A great day for the race....

The intrepid crew of "Jungle" L to R Dave, Tony, Keith, Mark and Les

Victorious after day one! Liz helps us down a couple of beers.

At the evening banquet

This last weekend saw us starting a new phase of our lives out here by being part of the boat racing community.  I helped crew "Jungle", a small J24 yacht partly owned by our good friend Tony, on a two day race to and from the island of Meganissi, the outward leg starting on Saturday afternoon at Lygia harbour going around the back of Scorpios and on to port Vathi on Meganissi.  We had a five man crew (or perhaps I should say a four man crew plus me) Tony, David, Mark, Keith and myself.

And some Greek bouzouki music into the bargain.

Lots of people eating more than they should

Sandra and Liz (Tony's much suffering partner!) couldn't see the start of the race at Lygia as they had to get down the coast to Nidri in order to catch the ferry for Meganissi and be there for our arrival.  The first leg took us about two hours forty minutes in fairly light winds.  I must confess to pulling the wrong ropes several times but fortunately the rest of the crew were forgiving enough and didn't force me to walk the plank, mind you I think it was only because it would have slowed them down!   Anyway we led all the way although we were fairly closely followed by one yacht.  When we got the entrance to Vathi bay we were unsure of which side of the finishing buoy we should go this caused us to have to tack twice and loose some time but fortunately the following boat also hit some slack air at the same time so we ended up with about a four minute plus advantage to take into the second leg.

The race had been sponsored by a Greek family who had lost a son to some Albanian pirates and used this to commemorate his passing.  They supplied a free evening of food and drink at one of the local tavernas on the harbour front.  The food was excellent and must have been continuously flowing for about two and a half hours with myriad jugs of wine always being passed about the table.  After the food one of the Greek gents produced a bouzouki and the others encouraged the group of people to join in the merriment.  We stayed in an hotel overnight and expected having the mummy and daddy of all hangovers in the morning but surprisingly all heads seemed clear the next day.

Busy getting ready to set off for the second leg.

The next day the race controller said it would just be a straight race back to Lygia, the experienced yachties didn't like this idea as it would just be a straight drag race as no tactics would come into play and it was just downwind all the way with all the big spinika's flying.  This was over ruled and a drag race it was but I ended up being a bit (a lot) of a passenger.  The spinika takes a great deal of tweaking and I couldn't read the signs quick enough to stop the sail collapsing but fortunately Keith and Mark worked very well as a team especially Keith who was stood all the way home pulling and releasing ropes sometimes with quite a heavy load on them when gusts came, and when they did we really flew.  We ended up being second across the line but less than 2 minutes behind the leader who was the same rival we had in the first leg so the overhaul winner came down to times and taking the handicap system into account.  "jungle" being a fast boat owed something like 6 seconds an hour to the other one and with around 4 hours racing time this was twenty odd seconds off our first leg lead but fortunately we still had enough in the bank to end up aggregate winners of the race.

Mingling around the start line at Vathi

I think I have a great deal to learn about competitive racing but it'll come given practice and some expert tutelage.  Anyway, I've got all of two weeks before the next race!!!

Our Landlords arrived back home (next door villa to us) on Tuesday after driving all the way from England, I mean not going to Italy and getting a ferry across to Greece but taking the eastern European route through Romania, Bulgaria etc.  They seem to have very much enjoyed the trip so that may become an option for another time when we drive back to the UK.  They seemed very pleased to see us and we are going to have a meal together at the village taverna on Thursday night so that's something to look forward to.