To Spartakhori

We left the anchorage at Préveza in the early afternoon of Monday 11 August bound for the Levkas canal and the island of Meganisi beyond. In best RYA fashion we should have completed a full passage plan before departing and, had we done so, we would have left either 30 mins earlier or later, so as to time our arrival at the northern entrance to the canal at bridge opening time. As it was, we just slowed down by rolling away some [Ed – quite a lot!] of the genoa, which was a bit of a waste of a good sailing wind, but better than jilling around under engine or hove to for too long.

The castle overlooks the old entrance to the canal and to the left (upper picture) are the crags with St Anthony’s Cave [Lower picture is looking back northeast from inside the current canal]

However, slowing down gave us ample time and opportunity to enjoy getting back into clear blue (rather than murky greenish) seas again and to compare the line of the current canal with that of the ancient canal shown in Tim Severin’s book and which can still be made out on the current charts. His hypothesis is that, with the canal of Ulysses’ time running very close into the mainland shore, Scylla’s lair was actually a cave in crag on the western slopes of Mount Lamia, on the mainland shore of Greece, just above the entrance to the canal. Having passed the Sirens, and as they approached Scylla’s lair, Ulysses and his crew came across an area of ‘raging surf’. Severin’s theory is that this was the surf breaking on Plaka Spit, which protected the entrance to the canal at that time. Plaka Spit still exists today and the western shore of the ancient canal can still be made out as the rasied beach in the picture below (right) behind the line of yachts.

Having satisfied our urge for ancient history, we redirected our attention to our transit of the canal. In the last 10 minutes before the bridge opened, there were about a dozen yachts circling outside, which made for quite a traffic jam when they all started to move towards the canal entrance and the bridge with about 5 minutes to go. We ended up third in the queue behind a couple of large catamarans, one of which decided to drop its anchor in the approach to the bridge literally a minute before the bridge opened. We dodged past and so became number 2.

For a while anyway, before the impatient catamaran driver ignored the 4kt canal speed limit and raced past us both to take the lead.

Mosying along watching the world go by we could see the attractions of canalboating. We also had lots of time to spot the old fortifications protecting the canal; it has clearly been a strategic thoroughfare for millenia.

Once through the canal we had hoped to be able to set sail again but the brisk northwesterly wind to the north of the canal was blocked by the Levkas island so we ended up motoring through a calm. Perhaps we should have chosen to sail downwind around the outside of Levkas (and perhaps see Ulysses’ Roving Rocks, Sesola) though that would have added a lot of additional mileage given that we wanted to stop off in some of the fjord-like inlets around the north of Meganisi.

But, we’d made our choice and the scenery on the eastern side of Levkas is lovely which made up for the lack of wind.

We had decided to spend the night at Spartakhori with its village clinging to the hilltop above the port. Though the pilot book describes the bay as very deep for anchoring, it also shows plenty of mooring berths. However, by the time we arrived the harbour was very busy and the only available berths were on the quays at the head of the bay. We tried to moor on the one with the sign saying ‘Free Port’ (ie not linked to a restaurant), which was the further quay from the nearest taverna, but we were shooed away by a chap from the taverna who said that he wanted it for a larger boat. Though we were clear that we did not want to eat in the taverna (we had plenty of food on board which would go to waste if it were not eaten) he insisted that we moor closer to the taverna, gave us a run around of 4 moorings before deciding which one to allocate to us and then got stroppy with us the next day when we hadn’t eaten ashore.

The whole mooring palaver put a little bit of a dampener on what is a lovely, scenic little bay. Whilst we understand that the locals have a short window each year in which to generate income from tourism, we don’t like to see one establishment try to take over a whole chunk of a port for their own gain. The other village restaurants and shops are just as entitled to our custom and we should be allowed to choose freely. By way of recompense for the use of the lazy line mooring we did we did buy some of their overpriced water which we didn’t really need, but it would have been better if we had been allowed to use the main quay we had tried to use in the first place (although it does seem that the restaurant thinks they are entitled to that area as well).

Rod Heikell says that the village above the port is well worth the steep walk uphill, both for the views across the north part of the inland sea and because the village itself is enchanting. So, the following morning we decided we should restart our Tuesday hills and sprints routine (JP Macé’s Running Club at home has a lot to answer for!) and took ourselves off for a breath-taking [Ed, literally!] 40min run.

The morning light certainly set off the views nicely and it was a good way to start the day.

Spartakhori