011: Surviving a Stormy Lee Shore at Anchor in Lakka before Sailing to Gaios on Paxos

After a tense night anchored on a lee shore we up’d anchor and sailed to Gaios. There we found a quaint village, went for beautiful walks in the olive groves and even got the bikes out. We thought we’d found treasure on the sea bed (which would have paid for the extortionate mooring fees!) but it turned out to be just a bag of shells.

TRANSCRIPT:

The Beaufort scale tonight is a force 9. It’s 55 miles per hour winds.

Okay it’s 4 o’clock in the morning. I think we’re through the worst of it now. One of the buildings I was using as a transit switch its lights out at about half past three which completely confused me so I had a bit of a panic. The anchor chain seems to have held The wind’s changed direction a bit so the swell’s not so bad. So I think we’re gonna be all right. So I think a cup of tea and get my sleeping bag. I’ll stay on deck for now. Might as well see the rest of the night out on deck.

Everybody sleep alright last night? No! It was really stormy and I could hear the wave.. really big waves splashing on my cabin.

So the next day the weather calmed a bit so he could go around the corner and we went into a little inlet called Gaios on the same island of Paxos. It’s really pretty. We went stern to. We had a few problems getting the anchor down and we had to sort of do it again because it wasn’t holding again. We were really relieved we didn’t go there the night before because it wouldn’t have been good the night
before; it was better to stay where we were. But it was a lovely town and we got the bikes out. My oldest daughter went cycling with dad.

We’ve come to a new place and we’re looking around to see if there are any good shops or cafes. And now we’re going along the sea because over there is a dead end and a place where the ferries come in and out. And it’s quite a nice path.. like a winding path.

It was a really nice place to stay for a few days. We went for a walk in the olive groves right to the top of the hill and the kids loved that. We just talk as we do it; it was good to get our legs working and good to spend time with them. Yeah we even found a handbag at the bottom of the sea so my middle son dove down to try and retrieve it and we couldn’t wait to see what was inside – we thought there might be some money and some treasure but when we opened it up it turned out that was just a whole bunch of shells. The other thing about that place in Gaios – it was a town quay so we we only really expected to pay about 10 euros but the authorities came around and we got charged about 35 euros. It was really expensive and it’s not something we can afford to pay every night because we’re on a budget.

Yeah we’re leaving Paxos and going to Parga again. Paxos was really quaint. There were lovely squares and little alleyways we are cycling down. We had a few traumas like the washing machine flooded the boat. Right just got the washing machine going and oh yeah and our anchor wouldn’t bike as well – that was pretty bad – and we got charged loads of money it was like 35 euros for one night which we can’t afford to pay that. So luckily she didn’t come round the next night so we’ve got two nights for 35 euros which was a bit better. So we had a lovely walk up the hill and a lovely two days actually – two days of good home schooling as well kids have really enjoyed it haven’t you kids? No! We’re going to Parga which is over there
somewhere.

The kids are more confident on the boat – they want to move around the boat a bit more so we’ve kind of got the lifejackets out and the lifelines so they can clip on they can move about the boat quite comfortably. As we’ve been going along I’ve been trying to fix the kiddie netting on which just makes it extra safe really on the boat. We’re still trying to work out what safety measures we’re gonna use really. Yeah that’s probably a whole blog in itself.

When we anchor down we’ve got dinghy that gets us to shore and back and the dinghy has been repaired. There was quite a few things wrong with it. Some of those things repair but not everything could be repaired so it still leaks quite a bit; we have to keep pumping it out. It’s not the most reliable dinghy at the moment – it’ll be nice one day maybe to replace it.

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