Back again.

Its been a while since the last blog entry. Since heading to Geece we’ve had quite a few adventures and have done quite a few things.

When we arrived in Greece, we headed to Corfu, and Gouvia marina, which was to become our adopted home port for the next couple of months. We tidied the boat up as we were leaving it for a few weeks whilst we headed off to work.

To get to Midnight Sun, we flew via Athens, and fortunately our connecting flights gave us a few hours to see the sights. We headed for Acropolis and did the tourist thing of wandering around amazed at the scale of the whole thing. We paid for a tour guide and discovered a number of fantastic facts such as:

- Acropolis is actually the name of the town perched on the hill.

- It was built using Spartan war spoils entirely by free labour and craftsmen – no slaves.

- The entire construction of the temples, Parthenon etc took only 14 years to complete.

After our whistle-stop tour of Athens we flew out to Kos, and joined Midnight Sun.

Things went well for a while and it was very interesting getting used to sailing and living on a large boat. The boat is over 20 years old and is suffering a bit from lack of maintenance and layer upon layer of additions, stop-gap solutions and modifications. But overall it is in a good state and handled the weather very well.

The Aegean during August is renown for its strong winds, and this year was no different. We had consistent force 6 and above. Fortunately the 82’ steel racing hull handled waves and weather fine, so we were quite safe. Our first charter started violently with a F8 gale and for the first night whilst at anchor we had gusts of up to 49 knots. The guests were ok but since this was their first introduction to sailing, were a bit perturbed.

We travelled around the Aegean to Ios, Kos, Santorini and many typically greek islands and towns. Santorini was stunning.

Things were fine, but after about three weeks Jacqui and I were having problems with the skipper and felt compelled to leave. It was unfortunate as it was great experience and we were looking forward to the route over the next few weeks to Sardinia and Cannes.

On arriving back at Gouvia in Corfu we quickly picked up another job until the end of the season (end sept) working as lead crew on a yacht flotilla. It is pretty good fun, hanging out in the sun, helping our crews and watching everyone mess up mooring etc, pretty much like our normal cruising!

We’re based in Corfu and spend two weeks out at a time sailing south to Levkas, Mevagisi, Ithaca etc. Vagari is in the company’s home port safely tucked away until we get back to her in a few weeks to put her to bed in a greek marina for the winter.

Its going pretty well, with busy times in the morning where I have to do briefings and maintenance for our 8 – 10 boats before we let them go for the day. We then (generally) motor to the destination, grab an hour to ourselves then Jacqui scouts around for tavernas, bars, rubbish, showers etc before the boats start coming in between 4 and 6. More maintenance, grab a shower then off to a taverna for a group meal (which fortunately is usually free for us in true holiday rep style).

Weather is great here, suns out, warm evenings etc… we’ve been following the weather in the news and it sounds very shitty in the UK.

Will be back 1st or 2^nd week of Oct and are looking forward to being at home for a bit – although I’m trying to arrange an Atlantic trip and Caribbean work for later in the year so it may be a short stay in Blighty.