Sailing off Corfu

On Sunday 3 August we met up with Nici, Neil, Jade and Ben to go sailing. We headed out from Dassia towards the picturesque bays on Corfu’s north-east coast. There were 3 pre-birthday celebration objectives: firstly, to try out Neil’s present, an underwater video camera; secondly, to visit a fab restaurant in Ómos Agni for lunch; and thirdly, to have lots of fun sailing and swimming.

Before that however, the priority was to munch some of the lovely baklava with a coffee get the day going properly. Drizzled with honey they are very sweet but the flavour of the nuts and other fillings are lovely; we certainly all got our sugar fix for the morning!

Our route took us out past a villa which was used in one of the James Bond movies, a Rothchild’s villa which looked like a small castle, and past several large yachts; all helping to confirm that we are in an exclusive playground. There was absolutely no wind so we motored along, looked at the sites and then anchored in Ómos Agni.

The anchor had barely hit the seabed when there were the first splashes from people diving in. Neil’s underwater camera was successfully tested out, photographing and filming a variety of leaping off the boat and underwater antics, all of which helped us to build up an appetite.

This was just as well because we had booked a table at Toula’s for lunch – very much the highlight of the day. Their visitors’ book reads like a celebrity who’s who list and we could see why it is so popular. We were totally spoiled with great food and excellent service all in a beautiful location.

Replete, we left Toula’s very happy despite there still not being a breath of wind. The plan for Neil to enjoy some afternoon sailing was therefore changed into moving a few bays west and anchoring again where there is a ve and a short underwater tunnel we could swim through.

We were very lucky as the tunnel is very popular with tripperboats. There were some there when we arrived but they quickly moved off leaving us to enjoy swimming through the tunnel on or own. As you can see, Neil’s underwater video camera was put to good use again.

Back on board BV, we lazed around for a bit before the challenge was set as to who could do the best backwards dive off the pulpit step. Marking was harsh but I think everyone agreed that Nicky’s dive was the most elegant.

Still with no wind we made our way back to the anchorage off Dassia and rounded off the day with an evening of drinks and nibbles in the cockpit.

Neil had kindly brought out some bits and pieces for BV with him including an LED anchor light for the masthead which uses much less power than the bulb supplied with the light fitting. One of our early morning tasks was, therefore, to winch me up to the top of the mast to bring down the light unit, change the bulb and then go up the mast again to refit it. Happily, we got the job done well before the sea was chopped up by the passing speedboats so I didn’t get bounced around the mast.

But the ‘Birthday Boy’ spent the morning of his birthday having great fun bouncing around – in a doughnut circling BV. Less like 60, more like age 16!

In the evening we all took the bus into Kérkira (Corfu Town) where we again enjoyed drinks in the Esplanade before an excellent birthday dinner in one of the restaurants in the old town. Neil’s been visiting Corfu through his work for a number of years now and we certainly benefitted from the local area knowledge of good places to eat that he has amassed.

Since there had been no wind on 3 August we took everyone sailing again the following day, 6 August.

We sailed up to Órmos Áy Stefanou and anchored for lunch whilst the wind built. In fact, it built so much that the bay started to funnel the wind very strongly, pushing BV around and breaking out her anchor. We moved around the corner and re-anchored so that we could swim. However, the real game for the day was sailing so before long we headed back towards Dassia. Neil wanted some wind to sail and we certainly had that, with gusts of up to 35 knots across the deck but it was variable. Sometimes we had barely 10 knots and then it was back up to 30+ knots because of the effect of the mountains to our north. The spray flew and the sea was covered in whitecaps as we made our way into the shelter of the bay off Dassia. For extra protection, we anchored at the northern end of the bay rather than where we had previously anchored and then took our guests ashore in the dinghy leaving just Nicky and me on board for our last night in Dassia; we’d be heading south towards Préveza early on 7 August.