15. Our journey through the Corinth Canal 2019 | What you need to know | Sailing around the world

Last week our journey through the Cyclades continues and we witness some of the best sunsets we have ever seen. We check out Milos and its surrounds including this colourful and picturesque fishing village. This week we dodge some crazy winds all around us and get our first glimpse of the Corinth Canal before enjoying our transit through it. After we exit the calmness of the canal is taken over by strong gusts and building waves and our prop found an unwanted guest. The next day we get to cruise through spectacular snow-capped mountains and under the world's largest cable bridge. She's fresh this morning. It's so sad that we have to leave this place when we just got here but Athens is calling. It is. All right let's do it. Today we would leave from Kythnos heading past Athens to our destination of Kalamaki Anchorage near the Corinth Canal. The 70 nautical mile trip was necessary as at midnight strong winds were predicted to arrive. This is the beauty of a day. Unfortunately no wind but spectacular. Spray hood is down. We're loving life. Bit of music playing. As we approached Athens we passed the traffic separation scheme but it was no drama as we only saw a couple of ships. All right bae we're in the big smoke. We are. It's really strange actually looking at it from this view. We were here a year ago and we were staying in Piraeus and we saw it from the land and now we're seeing it from this aspect which is a bit strange and it's been a year since we got here and started searching for our boat. So six months it took us to find it and buy it and now we've traveled from Turkey through the Cyclades and back to Athens again so it's pretty cool. Done a fair bit, learned a fair bit and gotten out of our comfort zone comfort zone a few times which has been interesting and enjoyable. Just trying to balance out this fridge. Way too many vegetables but fixed. Just east of our anchorage we saw many large ships anchored who seemed to have the same idea as us. Tucked up behind the mountains where it would hopefully be more sheltered. Situation predicted for this evening at midnight. There's gusts all around us between 50 to 60 knots. We are here in Kalamaki Anchorage near the Corinth Canal and we're predicted 20 to 30 knots gusts which is great and we're really relying on windy to be correct because predict wind said we would cop it I think around 40 gusts so we're hoping that's correct. So this is Athens here and this is all the Cyclades and it's coming down. It's just us and the big ships waiting out the blow. She's been mostly 30 all day, some more for sure but still pretty good anchorage. Lining themselves up and yeah hopefully it's gonna stop soon because it's freaking cold. All right babe we're loading in. Look at this day compared to yesterday and the day before. Yeah she was crazy yesterday but today beautiful. So Trace is going for a run. We're taking some rubbish ashore and I'm gonna do a bit of droning. Hopefully take the drone up above the Corinth Canal. So let's do it. The Corinth Canal cuts off the 240 kilometer journey around the Peloponnese. It is 6.3 kilometers long and ranges between 21 and 24 meters wide. The depth is between six and a half to eight meters. Roughly 12,000 ships pass through per year and is also host to swimming contests, jet ski passages and bungee jumping. The Corinth Canal has a lot of history including being put out of action by the Germans at the end of World War II. Today the canal is still susceptible to landslides the last of which closed the canal for two weeks in February 2018. Well I've just come for my run and I've made it to the Corinth Canal. This is the opening which is closed today because it's a Tuesday and they're closed for maintenance on a Tuesday otherwise we would be going through today. And over here is the dock where we will tie up and pay at that little tower over there. We woke early the next morning to call the canal tower Izmir Pilot on the VHF Channel 11. They told us to come immediately to the quay to make payment and to wait to transit. It was an easy two-minute motor from Kalamaki Anchorage. Jase had already prepared our fenders making sure they were as high up as possible as we knew the quay was a high one. If you're also looking to transit I'd recommend tying up well as a large ship's wake pushes your boat up and down All good? Yeah just gotta wait 20 minutes there's traffic coming through apparently. All right cool. And they'll call us when to go. Good one. And we paid. Cute moment Jase and a dog waiting to go through the canal. Your little friend. He's pretty fast he flies up and down chasing the boats. Watch out. Could bring him on board, flip him on. I was excited to cruise through the Corinth Canal. I'm not sure why exactly but the sheer cliffs and bright aqua water intrigued me and the fact that huge ships that take up the entire space can pass through it. Thankfully Jase did a good job videoing it because most of the time I was too focused on not being the first person to crash into the walls. Well I'm not actually sure if anyone has had an accident in there. If anyone knows about that I'd be interested to hear. It's very weird to see a dog in the Corinth Canal. Here's Kat. Hey. All right babe I'm filming you. You're cruising through the Corinth trying to concentrate. Yep. Sorry about that. That's all right. How are you finding it? Yeah pretty good. Pretty good. It's been pretty calm. There's a bit of gusting on the water coming up but I'm sure it'll be fine. Cool experience? Yeah very cool. Very cool. It's again I hate using this word because we use it all the time but it feels surreal. Yeah no it is surreal because I got to see the pictures and we're finally here doing it. Yep. Right now. Here we are. All right I'll leave you alone. On up a bit of traffic kawaii. After leaving the calmness and tranquility of the Corinth Canal we entered the craziness of the Gulf of Corinth. We'd heard and read about strong gusts off the mountains but it was a fair bit more than we expected. So through the Corinth Trace and now into a much worse scenario. Yeah we had 12 knots and we thought we were being really conservative putting out three quarters of the mainsail and then I could see it gusting ahead of us on the water but I didn't think it would be that bad and then yeah we got there and it was like 28 knots so Jase is up front getting the headsail ready. Yeah we dodged a bullet there. Anyway you learn. Well we've gone through the Corinth Canal today. Just after that we had some pretty gusty conditions. We were expecting gusty but not near what it was. I guess the gusts were coming around the mountain but yeah I think it's gusting up to around 30 and that was continuous. Now the wind has dropped off completely there's only about five knots of wind and the snow-capped mountains in behind so pretty cool. Yeah all of a sudden our engine started making a rather loud sound. We actually thought it was a plane overhead at first. This was the culprit. We then sailed slowly into our anchorage where Jase nominated himself to jump in the icy water to free the prop. Thanks Jase. So Barry we just sailed through our ice-capped mountains. Yes. And what are you doing swimming? Well the propeller had something stuck on it and it was making some crazy noises. I had to get it off and I got down there and it's now come off. Did you get it off? No well I didn't do anything. I took my knife, I dove under and somehow it's come off. So just good news. It's not fun when your engine's making loud noises. And vibrating. Vibrating. I'm just glad it all worked out. We left our anchorage early the next day and headed towards the Rion and Dirion Bridge. It is 2.25 kilometers long and is the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. The three sections you can pass under are between 25 to 45 meters high. Just on the lookout up here for fishing boats and nets and anything else with water and yeah icebergs probably around here. She cold. She cold. Rion traffic, Rion traffic. This is Sailing Vessel Kauai. We are 2.3 nautical miles from the bridge. Yes, sailing boat. Next week we enter the Ionian and stumble upon one of our favorite islands, Ithaca and have this stunning paradise all to ourselves.