Thoughts from Paradise
A quick note to say how much Emmie and I enjoyed our return to Geni and our week with Dragon Drascombe on the beautifully renovated Lugger Angie. The addition of your special upgrades including closing wooden lockers, excellent anchors and fully kitted out with charts, pilot guide, cool bag and life vests, etc make your Drascombe Lugger fleet rather special.
Our first trip was in 2019 and we had hoped to return last year, but then so did many others. In 2019 we stayed at the very hospitable Gialos Taverna where the food and welcome is excellent and the cold beers very close at hand at all hours. This year we were at Geni Garden Apartments, much quieter and with a swimming pool that we used each day. From a sailing point of view, embarkation and disembarkation is rather simpler (and more steady) at Gialos where you berth alongside a solid pontoon. At Geni Garden Apartments, there is a need for rather more agility as you berth bow-on to a floating pontoon.
The week before our arrival we had chartered a 37′ Bavaria yacht from Sail Ionian in Vlihko to do a refresher RYA Day Skipper course for myself and a Competent Crew course for Emmie. The week in Geni was a wonderful antidote to the rather more intense time on the Bavaria. There is nothing quite so nice as a decent sized bathroom and facilities and a very comfortable bed after a few days living on board a yacht! The advantage of our Lugger though was the ability to pull up to remote beaches away from any crowds and, when we were sharing a bay with larger boats, to be able to get much closer in for swimming and snorkelling.
We had a wonderful time revisiting old haunts in quiet bays on Lefkas and Meganisi as well as exploring new areas. What stood out was just how friendly everyone was and how taverna owners remembered us from our short visit 2 years previously. As one example there is nothing quite so uplifting to pull alongside the water front of Taverna Spilia near Spartakhori on Meganisi, to have the lines taken by the owner and greeted as if you were there just the day before. Their Baklava dessert by the way was the best we had.