We enjoyed our evening in Zakynthos town although it was a bit stressful keeping out of the way of ferries while we waited to be parked by our lead crew, working together with the helpful harbourmaster. There were some good shops in the town so we bought everything we needed for the cocktail competition (more on that soon) and we also bought a few small Christmas presents.
We didn't stay out late though, as we had an early start the next morning. Our lead crew wanted us away around 7.30 a.m. as we had a long day ahead of us. We had a massive 42 nautical miles to cover to take us back to Cephalonia and the port of Ag Euphimia. At a motoring speed of just over 4.5 knots and a variable sailing speed, you can see the reason for our early departure.
As I am always up early, I was more than happy to make an early start. Leaving before the Sailing Holidays boat that had come in after us the night before, turned out not to be such a bright idea, when we discovered their anchor had been laid on top of ours and we were taking it up as well as our own.
Our male minder did a great job of lifting the extra anchor up and over ours, with the aid of a boat hook. This saved the skipper, who was supervising from his inflatable, from having to take an early morning swim, so he was pleased with us.
As you can see when our anchor finally came up it, was very muddy and some of the mud had ended up on our minder. It was reassuring though to know that there had been such good holding in the harbour.
It wasn't long before we saw our lead boat, Loutraki, (which leaves harbour last) come steaming up towards us, thanks to her bigger engine. We got ready to take a photo, but then she stopped dead and floundered in the water. We thought about going back to help, but as they had Sailing Holidays no.1 engineer, Richard, on board, we didn't think there would be much we could do. Sure enough Richard soon had the problem with the engine fixed, and then Loutraki really did steam past us.
All the lead boats have a great collection of flags which are really useful for spotting them when you're out at sea. Our lead crew were flying flags from New Zealand and England and were even flying Warwickshire's bear and staff. This went down well, as the longer standing members of both the Norfolk & Suffolk branches, originate from Warwickshire, and,of course, the Midlands branch still have their bear cave there.
The rest of the trip passed without incident and it was a lovely long day at sea. We were tired, but very happy bears.
Lots of love Eddie, George & Yorkie xxx
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