Paxos, Greece

 

Anchorage at Paxos with Corfu in the distance

When we first anchored in Lefkada there was only one other boat at anchor and it was a Canadian boat.  In the evening, they stopped by to say hello and as it turns out she is American but has lived in Canada most of her life. Oddly enough her father actually lives in a town near us (DuQuoin, Illinois), now what are the chances that you run across someone at a anchorage in Greece who has family in your neck of the woods.  Unbelievable.  All we could do was shake our heads and marvel at the smallness of our world.

Close quarters!!

 Initially,from Lefkada we were planning to sail to Preveza and go to a marina but we didn't need fuel or water so we decided to sail on to Paxos instead.  The wind was supposed to be out of the east but instead it was out of the northeast.  The waves were big and the seas rough.  Later, in the morning the wind did finally shift east so we were on a beam reach but the waves were on our beam as well.  Hoisting the mainsail meant steering into some big nasty waves so we just limped along with the staysail until the waves calmed down a bit.  Of course, no sooner than we had the mainsail up the wind shifted again and was now behind us.  The mainsail is not good for downwind sailing so the mainsail came down. Some folks describe the wind in these parts as an adolescent who never knows which direction to go.  We can certainly attest to the winds fickleness😉 

Image from anchor alarm

 We had decided on an anchorage on the north end of the island called Lakka.  That is actually the name of the little village there.  Mind you this is the "off season" but you sure would not know it looking at that anchorage.  It was crowded!  When we first arrived it actually wasn't bad but all day long the boats kept coming.  By 1800, I counted 38 boats in the anchorage.  Of course, next morning a departing boat pulled up our anchor with his which we did not discover until the anchor alarm notified us.  This time we put a  float on the anchor before we re-set it.  We then went into town for a bit for some WiFi.  Wouldn't you know it in that short amount of time another charter boat came in and then pulled up our anchor trying to set theirs!  What the heck - twice in one day😕.  We re-set the anchor yet again and hoped for the best.  That sort of thing happens all the time over here as there are a lot of charter boats. and overall just a lot of boats.  Later that night I checked on our anchor alarm and was stunned to see that there were three boats showing up in our "swing circle".  I have never seen that occur before - boats were close, very close. Thank goodness the next morning we were able to get out of that mass of boats without any drama and set sail for Corfu.