Going Nowhere

Vlicho bay has a well known nickname amongst the sailing community, being such a safe and comfortable anchorage, once you’re there, it’s often difficult to find a good reason to leave, so it’s no surprise that it is affectionately known as ‘Velcro’!

With stormy weather all around, we enjoyed a very lazy time at anchor in ‘Velcro’, despite the clouds over the mountains, it was mostly warm and sunny in the bay.

With two good bakeries, numerous restaurants, a supermarket, chandlery, laundry and fuel station, there’s everything you need, providing that you have a reliable dinghy and outboard of course. I’m happy to say that Fred and Ed were very busy and very well behaved.

We were pleased to see that many of the sunken boats, that had previously been along the shoreline, have been removed with the exception of this rather large one.

Our days were spent relaxing after doing a few odd jobs and going ashore to make the most of the local amenities. Many of our evenings involved socialising as we had a steady stream of fellow sailors come into the bay, whom we had met previously at various times on our travels.

After a few days we were getting low on water, the one downside of ‘Velcro’ is that the water is not very clear so we didn’t want to run the water maker, but lo and behold, we found a very convenient water tap among the bushes beside some fishing boats.

Eventually the weather had cleared and the wind was favourable to leave the bay and head south, that’s if we could get our anchor up after being here so long. Thankfully, after a bit of tugging and toing and froing, the anchor came up and we motored out of the bay, leaving ‘Velcro’ behind us.

Once out in the open water we wanted to calibrate our new autopilot. Paul had put all the new wiring and equipment in over the winter ready to plug it in but we hadn’t used it yet. The process was to allow it take control of the boat in open water, to calibrate itself. We were zigzagging and pirouetting which must have been to the amusement of the other yachts out sailing! Once it was done we continued on our way but it was all upside down, when we set it to go south, it took us north. Finally, after Paul had done a bit of tweaking, it was working as it should.

After sitting in ‘Velcro’ for nearly two weeks we had more growth on the hull, so our first stop was just around the peninsula to Dessimi beach where the water is clear. We anchored here for a couple of hours where we did some hull scraping and had a quick lunch before continuing to Sivota.

The village of Sivota is a pretty bay situated in the southern region of the island of Lefkas. The settlement lies around a cove surrounded by forested hills with views out to the sea.

Sivota is another popular tourist resort in Lefkas with plenty of the usual souvenir shops, bars and restaurants. It is also a popular destination for yachts, we have been here many times over the years and seen it develop. When we first came, I think there was only one pontoon, which was attached to ‘Stavros’s’ restaurant, and a very long town quay. Now most of the bay is taken up with pontoons owned by restaurants and charter companies, and we heard that plans are in place to add more along the undeveloped east side. The pontoons were all filling up as we arrived, and by the evening there was no space left and the restaurants were eagerly awaiting their expected guests.

We had pre booked a mooring on ‘Stavros’s’ which is free but you are expected to eat in his restaurant. This was very good value, Paul was definitely faced with a challenge when they served up his pork chop. Stavros has expanded his business since the early days, he now has a cocktail bar and supermarket joined to his restaurant so by the time we left the next morning we had certainly paid our dues.

In the morning, the pontoons all emptied fairly early. We headed out of the bay and with a light westerly wind, set our sails to continue south to one of my favourite places in the Ionian.