Angela and I have just got back from a week ‘sailing’ around Kefalonia and Ithaca on a flotilla holiday. The word sailing is deliberately in inverted commas as, although we enjoyed the holiday, on this occasion we were on the motor a lot more than usual due to some inconveniently inclement weather.
A flotilla holiday offers the best of several worlds, especially for less experienced sailors like ourselves. It involves 8-10 groups of people hiring yachts and sailing from one beautiful place to another each day (at your own speed, not in a convoy), with a lead boat organised by the flotilla company containing a crew of 2 or 3 experienced sailors. Their role is to support us with any issues, brief us on the weather, nice places to stop for lunch etc and then help us do the 2 most difficult bits – leaving one place and mooring up at the next.
You meet some really nice people on flotilla and often everyone from the boats have dinner and a few drinks together at various stops, which is brilliant – as long as you spot and avoid the sailing bores who want to tell you all about how their winch broke while out at sea one time and the lengths they went to to fix it. Yawn! These gatherings are voluntary though so if you don’t wish to join the group socially that’s fine.
A typical day on flotilla
A typical day involves waking to a view like this, in a beautiful bay with the sea mill pond calm. A nice breakfast overlooking the bay is followed by a briefing from the lead crew that includes nice places to visit, swim or have lunch, what the weather will do that day, any hazards to be aware of e.g. hidden rocks, and what time you need to arrive at that day’s destination harbour.
Each boat then plans their individual routes based on charts and the pilot book that gives vital information about the area including any hazards to look out for where you plan to stop.
Lunch is normally taken in a lovely bay on the way, unless there is a nice village where you can moor up and visit the local taverna. Time for swimming, paddle boarding or just taking it easy before the next leg to where you’ll spend that night. If you’re lucky you’ll be joined occasionally by dolphins or even the odd turtle on the journey.
We like to arrive in harbour around 4.00, moor up and have a drink on the back of the boat relaxing after a great day’s sailing before exploring the town and deciding where to have dinner. Sometimes we’ll meet the other crews for either drinks or a meal.
This pattern repeats itself on each day of the flotilla, visiting 6 different places before returning to the home port for a final night gala dinner. A lot of places you visit are not huge tourist destinations, just beautiful villages or small towns with a picturesque harbour.
If you decide to do this type of holiday but not as part of a flotilla then Greece has a great arrangement that works well for all concerned. The etiquette is that when you arrive at a harbour and decide where to moor up, staff from the nearest taverna help you secure your stern lines etc and allow you to stay there overnight for free in return for you eating in their taverna that evening. Most also offer showers free of charge but they can be quite ‘interesting’ so we tend to shower on the boat.
The wind is your friend but can also be your nemesis
Although the lead crew give you weather conditions including wind strength and direction in each morning briefing, in summer it’s normally simply a case of remembering those geography lessons with Mr Taylor where he droned on about how convection wind forms in early afternoon as the land heats up and the air rises blah blah blah.
Occasionally the wind does something different but normally it’s predictable and, with a bit of tacking and trimming the sales accordingly these previously boring ‘convection’ breezes take you from one gorgeous Greek island to the next.
It’s hard to describe the feeling of sailing on the wind, with the noisy diesel engine turned off, gently heeling to one side. It’s almost spiritual and certainly brings a sense of calm and that all is good in the world. We love it! And if a family of dolphins joins you it’s truly a magical experience.
This is me at the helm somewhere in between Kefalonia and Ithaca. Although nude yachting is apparently a thing (yes, really) I assure you I am wearing shorts in this picture even though the image suggests otherwise!
For formatting reasons I should really make this picture bigger as there is so little text relevant to it but I wouldn’t want to put you off your breakfast so have added 3 lines of waffle instead.
Terra firma
Another good thing about a flotilla holiday is that wherever you land the lead crew know which are the best bars and restaurants, and after the stress of mooring up there’s nothing better than a cold beer overlooking the sea, followed by a lovely authentic Greek meal either with your hearty fellow sailors or just yourselves.
Although you do need to be careful sometimes about the lead crew recommendations as, even though they are very skilled, highly experienced and on call for 14 hours a day the lead crew aren’t paid well at all and so they often direct us to places where they earn a commission for sending guests there, or receive free food and drink in return for several of the yachts eating in their restaurant and you end up in a tourist trap with very average food.
But most of the time they direct you to some lovely places such as this bar hewn out of the rock and overlooking the bay in Poros on Kefalonia.
Although people I speak to think it must be immensely complicated to become qualified to do this (sail, not sit in a bar drinking beer – that comes remarkably easily), it’s actually not that difficult to get to the stage where you can competently skipper a yacht on a flotilla, because there is a lot of support available to you and no night sailing.
Becoming qualified to skipper a yacht
There are various qualifications that are accepted by flotilla companies, some of which only involve a week’s tutoring before the flotilla although, to me, that seems ridiculously little training and I would not recommend it.
