013: Dinghy Sailing, Paddle boarding and Kayaking at Neilson's Ionian Yacht Charter Base

We head south through the Lefkas Canal and into the Southern Ionion to meet up with some friends chartering a yacht from our old employer – Neilson Active Holidays. We arrived early – they arrived late, so we had some fun on the beach until they arrived.

TRANSCRIPT

This blog is all about how he left two rocks Bay a bit reluctantly and we headed down south to the South Ionian seas. On the way down to the South Ionian we stopped to Preveza to charge up our batteries.

As we’ve been living on the boat for a while we’ve been getting the kids more involved in some of the jobs around the boat – some domestic chores – they get pocket money for doing it. It’s something that I’ve always wanted to try and do when we lived back in England but there was never time it was always quicker to do it yourself. But I really wanted to start a new life here and just get the kids more involved in the whole daily routine.

So we heard that some of our good friends were coming out and they were going to charter a boat and so we were really excited to go and meet up with them and perhaps sail with them, so we headed south which meant going through the Lefkas Canal. It’s quite a tricky place to get through. There’s boats wanting to go both ways through the canal. It has silted up quite a bit so it is quite shallow in areas that it doesn’t tell you on the charts so you’ve really got to have a little bit of local knowledge. And the bridge – the guy only opens it on the hour every hour and it’s very precise. If you’re coming from the north which we were, you have to wait for a while; you have to wait for the bridge to open and there’s nowhere to moor up because it’s too shallow at sides so you have to kind of just hold yourself there. And then when he finally opens it up you have to get through as quick as possible because he doesn’t keep it open for very long because he’s got to stop all the traffic that’s getting on and off the islands. It is the only connection that Lefkada has to the main so you wait, the bridge opens and then it’s like a mad dash to get through. Oh, he’s starting to close it now! So we anchored off outside the harbour at Palairos. The next morning we got into our dinghy and we headed into the harbour and we continued our boat training with the children – teaching them how to use the outboard engine.

So we arrived at the Neilson base in Vounaki. It’s a new place; it’s different to where we used to work but it’s a really nice resort so we went to the marina to see if our friends had arrived and it brought back a lot of memories and memories of when we used to work for Neilson when we were flotilla skippers and it was actually turnaround day and it reminded us of those days where all the boats came back in and you have to get everything fixed and ready for the new guests to arrive. ‘The turnaround day – fixing, unblocking..’ We couldn’t believe it when we saw all the Neilson boats in this lovely marina because we remember the days when they were at their other base and the boats were parked on the mud when they’re not being used and there was just one pontoon so it was great to see how it expanded and the beach looked brilliant. It was really nice chatting to the staff there and sharing some of our experiences when we used to work for Neilson and it was really nice to hear from the staff about their experiences of working for Neilson now. When we went to the marina to see if our friends had arrived, we realised that they were on a later flight. On that day a lot of people are arriving or leaving so it turns out that the beach was not that busy and the guests were busy getting there and inductions and so forth.

So we waited on the beach for them. The wind conditions were perfect and it was so great to get out on a Wayfarer with the kids and not have to put on all our wet suits and gloves and everything’s keep warm. We’re going sailing now! So when our friends finally arrived we took their kids off with ours so they could have a good time and so that the parents could unpack and get ready to set sail. When everyone was ready we went back to our boats and so the next day we were all ready to go. We lifted our anchor and off we went with our friends Craig and Jamie and their children around the South Ionian.

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