With the weather forecasting clear skies
but strong westerly winds, we decided to make a long day of it the next day and
headed south for the southern coast of Cephalonia – back to one of our
favourite anchorages at Katelios Bay. As
usual, the morning started with little wind as we motored along the imposing
heights of the western side of Kalamos island, but as we approached the end of
the ‘inland sea’ and the protection from Levkada and Meganisi, the wind picked
up. We were able to raise the main and
genoa and started sailing for the first time in awhile. We stopped in at Atoko Island in mid-channel
to take a look at ‘one house bay’ (one of the islands that is uninhabited but
for a couple of houses – actually a house and a chapel) as a possible
swim/lunch stop, but it was full of daytripper boats as well as charter yachts
and the wind was such that it would not have been a comfortable stop, so we
carried on. As we sailed down the east
coast of Ithaca towards the southern tip of Cephalonia, the wind kept rising to
a steady 35 knots (a great deal more than predicted!) but Bisou held her own
and flew south averaging 7-8 knots. We
would have gone faster but the gusts were raising some fairly big swells which,
while not on the nose, were coming almost beam on and causing some splashing –
not wanting to soak the boat in salt spray, Tad kept the speed down. We were doing well with our progress,
although it had been a long day already, when it was time to round the southeastern
cape of Cephalonia – we already knew that the prevailing winds curve around the
west coast of Cephalonia and blow almost due west to southwest along the south
coast but we were unprepared with the force with which we faced these winds as
we rounded the cape. From almost a
beam-on wind we came face-to-face with an on-the-nose 40 to 45 knots of wind
with seas to match. We had already
lowered and furled the sails and were motoring which was lucky as it would not
have been fun to try and do that in these conditions. Our last two nautical miles took us almost an
hour to complete and were splashy and uncomfortable but at least we knew the
anchorage well and would have good holding in sand with little swell. We were surprised to see a few boats in the anchorage
as we arrived, but with a draft of just 1.1m we are able to slip in fairly
close to shore where the monohulls usually dare not. Tired but happy to be back out of the wind
and swell we had an early night.
Because we had been on the move for a couple
of days now, we chose to stay another day and night in Katelios. It’s such a cute village and a lovely
anchorage, and the next day was a great deal calmer so that we were able to
enjoy ‘sundowners’ on the trampoline.
Although we wanted to head south, the winds
were not quite ready for that journey so we meandered west to another favourite
anchorage on the Cephalonian south coast – Pessades. Once again, there were a couple of other
boats already here but as it is a large bay, there was no problem with us
finding the perfect place to stop. We
didn’t go ashore this time as we spent all our time snorkeling and swimming in
the beautiful clear water.
The next day we headed south again – this
time to the southern end of Zykanthos.
We had read about the sea turtles Caretta
caretta in the pilot guide as well
as hearing about it from other yachting friends and so were anxious to see it
for ourselves. The predicted
northwesterlies didn’t really emerge and so we motor-sailed the 30nm to
Keri. The coastline of Zykanthos is
quite spectacular on the west side with craggy cliffs, clefts with tiny sandy
beaches and lots of caves. Unfortunately
the water is very deep along this coastline so there is nowhere to drop and
anchor and go exploring in a dinghy – this has to be done with one of the
tripper boats. We reached Keri in the
late afternoon and marveled at the size of the bay. A great deal of the bay (about 2/3) is
protected sea and beach for the sea turtles and boats may not enter or anchor
in the area. The part of the bay in
which we were anchoring is supposed to be restricted to 6 knots or less and yet
there were a huge number of small motor boats (as well as larger day-tripper
boats) zooming in and out of the bay around the anchorage. Very disappointing that this is not being
patrolled even though the egg-laying season is over by now (end of
August). We went ashore for a stroll
later in the evening and had a lovely dinner at a rooftop taverna with views
over the harbour. There’s not much to
the town – some tavernas, a supermarket or two, some dive and motorboat rental
shops and that’s about it. Further along
the bay, Lagana Beach, is the popular tourist area with hotels, beaches and probably
all kinds of noise. We didn’t venture
over there as we couldn’t reach it by dinghy or boat and we weren’t interested
enough to ride our bikes or catch a bus to get there.
A cute lantern by a restaurant at Katelios
The southwest coast of Zykanthos
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