Ammouliani is not a place to be – it wasn’t as bad as we expected as the sea calmed down overnight, but very busy with the boats from the campsite and the beach so not a place for us as it’s so busy. We also need to get fuel and we aren’t going to get that here.
The only option was back in the direction of Diaporos with the intention to drop anchor somewhere and make calls to arrange fuel and go into the harbour when it is available. We chose Lagonisi as a change of scenery – having spent so long in Diaporos North Bay, we wanted to look at something different. It’s a lovely bay but quite a few yachts and boom boom on the beach from the other side 🙂
We stayed happily at Lagoni for three days although we had no luck calling fuel suppliers or working out what we would do! On the 4th night, the wind turned Northerly and with very little protection the bay became very bouncy. Bad weather was forecast to come in for a few days so we moved back to Diaporos North Bay which has the most protection. The anchor track looks like spaghetti now! It took us a long time to do the mile journey between the two bays because we were towing the dink and the waves were around 1.5m outside – a sure sign that we needed to find better shelter.
Safely laying on anchor again – back with the familiar scenery including the local farmer and his dog who takes regular trips out in his boat to get supplies. He’s even waving at us now as he goes by 🙂 We sit out the storm and then work out where we go from here. It’s quite clear this is the most protected by on the island, as there are constantly new yachts coming in to shelter – including the odd charter yacht. It will be no news to any full-time cruiser that anchoring techniques often leave a lot to be desired, and we ended up sitting up all night on anchor watch for the neighbours in order to protect our own boat.
After another 9 days of laying at anchor in the North Bay, the weather had finally seemed to settle. It was now the 15th September and we really needed to be making track back to Preveza for the winter, or we would never make it in time! We still didn’t have any fuel – but had worked out where we could get it. It would mean moving to the bay next door beside the nearest town and simply waiting until the local garage had time to come along with a tanker.
We retrieved the anchor and made the short journey to the bay next door at Ormos Panagia – we needed supplies as well as fuel so we went ashore and arranged for a rental car for the following day. The car allowed us to physically go to the local fuel station – far easier than trying to track people down by phone! We arranged for the tanker the following morning – it had to be timed for when all the day trip boats had left so we could move onto the quayside. Re-provisioned and fuel arranged, we took a drive around to see a few of the sights.
