Nikea Revisited (Finally!)

Nikea Revisited (Finally!)

Date: Sunday, September 08, 2024. 2034Z
Location: 38°41'26.4N, 20°41'58.7E — Vlicho, GR

Thanks to school exams for Ben, and the small matter of a global pandemic, this was our first visit to Nikea since 2018. Well, that’s strictly not true - I did a quick trip with Tim and Asta in 2021, ostensibly to do some repair work. We are not fans of the high summer heat in Greece, and with Ben’s school year, the only available month was June. Even that has been hard to manage, in recent years. Now that he is away in college, we were free to schedule a more convenient time to visit the boat. It’s not just the heat, though. We’re not huge fans of searching for the last available slot on the quay, and would prefer earlier or later in the season. We chose September, which hasn’t worked out as well as we might have hoped.

First off, the Lefkas peninsula is extremely busy and there are still a lot of boats (and particularly flotilla charters) about. Secondly, the weather doesn’t look too promising. Our phones are pinging with weather warnings!

We did our usual Aer Lingus flight to Corfu, and due to the flight change mentioned in a previous post, we arrived too late into Corfu to do anything other than relax at the Hotel Atlanta. As Ben is away in college, we brought Martin, an old friend of mine, who has done a little sailing and eager to do a lot more.

This morning, we did our usual route of taking the ferry after breakfast, and picking up a rental car. Breakfast took ages, because we decided on a restaurant near the hotel, which seemed to struggle with even the simplest of orders. A large backlog of tables awaiting their food allowed us to joke about possible explanations. Eventually we were fed, paid the bill, and caught the ferry. Lately we haven’t bothered with the routine of a pair of one-way car hires to get to Vlicho. Now, we book the car for the two weeks and leave it in the car park for the duration. This made it easy to dump excess suitcases and boat “stuff” in the car which can then be restored, when we return. We also decided to have dinner in Lefkada, which when combined with the shopping trip, it was quite dark when we arrived in Vlicho.

Nikea was tied up alongside the barge as agreed. However, there was a large motorsailer between us and the barge. Add to this the fact that one’s footing is never too secure on the barge, and it made for an interesting commute from the shore to the boat. Given it was quite dark, we decided to launch the dinghy and make a series of trips from the stern of Nikea to the shore, and ferry the bags and food one trip at a time. It took a bit to inflate the dinghy, and of course the outboard was refusing to work “out of hours.” After a couple of short rowing trips back and forth, the engine finally decided to join in and we managed to get everything and everyone on board without too much drama. Next time though, I would hope to avoid arriving in the dark.

Time for bed!

Dermot Tynan's Picture

About Dermot Tynan

Part-time sailor, full-time procrastinator. Software Engineer, Writer, Film-maker. Interested in all things cloud, sailing, autonomous systems and robotic sailboats.

Galway, Ireland https://intothemystic.eu