Day 329: Wednesday 9th May 2018 - Getting ready for the big trip to Greece

Today has been all about getting ready for our first multi day passage. Tomorrow we are planning to sail 255 miles to a small Greek Island, Orthoni, just north west of Corfu. It will take us approximately 50 hours or so, but very much dependent on weather. We may also decide to go somewhere else in Greece if the wind direction makes that a better sail. This will be the first time we are likely to be out of range of mobile data and perhaps away from AIS receivers for boatbeacon so we will be using the Delorme InReach in its tracking mode every 1 hour to keep our position updated on our "where are we" page.

First thing, Patrick took the laundry to the laundrette whilst I wrote down the school work I expected the kids to do this morning before heading off to the supermarket. It was a horrible walk at the end, with no footpaths and lots of parked cars along a very busy road but by 11am I was back on board having stocked up for the next 3 or 4 days. I then spent time carefully stowing the shopping and preparing food for the journey. Firstly preparing a stew for the thermal cooker and then chopping some salad vegetables and portioning them up so that we could just grab a box of healthy stuff to eat on deck if it is a little rough... shouldn't be but I like to be prepared.

We also dug out Nana's Christmas cake and cut it into portions... Esmé standing by for any rogue crumbs. As I was finishing off The Spacegrazers returned to their dinghy and asked if our kids would like to go and play for the afternoon... perhaps some swimming at anchor. They jumped at the chance and were soon gone.

It was great to have a bit of time to ourselves to finalise preparations. We motored round to the marina to fill up with water, just leaving a diesel fill up until the morning as it was closed in the afternoons. We met another sailing family at the marina and filled them in on the various kids sailing facebook groups as well as noforeignland.com. Then out to the anchorage where we could see the kids having a great time splashing about in the water. Esmé having plucked up courage to swim out to the buoy and back by the time we had dropped the hook.

I then spent some time looking at our Delorme Inreach, checking I remembered how to send messages and also trying to figure out the weather forecasting service. I worked out how to get the basic forecast but we need to be out on open water for the marine forecast to work... wonder if the trip to Greece will count? I couldn't find any way to check.

Once jobs were pretty much done Max came to taxi us over to Spacegrazer for drinks which eventually turned into an amazing dinner of tuna steaks, potatoes, broad beans and salad. A lovely way to spend our last night in Sicily.