Warfare & Wildlife

After our night in Corfu Anne and I sailed on with Toby down past Paxos where we spent a quiet night in Mongonissi Bay in Paxos and then onwards to Preveza to meet Jacques.

The entrance to Preveza is a dredged canal leading to a large inland sea, famous for hosting Anthony and Cleopatras fleets of warships before they tried to take control of Italy. But Emperor Octavian's fleet bottled them up in the harbour, and when they broke out Octavian waited for the afternoon NW and then sent his fleet racing downwind to attack. Cleopatra broke and ran downwind for Egypt, and Antony soon followed leaving thousands to perish.

It's quite extraordinary to be in a landscape with such ancient and well documented events.

We were lucky to see a big turtle in the inland sea, poking a gnarly head out of turbid greeny brown water to look at us.

Then on to our reserved berth in Cleopatra Marina. It has hundreds of dry berthed boats on land and a relatively small wet marina, mostly catering for dry berth clients coming in and out. There was a brisk cross wind blowing and a current through the berths as we reversed in. The Marinero in his RIB indicated the last remaining berth which looked about half the width of Tin Tin. I kept a straight line as we eased our stern into the slot and then had to reverse hard to try to squeeze the neighbouring boats apart. Much squealing of fenders and then we were in there jammed fast. I was surprised to get a round of applause from nearby onlookers.
At the office I was mindful of my duty to get my bew Transit Log stamped, but no, that would have to be Port Police in town across the river. It didn't happen.
The Marina laundry facilities accommodated three machine loads at the same time. Shopping for fresh food was a little less successful - no salad stuff today.

That night Toby reported that cats had come on board via the gang plank and peered down at him through his hatch. I was minded of rats boarding ships and to my surprise met a man in the Chandlery who was buying rat stoppers for his shore lines. Later the next day I read that rats are a real problem in Ambelakia on Meganisi, where people have left litter and rubbish on shore, and rats have been known to make their way on boat via the ropes!