Dave finds out if Australians speak English

Dave demonstrating his diplomatic skills with the Austrialians as the rest of our crew discuss the merist of English and Australian sportinging achievements in cricket and rugby.

Chris listens to the crew of the "Guinness" Boat discuss how they are going to come in before us on one of these days. They never did of course! They did have a really big Guinness flag though.

Blue Cup Day 4

Race Day 4 - Ermioni to Porto Heli. Wind at last. Because we had abandoned Day 3 the Blue Cup organisers set 2 races for Day 4. We raced round the island of Dhokos to the South of Ermioni and then raced from there to Porto Heli. We started the day with brisk Force 4's which soon got up to 6's gusting Force 7. This made for some very exciting close quarters racing with several boats getting altogether too close. This boat suffered a bit of damage when it was T-boned and this was not the worst incident. One boat lost a backstay but fortunately not its whole rig. Nobody was injured and it made for some great stories in the bar at Porto Heli as we all gathered for the brilliant gala dinner that marked the end of racing. The good news was we were getting better. We came 19th in the 4th leg race and then 7th in final 5th leg to end up with a position of 21st overall.

Friday 4th November

Friday 4th November - racing finished and we head back towards Athens. Feeling a little jaded we motor sail to the island Idhra for lunch

The winds piped up after lunch and we took the opportunity to get in a bit more sailing although Colin was finding it all a bit tiring.

Chris our skipper was also finding it hard to stay awake as the short nights and long days caught up with him.

We headed back to Poros for Friday night and took the opportunity to explore this interesting Greek town. Here a local fisherman is selling his catch right off the boat.

As far as we could tell this was the main street of Poros (apart from the road running along the quayside with all its tavernas of course

The view from the top of the hill in Poros is spectacular

Daves bruise was a talking point among all the crews mainly because he insisted on showing it to everyone. Eventually we persuaded him to visit a local doctor before the bruise covered his whole body. To our disappointment he was not rushed off by helicopter but instead was given lots of pills and sent back to us.

Saturday 5th November

On Saturday we edged closer to Athens, as we sailed back we stopped at the small island of Nisis Moni.

As well as being a beautiful anchorage the island had the tamest wild animals we had ever seen.

For our last night aboard we went to the harbour at Aigina. Although this island is only a short from Athens it seems much poorer than the mainland. Many of the cars on the roads were 30 or 40 years old and showing lots of wear and tear. Mind you some of our crew were also showing signs of the relentless punishment they had been putting their bodies through each night in the bar.

Sunday 6th November

On Sunday afternoon we arrived back at Alimos marina packed up the boat, had a final drink before we headed back to the airport for our evening flight back to the UK. It had a been a great week, better luck with the racing next year. Our thanks to the organisers and providers of the boats Vernicos Yachts . Our boat was in excellent condition, the weather was great (for November) and the whole atmosphere of racing against and partying with crews from many nations was brilliant.

Helming on a winters day