We’re back in more ways than one: we’re back blogging (sorry
for the lack of posts recently) and we’re back from a wonderful maritime adventure with those
great people at Sailing Holidays.
This is Boating Bear Eddie picking up the tale of our
sailing adventure which has lasted two weeks and taken us to many of the
wonderful islands of the South Ionian seas of Greece.
Readers with a long memory will know that flotilla sailing
with Sailing Holidays is probably our favourite type of adventure, so good that
it simply has to be repeated, and this was in fact our fourth trip with Sailing
Holidays in the last 8 years. Our
first trip pre-dated this blog, but the other two have been reported in full
and can be found in the archives of 2010 and 2007.
The trips are so popular with B.U. members that we set a new
record for the biggest contingent travelling abroad – 7 of us. I was joined
by travelling bears George and Yorkie (of course), Irish bear Patrick, and our 3 members of Greek extraction: my
fellow boating bear Louis (who joined us at the end of our last flotilla) and
turtles Zak and Stavros (from Zachynthos).
Horse racing fan Patrick might seem like a strange choice of
travelling companion for a boating adventure, but there was a lot of sense to
his inclusion. He was there to be re-united with our good friends John and
Emily from Northern Ireland, who we’d met on our first flotilla and were due to
be sailing with us again. They had given Patrick to us when we visited them at
their Irish home. Patrick was very excited at the thought of seeing them again.
We were all very excited when we arrived at the Sailing
Holidays base at Sivota on the island of Lefkas. We set off along the harbour
searching all the many Sailing Holidays moored boats for one with the exciting
name of Analipsi, which was to be ours.
We soon found her ...
... and there was a mad scramble aboard to
check her out and admire her fine lines and her internal space. She instantly
got the paw of approval. We couldn’t spend long though as we had an even more
important job to do, to meet our lead crew.
We didn’t have to look hard as they were a friendly bunch
and as keen to meet us as we were to meet them. Our lead crew were Skipper Liz,
Hostie Pip and engineer Jamie. We liked them from our first meeting and
thankfully they seemed to like us too.
We felt very privileged to have a female skipper as they are
a rare breed. Liz is the only one this season, and in our opinion, better than many of her male
colleagues. The whole crew was a class act and, as a good lead crew are the key
to the best flotillas, we knew we had a great two weeks ahead of us.
We’ll be telling you lots more about these great folk and
all our new boating experiences in the days to come.
Back soon
Love Eddie and the crew of Analipsi
No comments:
Post a Comment