And what will the robin do then?

M.

Emerald bay,  red pants

We awoke to a lovely sunny but rather windless day and decided to tootle a bit further south. We motored down to beautiful Emerald Bay on Antipaxos and arrived just as the day trippers were leaving, giving us the bay pretty much to ourselves for a couple of hours.

A different ebay

The water there is so clear that you can see individual flat fish on the white sea bed in depths of 6 -7 metres and the iridescent blue of pipefish flashing past .The white of the boat hull reflects a green glow from the emerald colour of the sea.. and the sun shone. Absolutely glorious...and then the wasps arrived again. Why? seems no reason to the choice of habitat other than maximum disruption to the possibility of complete perfection . We desisted from lunch in an effort to minimise their scourge, and managed a swim to shore.
It's not a place that you are encouraged to stay overnight so we headed back to Mogonisi on Paxos for the night . It's a small bay with a single taverna onshore. Clear warm sea and fantastic red dragon flies buzzing about. Big fish plopping around us.
We looked forward to a quiet and serene night.....
Well. not quite.We anchored with 2 shore lines and slept until about 3am before the GPS anchor alarms shrieked. No matter how we adjusted them they continued to erupt at 20 minute intervals even though there was no apparent boat movement. In the end we switched them off but then lay awake worrying ...I lay there enjoying the occasional sound of an unusual owl call ... only to find out in the morning that it was another alarm  on Colin's phone. Doh!
Dawn greeted us and all well however . A quick swim and we were ready to go again.
We planned to continue southward through the Levkas canal back into the inland sea of the Northern Ionian  hoping the wind would do as the forecast predicted. It didn't, so we had to motor for several hours.

Guns of Navaronne??

We passed on the west coast of Antipaxos on the

West side of Antipaxos

promise of a view of cliffs apparently famously filmed in the ' Guns of Navarone' .... according to Antipodean sources.
The sun has returned and the weather appears much more settled again. However it has definitely developed an autumnal flavour with earlier sunsets [ 7.30] and cooler nights [ welcome] 
We managed to time our entry into the Levkas canal to perfection at 5pm and the 'bridge ' opened just as we arrived. However the operator was clearly desperate to get home for tea and closed it again immediately after us. This did not please the small yacht behind us that slammed its engine into full power and dodged around it just before the gap slammed shut. Top marks there . Glad we didn't have to witness a squashing incident.
Just as we left the canal the wind picked up and happily we managed to sail for the rest of the journey. We were accompanied by a barnacled turtle lazily swimming past who gave us a rather bored and worried look. We also had flurries of butterflies and the amazing sight of flying fish. They are beautiful.. a flash of silver catches your eye and they fly for 100s of meters just above the surface of the water..

Sunset at Palairos

 In fact the sailing was so good that we headed further south than planned and arrived in Palairos when it was decidedly dark. Fortunately it is well known to us now and we were lucky to find the last vacant, rather small berth on the harbour wall.
A very nice, and wonderfully tailored gentleman, with long white socks popped out from his yacht next door to help us squeeze into the very small space before returning to his very civilised evening meal. He was travelling alone, but a chance peep though his hatch showed him sitting with a fully laid table complete with placemat, wine decanter and candles . Classical music accompanied his artfully presented meal. Excellent . A lesson to us all .My plastic tablecloth and crusty shorts just won't do.

So what's the robin got to do with this ? I left this to the end so that those of sensitive disposition can stop reading now.

As we were motoring along in the late afternoon we noticed a small brown bird fluttering around the boat. 'It's a robin' Colin said.
'It can't be ' I replied . We were miles from shore.
But it was. It seemed confused and kept trying to land on the sea .. dipping a toe in and then panicky flutterings . We slowed down, hoping that it would land on us and we could give it a lift to land. But it didn't . It just kept flying and fluttering. Eventually it headed for land. I hope it made it ....poor thing.