I have the ‘Day Skipper’ qualification that involves a week long ‘Competent Crew’ course where you learn how to sail the boat, tie knots, rescue a ‘bucket overboard’ (it’s a bit risky to do ‘man overboard’ just in case!), check the engine etc; then a week long theory course and test that is mainly around the weather and also plotting journeys in tidal waters; then a week long practical course where you put everything together and show you can set off, sail, moor up, rescue someone, and are aware of all the rules of the road like what the various buoys mean and who has priority if you’re on a collision course!
A word of warning though – similar to learning to drive a car it’s only once you have passed the test that the real learning starts and having done my training, 4 flotillas and 5 holidays with experienced friends I count myself as still being very much a novice. There are so many more lessons you need to learn e.g. what to do if the anchor chain comes out of its runner, as happened to us on day one this year.
So far, so idyllic. It’s the perfect holiday, time after time? Err no! when the weather is bad, sailing can be a bit grim and clearly that can happen at any time but thankfully it is rare in Greece.
Although our first two days last week were perfect with temperatures in the mid 20’s, a nice breeze, and a smug grin on my face, whereas it continued to be warm the weather in the southern Ionian was blumming awful for the next 3 days and included a storm, thunder and lightning, days with no wind and several days of rain some of which was stair rods (or chair leg rain, as the Greeks call it apparently). Poor us!
Yachting in bad weather is no fun!
With shorter days and the weather cooling in autumn the usual convection wind theory did not seem to apply and so we either had no wind at all or monsoon type conditions. Yikes!
We also found to our cost that, in bad weather, you become trapped. The previously serene and beautiful little harbour villages turn into tediously boring places where there is literally nothing to do. The locals hibernate and do not even open their bars and restaurants so you are stuck in quite a small space in washing machine conditions.
People seem to think that yachting is posh but it’s not! A yacht is basically a caravan that floats and so when you are trapped down below in the small saloon area being buffeted by strong winds, tossed about by swell and waves even in port and when you look out of the tiny windows and all you see is grey glumness it’s not quite the romantic adventure I’ve described above. In fact it’s pretty miserable.
Fortunately we only had one full day like this. Even though the wind wasn’t great, the rest of the time we travelled around some beautiful places.
Mooring on the anchor
There is another romantic and back to nature type experience you can do on a yacht and that is mooring ‘on the anchor’ which, as the name suggests, involves lowering the anchor and trusting it to hold while you go off for a swim etc. As with everything else yacht-wise, there is an art to lowering the anchor and ensuring it stays, and that needs to be learned through trial and error.
On our penultimate day the weather was nice but there was no wind and a fair amount of swell so, as we wouldn’t be able to do any proper sailing we made the short passage from Sami to the bay of Andesamos – a spectacularly beautiful sheltered little bay where the water is crystal clear and teeming with small fish that will happily swarm round and devour any bread you chuck in. It was so nice we decided to stay overnight and informed our lead crew that was our intention.
Unfortunately, whereas I have stayed overnight on the anchor when my good friend – and accomplished sailor – Paul has been in charge and I’ve slept like a baby, it wasn’t quite so straightforward being in charge and personally responsible.
Even though our anchor had clearly taken, I started having real doubts – what if the anchor fails during the night and we crash into the huge rocks? What if it fails but I realise, and we then need to spend hours having to sail around in pitch darkness as I wouldn’t be confident enough to moor up on my own in a harbour at night?
Naturally, being a British bloke I decided to just hope for the best, and played down all of these fears to Angela who, for some unfathomable reason and despite my bluster, was a little hesitant.
Then, from nowhere a 26-knot gust of wind hit us. The anchor held but that was enough for us and I decided not to put Angela though such an anxious night and explained to her that, as she was nervous, we’d go back to harbour while it was light. Ever the considerate and dutiful husband!
I was so relieved at the opportunity to save face and we raced back to the harbour at Sami quicker than a dog after a whimsie (Mila has just discovered these), moored up and then went to our favourite bar. I of course still maintain that it was perfectly safe and I was being a gentleman but in reality it was great to be moored up securely. We’ll leave sleeping ‘on the anchor’ for another time.
Only in Greece!
Later in the afternoon we went for a hilly walk and heard what we thought was a beautiful symphony of wind chimes. But the reality was even better, we walked round the corner and saw a huge heard of mountain goats each with a different sized bell round its neck tinkling away in tune with each other. Fabulous! Although these 2 guys just had to go to the precarious edge to get the tastiest leaves.
In summary, flotilla holidays are absolutely brilliant. We love them but it’s not all pain sailing! In future we’ll be sticking to late spring or summer when the winds and the weather are more predictable. Of the many lessons we learnt on this trip the main one is that we are most definitely fair-weather sailors!
Next week I’ll be back talking about the grievance process. If you have any queries in the meantime please don’t hesitate to contact us