Rob and Virginia were our next guests and since they arrived late in the day we stayed at Agia Pelagia and all went out for dinner in the nearby taverna under a windmill. A beautiful evening to welcome them onto the yacht.

The next day it was off to Zakynthos and the famous Shipwreck Beach – a must-see on all the Greece travel guides. Well, the beach and cove are beautiful, it has spectacular cliffs and a cave to swim through, but it is swarming with visitors – thousands each day coming in ferry loads of over 200 a time!!!! Ourselves and the other yachts all got in early and then you could see the motorboats coming down the coast with their wakes – ferries of all sizes, and the big ones have their own spot on the bach. There is a roped-off area so you can sit down if you want to! the bigger ferries all feel they have to blow their horns going in and out!! The chaos and noise are hard to describe. Private boats coming squeeze in where they can on one side – some far too close to others and the ferries hoot at anyone they think is in their way – even if they are not!! I have tried to capture it all below but probably should have taken a video.

From there we slowly meandered our way down the west coast of Zakynthos looking at all the lovely inlets and beaches for those above the water.

All the great caves for those in the water. Many of the caves have names e.g. Heart Cave, Poseidon’s Face, Secret blue cave. The above water crew often got as beautiful colours as the swimmers. The swimmers could have spent all day going down the coast and go back again – it was great.

The yacht crew had to keep an eye when picking us up as we could be in 15 m of water and then suddenly there would be a pinnacle. This one was just outside of one of the cave complexes in the gap between an island and the mainland.

We looked into Porto Vromi but too full, then we pulled into the north inlet of a tiny harbour of Porto Steniti for lunch, tour boats were dropping people off here but not so many. Beautifully clear water.

Following lunch, we also tried to stop for a swim in Porto Limnionas but full of people and although two inlets there it was full of swimmers and roped off below the taverna so more set up for land swimmers than yachts. Where the was space it was too deep.

The final cave swim for the day was in the south side thorough one cave and then back through another for Barb and Di.

We missed the tiny Korakonsi port and its cave as it was getting late in the day.

That night we stopped at the edge of the Marine Park at the southern end of Zakynthos, near Keri and hoped to see some turtles but didn’t see any – they seem very shy.

Next morning it was off to Kefalonia east coast on the way north again.