We woke early for our 20nm trip to the
Corinth Canal – we wanted to get there as early as possible to avoid congestion
as well as to avoid the afternoon winds which can pick up and blow you either
through the Canal or against you. As it
was, we had a fairly smooth motor that morning and arrived at the entrance to
the canal by about 11:30am, together with a large motor yacht and a Romanian
Coast Guard vessel. Because the Romanian
Coast Guard vessel was required to
complete some paperwork, we had to wait for the pilot boat to come through
from the other side, and the paperwork to be completed before we could go
through so it was 1pm before we began our journey. By this time, of course, the wind had picked
up so that we had a good 15 knots on our nose going through the canal. As you arrive at either entrance, you are
required to notify (by VHF radio) the Canal authorities of your desire to
transit the Canal. They will queue you
up (according to their method) and you follow the boat in front as quickly as
you can. Payment is made at the eastern
end of the Canal either before you transit (if coming from the east) or after
you transit (if coming from the west) and it’s not cheap! Apparently the Corinth Canal is the most
expensive (dollar per metre) transit point in the world. Not surprisingly, it is closed one day a week
(Tuesdays) from 6am to 6pm for repairs, and as we motored along we could see
why. The cliffs are crumbling, the walls
at the base are eroding and it’s pretty narrow.
It must be a real nail-biter for boats any wider than ours (and there
were several cargo ships considerably larger than our boat). We were last in the queue for our crossing
and the radio authority kept telling us to hurry up as there were boats waiting
to come through on the other side. We
didn’t take it personally as he did the same thing for the last boat coming the
other way as we were waiting. It was an
awesome experience and Tad guided Bisou safely to the other side where we had a
bit of a scramble to get a place alongside the wharf to pay our transit fee. By this time it was afternoon and we needed
to find a place to anchor for the night – we had anticipated a northwesterly
(prevailing wind) but the wind was blowing from the southeast and so we headed
south to look for somewhere safe and calm.
The rail and road bridges of the Corinth Canal
The sheer cliff sides of the canal
Bison negotiating the last bit of the canal
As I have stated previously, we rely
heavily on both our electronic charts (Raymarine) as well as the pilot guides
(like travel guides but for cruisers) for information regarding
anchorages. Unfortunately the pilot
guides are rarely up to date (ours is 3 years old) and so much can change in a
short time. The bay we chose to anchor in
was much too deep for us (the chart showed sand and shallower close to shore)
but luckily there were large moorings which did not seem to be used. There were some fishing boats and another
ferry/barge type of vessel moored nearby; the bay was very protected and we
figured that we would be pretty safe on the large mooring with little or no
wind, as long as some boat didn’t come along and want it back!
Our mooring among the fishing boats
A lovely sunset to end the day
There was a nice pebble beach ashore with
some local young men camping, as well as a bunch of parked cars. Later in the
day we discovered that the cars belonged to fish farm workers that came ashore
on one of the barge-type boats that are used to carry the feed out to the
fish. They proceeded to moor on another
couple of moorings (not ours) so we were secure for the night. We celebrated by having a sunset cruise
around the bay in our dinghy with a glass each of our favourite ‘apero’ Amarula
(from Africa). It was a lovely calm evening
and night and we slept well after a long day.
No comments:
Post a Comment