the wind on the nose for both days. For the non-sailors, this is the type of sailing that is least enjoyable, as the boat tends to lean over the most, you experience a lot of motion from the waves, and your speed is the lowest which means you can’t go as far. The silver lining was that it did allow us to refine our upwind sailing techniques on Serenity and thankfully our tacking angles have now reduced from 120 degrees to a more respectable 100.

We first visited Plataria, which provided a very calm anchorage even if the town was somewhat non-descript, before moving on to Lakka on the island of Paxos. We had been advised that this was a must-see location, and the turquoise blue waters that greeted us were very inviting. Once the hook was in, I accepted the invite for a swim and this time lasted a full ten minutes before the cold forced me back onto the boat. Laura continued to view this chilly water swimming with disdain, and instead took the chance to catch up on some laundry and carpentry, before rustling up one of her signature Thai curries with the expanded range of groceries we sourced in Corfu Town. We ended the day with the great news that the normal wind service would be resuming from the NW the next day, and whilst we have now learned to take the forecast with a more than pinch of salt, we crossed our fingers that we would once more have the wind at our backs.