Zákinthos Island

On Sunday 13 July we moved into Port Zákinthos ready to meet up with my daughter, Charlotte, and her friend, Sophie, who will be spending some time on board with us. They arrived on different flights but met up at the airport and got a taxi down to the port. It was all very easy for them and they quickly settled in on board. To celebrate their arrival we found a nice little traditional Greek restaurant for dinner.

It’s nice to eat much later in the evening when it is cool and, as we walked to the restaurant, we crossed the large square in Port Zákinthos. This is always a little bit of a challenge as it doubles as a mad, disorganized racecourse for Greek children screeching around at top speed in small electric cars. Clearly driver training to intimidate pedestrians starts early here and by adulthood the locals are well able to spot any lack of conviction in tourists using a zebra crossing (stripes of death). Any hesitation or eye contact with the driver instantly results in your sharing the crossing with the car no matter how far you are across it. Now well practiced we made it safely across the square with our guests and enjoyed a lovely evening in the restaurant which took over a small cul-de-sac with the tables laid out on the road.

Olives, olive oil and dried herbs

The other important business was to get Charlotte and Sophie added to the crew list and visit the authorities to make sure that our paperwork was all in order. That was a job for the morning when the offices opened again and so we also took the opportunity to get fresh bread, fruit and vegetables so that we could spend a few days at anchor.

Our first move, on Tuesday 15 July was just 16 ½ miles south around into the bay of Laganas. We had picked up a leaflet detailing all of the restrictions and regulations for this bay which aim to allow tourists to use the area whilst still preserving it as the most important nesting area in the Mediterranean for loggerhead turtles. It has been a long battle to generate regulations to protect the turtles but it seems to be working. There are just 5.5km of sandy beach which are suitable for the female turtles to lay their eggs; the same 5.5 km that tourists want to visit.

Marathonissi turtle nesting beach which exclusively produces the male turtle hatchlings    

We sailed past the uninhabited islet of Marathonissi pictured above. The small beach is just 370 metres long and receives only 9% of the turtle nests in Zákinthos but all of those nests produce male turtles. The sand on this small stretch of beach is a paler colour than the other beaches and so it reflects more sunlight. At egg-depth, therefore, this small beach is cooler. If the eggs are 29 degrees Celsius or above the eggs hatch as female; on Marathonissi the strong reflection of solar energy results in exclusively male hatchlings. When we passed it the beach was busy with visiting boats and there was even a floating ice-cream shop.

It is a beautiful beach but we chose not to visit and potentially disturb the nests. Instead we moved into the corner of the bay where we were permitted to anchor.

Órmos Kerí

We anchored in Órmos Kerí and went for a swim which gave Charlotte and Sophie the chance to see how clear the water is and spot some fish whilst snorkelling.

In the morning there was no wind and so we started to motor clockwise around the island to get to some of the tourist boat spots on Zákinthos. We did manage to sail for a short time but the passage up the west side of the island was mostly a motor. The chalk cliffs very much reminded us of the English Channel; it’s just that it was significantly warmer.

Órmos Vroma

Our lunchtime stop was in a deep inlet in the northwest corner of Zákinthos called Órmos Vroma. Our pilot book warns that the deep bottom is rocky with poor holding for the anchor and a criss-cross of debris and chains. The inlet is regularly visited by large tripper boats because of the caves here so we needed to tuck ourselves into the side by anchoring and then running a line to the shore. Typically the wind got up and we found ourselves trying to do this manoeuvre in a cross-wind. The anchor was laid and Nicky swam ashore with a line to attach us to a ring there but we found that the anchor didn’t bite properly on the smooth rocky bottom so we were attached at the stern but not the bow. After 3 attempts to re-lay the anchor whilst still attached at the stern we gave up that game and dropped the stern line so that we could anchor properly. Sophie swam ashore and brought the line back to the boat so that we were in good order for a lunch stop. However, despite our best efforts, during lunch it was clear that the anchor was slowly dragging. Lunch was eaten but our plan for a lazy swim over to the caves was cancelled, which was a little irritating. Also a little irritating was trying to raise our anchor along with some thick mooring ropes picked up from the bottom. Whilst stuck fast to this, a huge pirate tripper boat came into the inlet to do a spot turn between us and the caves. There was just enough space for them to do their tourist bit whilst we cleared our anchor. Fortunately, there was also [Ed: just!!!] enough space for a smaller tripper boat to hurtle through the tiny gap between us and the pirate ship at great speed as I’m not sure that they would have stopped had there not been the space! Happily, we had followed the pilot book advice to attach a tripping line to our anchor before we laid it so that allowed us, with a bit of careful direction from Nicky, swimming with a facemask on, to unhook ourselves from the heavy mooring ropes. We were free to continue clockwise around the island to get to the highlight of the day, Shipwreck Bay.

Justifiably popular with the tripperboats this picturesque bay features in the majority of Greek tourist publications. The combination of the high chalk cliffs, the sea colour and the wreck on the beach is very photogenic. I had always assumed that the intense colour of the water had been enhanced during printing the brochures, but arriving at the bay we realised that the sea really was this amazingly intense turquoise colour.

Definitely a touristy place to visit but it brought big smiles all round.

After much ‘wowing’ we headed off to visit the next tourist spot, the Blue Caves.

We had missed the best morning light to see the caves but the water was still an intense deep blue and incredibly clear. We anchored in 13 metres on a sloping seabed and could clearly see the anchor on the bottom, even from BV’s deck.

And the ace Charlotte/Sophie snorkelling team set off to swim ashore, into the caves and to enjoy swimming with shoals of fish.

The last bit of our day was a short sail into Áy Nikólaos, a lovely small harbour where we spent the night. In the morning we would leave Zákinthos and head for the island of Cephalonia. For now, however, it was time to enjoy dinner on board and, for the girls, a trip ashore to check out the nightlife.

Áy Nikólaos