17. The Bluest water EVER - Sailing to Paxos and Corfu - Sailing the Greek Islands

Last week life started to slow down in the Ionian as we explored stunning Ithaca and Meganese. This week we cruised through the Lefkas canal before we set sail for Paxos and Corfu where the water is ridiculously blue and we enjoy a bit of the city life. Our path for this week would take us from Meganese through the Lefkas canal and on to Paxos for a few days before sailing to our final destination in Greece, Corfu. It's move-in day. We're out of here. I've got to go over and undo those lines now. Just smashing canals these days. Yeah. What's today? Today is the Lefkas canal. Yesterday was the British canal. Not quite yesterday but yeah. At least we don't have to pay for this one. Yeah. Free. That's a win. Yeah. We spoke to a lady in our anchorage who said it was all pretty easy and straightforward. Yeah. It's been dredged a couple years ago so. And we hope when we get there they're going to be open. So it's only they only open on the hour so. The bridge yeah. The bridge at the end opens in the hour and we're cutting it very fine to get there by 9am. We'll see. We'll see. And you're meant to go four knots within the canal so we may not be sticking to that speed limit. It's like 4.2 or something. Yeah. Yes that's right. With Navionics as a rough guide into the entrance we were pleased to find a wide well-marked channel and calm waters for the entire transit through. Southern end of the Lefkas canal. Let's go. I left this marina behind you. Yeah. What are you doing? It doesn't look like we're moving. Nope we're just chilling waiting for the bridge to open. We got here, well it's five minutes to nine and it's supposed to open on the hour every hour so we're just waiting. We can see it and we can see the cars going across it and it's still shut so we just cruise here waiting. It was never enough so please slow down. What's going on Skip? Oh I'm just chilling loving this nice slow sail. We're only going about four knots but we've only got seven knots of true wind so um it's just very pleasant and there's some nice rolly waves coming in. Nothing too sharp or big so. Yeah it's beautiful and fun. How's the fish situation going? We don't talk about the fish anymore until I catch something. You won't hear about it. This little legend hitched a ride with us into Paxos and who could blame him. This place was crazy with the bluest water we'd ever seen. We'd seen pictures of lacquer on Paxos before and just thought the water colour had been enhanced but it was real and we loved it. I really don't think I've seen bluer water than this, it's so good. No I never have. It's too cold to swim though. We've come 40 nautical miles today I think from Meganisi through the Lefkes canal and up to lacquer anchorage in Paxos which was not our original plan. We planned to go to a southern anchorage on Paxos, Monganisi. Sounds like a lovely place. Oh it didn't smell very good either. What do you mean it didn't smell very good? Well how do we prove it? Well we read that there were sulphur fumes so we cruised in there and we thought we were like oh it's okay. We were like before we even saw the boats we were like I think we need to abort this. It smelled like egg. It smelled like terrible egg. It did and then we saw it was actually quite busy. It was a small bay and there were a few boats in there already so all of those factors combined contributed to us ending up here in lacquer Paxos. Yeah yeah and it's really really quiet. Yeah we were concerned because it's supposed to be one of the busiest anchorages in the Med probably. Yeah. But it's just us and two others so it's great. How deep are we? 3.5 meters deep. Our draft is 2.3 so it's the shallowest we've been. Which I don't love but I'm dealing. Yeah we're going to chill out here for another day and then we're going to Corfu before we, hard to say but we're checking out of Greece. Heading home after a couple of little bevies over at the Paxos town centre. Yep not today so there was only one. We thought we really thought we should celebrate for Greece. Yeah we did we've been here a while now. Not attached someone's had too many wines. I had one small wine. Thank you very much. The southern tip of Corfu. The winds have arrived 12 troop and yep I was going well. Well we've just finished our sail from Paxos to Corfu and Jase has been the champion and taken off in the tender to go get some food for us for this evening and here he comes. What did you think of Corfu? It's pretty slow over there currently um but they got they had what we needed which was uh nachos and beers so that's that's a plus. I had to adapt slightly to a few little things because I'm missing a few veggies that you required. Oh great great let's see what you've got. But but I'm sure they'll restock another day. We're off to uh Corfu and uh we're just just tying up the uh little kawaii. Yeah padlocked her on. She's in demand. Of course and there's a big kawaii out there. Corfu is the second largest Ionian island behind Cephalonia although with a population of around 100 000 almost three times the population of Cephalonia it felt a lot larger. The old fort of Corfu has a lot of history including the successful defense against all three major ottoman sieges and the use of it by nazis in world war ii. Today the fortress houses the public library of Corfu. There's also grounds for various types of art and culture exhibits and use in movie scenes such as James Bond. As we spent winter in the greek islands we hadn't seen many tabernas open so we decided to make the most it's buzzy we haven't seen as much action in greece so far so we're kind of making the most of it yeah it feels like we're on holiday. Yeah we've left the boat behind and we are just out checking out Corfu so it's kind of nice it's fun and um haven't been out in a while so we thought we'd just have a little bit of fun and well we're always having fun but yeah just taking in this pretty cool city. As we'd spent the last six months on the boat it was nice just sitting back and watching people go by. Thank you very much. I don't know what these are what are they how's your celery? Very good me and Corfu picked up some essential items like celery perfect and we're off to the bus home. If you come to Greece this is what you gotta buy. Thank you. After enjoying a day in Corfu town it was back to exercising, peaceful anchorages and exploring more of the island. We sailed between three different villages and anchorages depending on the wind Hypsos, Stephanos and Cassiope. Main sail out now we're cruising down the coast we're still not sure there's lots of mountains we're only going about five knots 5.4 we just don't have much out yet so we're not sure what's gonna get gusting too. No we've only got three quarters of the main out but she's we're cruising along pretty quick and we got nowhere to be so just enjoying it enjoying it and uh yeah we might put a little bit of the head sail out once we know what the gusts are doing. Once we caught sight of the Albanian city of Saranda so close to Corfu it became very real that we would soon be leaving Greece for Croatia is there a place with sun all year round and pina coladas with pretty faces and sand on the ground