Othnoi

Big dent from hitting the whale

One day before we departed from Corfu a boat came in and docked beside us. On board were a group of young people with the Captain being from Germany and his wife from Vermont!  They had been sailing since June from their starting point in the Baltic Sea. As we were talking we noticed a big dent in the side of their aluminum boat and inquired about it.  Somewhere off the coast of Sicily, near Licata, they had hit a sleeping whale.  Whales don't show up on radar and are hard to see at night!  Fortunately, their boat is aluminum so there was not serious damage to the hull.  It would have been a different story if the boat had been fiberglass.  We made a mental note to watch for whales in Sicily😄.

 

Pass between Greece and Albania - Greece on the left, Albania on the right

Greece does not make it easy for you to leave Greece the right way.  As a sailing vessel you are required to "check out" of Greece with the Coast Guard and turn in your "transit log".  All fine except the only place to "check out" was Corfu.  Our plan was to sail to Erikoussa or Othnoi (or both) and then it would be just a 45 nm sail over to Italy.  We were told you can go to the outer islands but then you have to come back to Corfu and check out.  Well, of course, we had no plans to sail back to Corfu as we were just stopping at those islands for a night to shorten our distance to Italy.  Our options were to stop at one of the outer islands even though we were already checked out or sail all the way from Corfu to Italy.  By law you must be out of Greece within 24 hours of checking out so if we stopped we would be outside of the law.  We checked with the agent who assisted us when we entered Greece and he told us to check out in Corfu and then go to Erikoussa.  He said if anyone questioned us that we were to say we needed to seek a safe harbor and have them call him.  Assurances were made that we would not be fined or worse.  We had tried for days to reach Erikoussa to reserve a spot but never reached the harbormaster.  Eventually, we decided to skip Erikoussa and just sail to Othnoi.  Yes, there is bureaucracy everywhere!

Othnoi, Greece

Once the storms had passed we set sail for Othnoi.  It was a nice day for sailing, breezy but the winds were not too strong.  We reached Othnoi an hour earlier than expected and even though we had contacted the harbormaster there was no-one around.  It was a veritable ghost town.  So we tied ourselves up to the quay and thought things through.  We noticed that Talaria was hobby horsing with just 10 knots of wind and the wind would pick up over night.  It is shallow all around the entrance and we started thinking of how difficult it might be to get out of there at night should the wind from the east pick up to the point where we were really uncomfortable.  We also knew that once we reached Italy we would not have much time to make it to Brindisi before the wind shifted north.  Quite possibly we would get stuck in Otranto for days as we had no desire to battle a head wind.  After some thought and discussion we decided to heat up thermos of water, eat something and then keep going to Italy.  

Sun setting on the way to Italy

 At 1630 we untied and set sail for Otranto, Italy.  We thought we would just sail overnight while the seas were calm.  Our working plan was to sail to Otranto and then decide if we wanted to approach the harbor at night and make it to Brindisi the next day or just sail on to Brindisi.