A Change of Season

It’s time for us to leave Greece, there was a possible weather window at the end of the week so after more stormy weather in Vlicho, we headed north to Lefkas town to prepare to check out.

We left in dead flat calm water and motored north to the main town, where we moored on the charter pontoons that are available during the week.

With the fear of our legs seizing up, having not done much exercise over previous week in Vlicho, we decided to go for a ‘cultural’ walk. We walked through the town and along the canal overlooking the large lake on the north of the island. We’ve previously seen flamingoes here but unfortunately the recent weather seemed to have scared them off.

Our first stop was the Archeological Museum of Lefkada. It is in a big building shared with the much larger Cultural Centre, which was being renovated. As we walked in it didn’t look as though we were in the right place. But we then found a door leading to the museum section.

A sign at the entrance advised that the air conditioning wasn’t working. At the height of the sumer this may well have caused us to think twice, but fortunately the recent storms have bought the temperature down a few degrees.

It wasn’t very popular, we were the only visitors. Inside the small museum, there are four rooms with displays from the Paleolithic times until the late Roman years, depicting the public and private life of the islanders. The findings are related to music, commerce, weaving, coinage, weaponry, vessels, tools, fishery and farming. There were a lot of pots!

This ancient lyre has a turtle shell sound box and bone keys, it was found in a sarcophagus containing a child. Also terracotta puppets were found in a child’s grave.

One of the rooms is dedicated to funerals exhibiting costumes, tomb monuments and stone urns.

Back in the town, we next visited the house of Angelos Sikelianos (1884-1951), a 20th century Greek poet. He was born and brought up here. The house was later restored and turned into a very well presented museum between 2007-2016. Each room is full of information about his personal life and the formulation and progression of his literary works.

His work comprises of 1400 pages of verse, plus approximately an equal number of pages of prose and more than 1000 letters to his two devoted wives and select intellectuals.

Exhibits in the house include rare manuscripts of Angelos, photographs, recordings of his voice, hand-written letters between Angelos and his second wife, Anna Slkelianou, as well as her wedding dress and some of her handmade clothes!

In a time of discontent and fear of war, Sikelianos tried to instigate cooperation and friendships between countries, through artistic and cultural endeavours. The most public examples were the festivals of Delphi that he, along with his first wife Eva Palmer, organised to bring people together.

He was selected as a candidate for the prestigious Nobel Prize for literature. He later died in 1951, after days of hospitalization due to a pill that caused him extensive damage. Sikelianos’ death mask was displayed in the house.

Third on our list was the Phonograph Museum which has a small private collection of old phonographs, gramophones, and radios alongside mementoes of the local musical heritage. Unfortunately, this was closed, three museums in one day might have been be a bit too much.

It was very convenient being tied to a dock, we were able to easily visit the town. We stayed a few days and on our final day we had a list of chores, mainly provision, chandlery, laundry and visit the port police and customs office to check out (which was very quick and easy)

While we were out, a thunder storm passed over us and it hammered down, we had to buy a brolly to shelter under. We had quite a lot of rain during our time in Lefkas, we even unveiled the winter enclosure.

We had to leave the pontoon the following morning as it was Friday and the charter companies use them over the weekend. Our plan was to head to Preveza via the 8:00 bridge opening, the best weather opportunity to leave was the following day. We slipped our lines and headed for the bridge, however it didn’t open as scheduled and a quick radio call to the operator revealed it wasn’t going to open until at least 14:00 due to a ‘problem’. We went back down the channel and anchored at the end to wait for the morning weather forecast to update and consider our options.

We could either wait until 14:00 and hope that the bridge would open or leave Greece via the bottom of Lefkas island. We decided to give up with the bridge, if it did open at 14:00 it would probably be very busy, and we could leave instead the next day from the bottom of the island. I heard later that the bridge did open and it was carnage with approximately 70 boats queuing, it was open for half an hour and closed before they had all passed through. Fridays are particularly busy with people having to return boats for the end of their holidays. We went back to Vlicho to prepare for an early start to leave Greece the following morning.

Our anchor came up with the sun the next day and we headed out of Vlicho bay, south around the bottom of the island and out to the open sea. We set our course to go 280 nm to Sicily which would take us 3 days. You never know what the weather is going to do on longer passages as the forecast changes daily, so we had a plan ‘B’ if it’s bad to go up to a couple of options on the bottom of Italy or plan ‘C’ if there’s a good sailing wind, to continue to Malta.