Author Archives: nigelandmo

Julie and Matthew, both relatively new to sailing, arrived on time late on Sunday evening, 20th May, full of enthusiasm for a week afloat. Recently retired, they are building up quite a portfolio of experiences and adventures and so when the opportunity of a week sailing in the Ionian presented itself, they were keen toContinue reading “Julie and Matthew”

The hard work done, we launched on May 12th, the Cleopatra Marina team lifting Deja Vu gently from tractor trailer to hoist to lower her into the water, where she is definitely most at home! We spent a couple of days on the town quay at Preveza whilst we provisioned for the season as bestContinue reading “In and away”

It is Friday March 2nd 2018 and from my office in the UK I am watching heavy snow falling over the prematurely hopeful snowdrops, crocuses and daffodils. Although hard to turn our thoughts to sailing in Greek waters we do have considerable planning to do this year as we are wanting to go further afieldContinue reading “Planning for 2018 sailing”

Before we left Corfu we were thrilled to meet up with friends Colin and Sandra Baxter in Corfu old town, where they were spending a couple of nights before a week’s holiday in a villa further up the island. We had a great lunch and tried to put the world to right, but there wasContinue reading “Heading for home”

On our trip south last year we had some rather alarming creaks coming from the boat. We had been in conversation with the company about this and Manfred Schoechl said he would come and fix it. Manfred designed, builds and sails the sunbeam range (he also owns the company) so if anyone was going toContinue reading “Arrival of the Sunbeam team”

Time to explore further south so we once more headed down through the Lefkas canal where last years’ dredging has hugely improved the depth and brand new, brightly coloured buoys clearly mark the channel. We spent a couple of days in Vliho Bay from where we were able to visit the excellent chandlers in NidriContinue reading “Lefkas, Kefalonia, Kalamos & Corfu again”

On Saturday evening, 27th May, Bill and Cheryl, our American friends from Montana and California, (their two homes they share their time between) surprised us by arriving early to Gouvia Marina in Corfu and we had to bid a hasty retreat from our neighbour’s boat, AirWaves, where we had been ensconced with Chris and EileenContinue reading “Corfu, Paxos and back to Lefkas”

We landed in Preveza on Wednesday May 10th and on Saturday May 13th we launched Deja Vu from Cleopatra Marina’s boatyard. Those three days were really hard work, firstly removing the winter cover, then preparing the bottom of the boat for antifouling, actually painting on the antifouling and finally polishing the hull. Although exhausted weContinue reading “May in Greece”

We had a taste of hot weather in February this year, with a very pleasant sailing trip in the BVI’s aboard yacht Pipistrelle with our good friends Bob and Elaine. We caught up with them for a week prior to their trans Atlantic trip planned for May. Now back in the cold UK we haveContinue reading “Counting down to the lift in!”

Settled weather at last! We are slowly finding out how things work down here by talking to fellow sailors we are meeting. There are a lot of elderly sailors, many of whom are Brits, who spend long times in each place, often blocking quays and berths for the sailors on a journey and just passingContinue reading “End of September”