Dear friends,

I've finally made it to Greece. I'm moored this evening in the charming bay of Palaiokastrita on the west side of Corfu, and one of the pluses of being in Greece is that my mobile phone and, via that, email work again.

I last wrote from Corsica and it seems a long way away (it is!). From there we sailed to Elba and the Italian coast where first the two lads Matt and Mark left and a few days later Margaret, leaving me at Traiano marina, close to Rome. From that point I was on my own. I had done a few days sailing by myself and the weather was very calm -- boringly so because most of it was motoring, so I wasn't too worried. So I started down some of the islands off the coast of Italy -- Ponza, Ischia and finally Capri. At Capri I had a stroke of luck. I couldn't get into the marina and searched the north and south coast for a shallow anchorage as my chain was only 25m long, limiting me effectively to 8m depth of water. The best I could find was 10m (I had to add some rope to the chain) at the "Marina Piccolo" which Gracie Fields established. There was another English boat, Seathrift, next to me and we got talking and discovered they were also bound for Greece: a family of three, John and Sue and their daughter Claire. Their boat was the same size as mine and we landed up at the same marina the next day and eventually sailed together, useful for both of us as they were also not very experienced in sea sailing.

The next day we parted as I wanted to visit Stromboli, the  volcano north of Sicily, which involved a night sail. It turned into a 24 hour marathon which was quite enough for me sailing solo. (Stromboli is amazing just before dawn - I thought they had installed a lighthouse at the top because it was flashing red, until I realised the volcano was itself the lighthouse!) The sea was quite rough and decided to press on the 30 miles more to Sicily, because I had to negotiate the spring tides in the straights of Messina the next day.  I reached Reggio Calabria a day before Seathrift, which had had difficulties with marinas on the coast, but decided to wait for them anyway.

Round the corner of Italy we both encountered a force 7 to 8 storm which came out of nowhere, a very localised depression. They had almost no warning; I had about 2 minutes. But the boat behaved well and apart from getting very wet (I'd been dowsing myself a few minutes before to keep cool so that was no problem) we both came through with no damage. But it made us more cautious about the weather which by this time was quite unsettled. We carried on up the "boot" of Italy and waited a day before crossing the "Gulf of Squalls" and two days before finally crossing the Ionian Sea to Greece, a distance of about 65 miles. By this time I'd done 640 miles by myself and learned how to negotiate anchoring and stern-to moorings by myself. (There's always a way and if at first you don't succeed, try again.)

That's a VERY brief synopsis of what's been happening. Several friends are coming out in the next couple of weeks for some sailing but October's quite open at the moment, so here's an invitation if the Greek islands capture your imagination.

Chris