Kefalonia to Corfu

Embarkation in Sami, the ferry port on Kefalonia’s east coast, about 40 minutes by road from the airport. The yacht runs north inside the strait between Kefalonia and Ithaca, past the pebble beach of Antisamos and the village of Karavomylos, where the Melissani cave lake lies a few hundred yards inland, to the northern tip of the island. A swim stop on the way at Foki or Emblisi, two small bays a mile short of the village with white pebbles and water clear to the bottom. Fiskardo is the one village on Kefalonia that stood through the earthquake of 1953, and the result is a harbour front of 18th- and 19th-century houses in ochre, rose and cream under cypress and olive trees. Yachts moor stern-to in the middle of the village. Behind the quay are a few lanes of shops selling local wine, honey and thyme, a Venetian lighthouse on the point and the remains of a Roman cemetery uncovered in 1993. Dinner is at one of the tavernas along the water.

A day with almost no cruising. Out of the inlet and north along Ithaca’s east coast there is a choice of beaches reachable only from the water: Gidaki, a long bank of white pebbles under a steep slope with no road to it, and Sarakiniko and Filiatro, two deep coves with a sand-and-pebble bottom. The yacht anchors for the morning and most of the afternoon; the water in these bays stays calm when the afternoon wind is blowing outside. By late afternoon the yacht is in Kioni, a small horseshoe harbour with the houses climbing the slope behind it and three ruined stone windmills on the southern arm of the bay. The village was settled in the 16th century by islanders moving down from the hilltop settlement of Anogi, and it escaped the worst of the 1953 earthquake, which is why its neoclassical houses are still standing. The quay has room for a handful of yachts, stern-to, with the alternative of anchoring in the bay, and three or four tavernas have their tables at the water’s edge.

North through the channel between Lefkada and the mainland, past the islets of Skorpios, Sparti and Madouri off Nydri, to Lefkada Town at the island’s northern end. The town is reached by a canal that runs beside the Venetian fortress of Agia Mavra and through the floating bridge that joins Lefkada to the mainland; the bridge opens for yachts on the hour. Lefkada Town is a short stop for a walk along the main street, where the upper floors of the houses are built of timber faced with painted metal sheet, an earthquake precaution that has become the town’s look. After lunch the yacht leaves the islands for the afternoon and runs north along the coast of Epirus to Parga, a mainland town built like an island one: a steep amphitheatre of painted houses facing a bay with the islet of Panagia and its white chapel in the middle of it. The Venetian castle, rebuilt in 1572, covers the headland above the town, and the beach of Valtos lies on its far side. Parga belonged to Venice together with the islands for four centuries and was sold to Ali Pasha in 1819; his own fortress still stands on the hill at Anthousa behind the town. The yacht anchors off the beach or moors in the small harbour, and the evening is in the lanes of the old town.

Two miles south of Paxos, Antipaxos is an island of under two square miles, a few dozen permanent residents, vineyards that produce a dark local wine, and two beaches on its east coast that are the reason yachts come: Vrika, a short arc of white sand, and Voutoumi, a longer curve of fine white pebbles over a sand bottom that gives the water its colour. The morning and lunch are spent at anchor here, with a swim ashore and a walk up the path through the vines to the taverna above Voutoumi. On the west coast the Antipaxos caves, a run of grottoes at the foot of the cliffs, can be visited by tender when the sea is flat. In the afternoon the yacht returns the three miles to Paxos. Mongonisi, a lagoon-like bay on the island’s southern tip enclosed by a small islet, has a sand beach, a single taverna and room to anchor for the night; the alternative is the quay in Gaios for a last evening in the town.