To Préveza

We left Dassia in Corfu early on 7 August and sailed (motored initially) southeast to the town of Préveza. As we left we saw a very strangely painted motoryacht that Neil had told us about; more ‘Liquorish Allsorts’ than exclusive paint scheme to my eye! We also got some lovely views of Corfu’s Old Fort bathed in the orange morning light.

Approaching Préveza

About 60 miles further south we arrived at the narrow dredged channel into the Ambracian Gulf. The channel was well buoyed but for some reason we couldn’t make out the green starboard channel marker buoys until we were very close; well camouflaged or just failing eyesight? Préveza is on the northern side of the entrance but ahead of us on the southern side was the Cleopatra Marina. There is a road tunnel under the channel but there is no pedestrian or cycle access to the tunnel. Our main reason for visiting Préveza was to meet up with Les, a supplier of Coppercoat antifouling, who was recommended by Bob and Andrea whom we met in Poros. Les works in the boat yards on the southern side of the channel and so we elected to moor up in the Cleopatra Marina to make sure that we met up with Les before the weekend. We won’t do anything with the Coppercoat immediately but will have it on board ready to touch up some damaged areas of the antifouling during the winter stop.

Préveza looked to be an interesting town to visit but the absolute priority was to tackle the mountain of washing that had built up whilst we had been enjoying ourselves in Corfu. Nicky sussed out the launderette service at the marina and BV was then adorned with the clean washing whilst it dried.

Apparently the restrictions on pedestrian and bike use of the cross channel tunnel mean that the local taxis charge an inflated rate for a trip across to Préveza. As a result, the marina runs a free daily water taxi service across to the town. It’s an absolutely brilliant 45 second service from the entrance of the marina across to the town quay in a jolly fast boat; it’s just a shame that you only get 2 hours ashore between the 10 and 12 am trips. However, it’s enough for some shopping and a quick coffee which is all we had thought we’d need.

Unfortunately, whilst we were in the marina on Friday morning I discovered that my mobile phone had stopped working. Our trip across to Préveza therefore also included a hunt for a mobile phone shop. Amazingly I found one with an on-site engineer who said that he could fix it for me. Back in England I suspect the advice would have been that I needed to buy a new one with all of the resultant faff that would entail, importing my phone number data and learning a new phone etc. Not so in Greece, “come back on Monday and I will have changed the touchscreen for you”. Excellent news and a good excuse to spend the weekend exploring a little of the Ambracian Gulf. We’d get to explore Préveza better when we returned.