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Now we are back on board. Soon we will start again. First in the Ionian Islands north towards Corfu. There will be visitors on board. We will report.

Our new sun sail we have supplemented at home with two additional cloths. And we brought another new acquisition: small walky-talkies, so that we don't have to yell at each other anymore when we drop anchor and when we moor and cast off. 🙂

But there is always something to fix. Our electric on-board toilet no longer works. So we have to remove it. This is what our construction site in the foreship looks like at the moment. One of the two pumps is broken.

In the marina it is very quiet at the moment. There are not many people on their boats. And there are hardly any sailors passing through the marina. Messolonghi is too far away from the usual routes. And the marina bar is closed for a week.

We visit our friends Pat and Tony, whom we met here as sailors. We got to know them nearly four years ago. They sold their boat and now live in an olive grove in the hills just outside Messolonghi in a house that they have fixed up very nicely.

Probably our boat would have found its way from the idyllic Petalas Bay, where we anchored for two nights, to Messolonghi even without us. After all, this has been Aglaya's home port for many years. After almost two years we are now returning there, first around the bizarre island of Oxia into the Gulf of Patras, then along the flat alluvium and the lagoons and finally into the channel of Messolonghi. It is also a special feeling for us to enter here again. Who is still there from those we know? And how are the other sailors from our circle of acquaintances? What have they experienced? And of course: Is it still as nice in the Sunset, the marina bar, as it was two years ago?

We receive a warm and cheerful welcome. Our friends Angela and Walter are there when we dock - by the way, on exactly the same spot where we were two years ago. Also the two murings still go into the water at a funny angle. Obviously nothing has changed and we have to try to moor our boat as secure as possible. After all, we want to leave it alone here for almost two months.

In the evening, six of us sit in the Sunset and all talk about our experiences. A nice reunion! Not only Aglaya feels at home here, we do too.

Before we start our journey home on June 29th, there is still a lot to do: Clean the boat, tidy up, do laundry, take good care of everything on board and find someone who can fix our electric on-board toilet, prepare the summer cover. But we also unpacked our bikes again. Maybe we will manage to make a trip to the Gulf before we leave.

Opposite the Ionian islands of Kefallonia and Ithaca, on the southern part of the western Greek mainland coast, a peculiar landscape begins, just before the entrance to the Gulf of Patras. It does not correspond at all to the cliché of the lovely Greek islands or the Mediterranean landscape at all. In the background, high barren karst mountains, in front of them, towards the sea, huge alluvial plains of the rivers Acheloos and Evinos. These are very fertile plains, wine, olives, vegetables, fruits are intensively cultivated here - in former times also cotton, by the way. Between the plains and the sea stretches a huge lagoon landscape, inhabited only by a few fishermen in corrugated iron huts. The small huts stand directly on the water, and some of their inhabitants move around only by boat. Land and sea can hardly be distinguished here from a distance. 

The lagoon landscape is partly under nature protection, flamingos, pelicans and many rare animal species live here. The brackish water is sometimes only a few centimeters deep. Therefore, further east in Messolonghi (Italian: Mezza Laguna), salt is extracted on a large scale in huge shallow water basins, the best in Greece. 

Already in ancient times the area was densely populated and prosperous, ships and soldiers for the Trojan War were provided here, you can still visit an ancient shipyard in Oinadeon. Above Messolonghi the ancient city of Plevrona with 20.000 inhabitants at that time is excavated. 

Cultural and natural landscape, land and sea flow impressively into each other here.

We sail between the Ionian Islands (Kefallonia, Ithaca, Zakynthos and many smaller ones) and the Greek mainland. Some of the islands have high mountains, the smaller ones are cone-shaped, almost all of them are green. 

We move like on a huge alpine lake, everywhere you look, mountains. There are many small cozy and sheltered anchorages and bays between the islands and the mainland, but also harbors like Astakos opposite Ithaka or Poros on Kefallonia.   The distances between the many possible places are not particularly large, sometimes less than 10 miles, so you don't have to leave so early in the morning and in the evening you can still find a place in the harbor or in a bay to anchor. And the taverns in the harbors leave nothing to be desired - and fish to cook or fry yourself is also available directly from the fisherman.

A wonderful (water) landscape, relaxed sailing, and finally the summer is here - what more could you want?

And here the view from our anchorage at Astakos

in the evening

We had already suspected that the high pressure over Central Europe, which was stable for several weeks, caused all lows to pass it and move into the Mediterranean area. Unstable, rather cool weather with lots of rain and thunderstorms - that is rather unusual in May and June in Greece. So we hadn't packed away our warm clothes yet.

And now we know it for sure: The Omega weather system has given us this bad weather phase: in Central Europe a steady high pressure system and in the West and East low pressure areas. Normally, the weather systems relevant for Greece move from northwest to southeast. The high over Central Europe blocked this movement. So we noticed that the temperatures at home in Germany were often higher than here in the Peloponnese and the Ionian Sea. And our friends at home already envied us for the rain, because it was much too dry at their place. Most recently, we spent three particularly uncomfortable days on Ithaca in Vathy: continuous rain with thunderstorms and strong winds. Most of the time we were guarding our boat.  

And why Omega? The flow field around the two lows and the high look like the Greek capital letter Ω on the weather map. 

Meanwhile, the weather map looks different. The omega has disappeared. We could sail to the mainland to Astakos with sun and great sailing wind. Now it is getting warmer every day, so we unpack our sun sail more and more often.

At some point you have to untie the ropes again, otherwise you get the Poros syndrome (see blog from May 24th). So we left the lonely marina of Argostoli on June 8th. And with what destination? Poros - not the Poros in the Saronic Gulf, after which we named the syndrome, but the small Poros on the east side of Kefalonia. There we were directed by Spiros, the energetic, fit, nice and humorous harbormaster directly to the new floating jetty, which is not yet marked in the harbor guides and in Navionics ("I want to see your beautiful money." means: pay harbor dues). Although the big ferry from Kyllini docks here several times a day, it is a nice, quiet place with an eternally long pebble beach.

But like Odysseus we wanted to go on, to Ithaca. We didn't have to wander around for ten years like him, who wanted to get back there from Troy. Just a little more than 20 nautical miles and we were there. We wanted to go to the bay of Vathy, the main town of the island. Surprise: rather light winds outside and on entering the bay winds gusting up to 40 knots. No good anchorage free, the pier full. So we fled, again some nautical miles back to the south into the beautiful and well protected anchorage Filiatro. There we could anchor well, enjoy the peace and the great scenery and swim extensively in the clear turquoise water.

But we could also see here that the high season has just begun. Had we seen so far only a few charter boats, they came now in ever greater numbers. In the harbor of Vathy, which we then approached two days later in calm weather, we felt finally catapulted into the high season. Like a string of pearls, the boats arrive here, many of them catamarans. The long piers are already full from the early afternoon. Anchoring is busy in the bay. After the rush hour for the free berths on the pier, we can admire catamarans with at least ten half-naked young men with suboptimal figure and bad taste in music. Well, they have a week's vacation, there must be something going on. We are retired and have time. But from the aesthetic point of view, we find some things to be an imposition. So: We arrived in the high season in the Ionian Islands. We have to get used to it.

Nevertheless: It is beautiful here. And there are always nice encounters with other sailors. And we will continue to find beautiful anchorages again and again.

Despite all this beauty that we are allowed to enjoy here every day, we are aware that obviously the Greek coast guard is probably one of the worst and most inhumane in the EU as far as refugees are concerned. We are horrified by the death of so many people in the boat accident south of the Peloponnese.