Jimmy and Karen’s dingy trip to Greece

Dingy sailing holiday booked… only 3/4 weeks to get fit for hiking! So we started a plan of sit-ups using a pull up bar but as a trip hazard into the back room, a couple of days done then no more till the holiday oh well will have to get fitter on the job!

Location Vasiliki Greece some of you may know it and visited while in the Ionian Islands on charter, beautiful little village tucked into a corner of a very large bay. The bay is known for having light breeze in the morning and then after lunch its cross shore wind known as “Eric” starts, blowing somewhere between 20-35knts sometimes more! Fantastic place for sailors, windsurfing and wing foiling.
The set up is a company called Wildwind which we found on the web great reviews, British travel awards, huge sailing area and vids online looked like we would have a great time and we certainly did.

You can just free sail or join some of the instructors for sessions in the mornings, so the first week we joined the intermediate mono hull group to get back into it, sailing a RS500, RS200 (preferred this one as a bit less squished up in light airs and 35degree heat made for more comfort!) ILCAs (most will know as Lasers) RS Aero, and many other choices which we didn’t get round to sail. Afternoons when “Eric” arrived it was free sailing for the more experienced or you could go and grab a joyride out on a cat or mono with one of the experienced instructors (most of whom were or are in some of the national sailing teams). We did a bit of both blasting about together in a mono and on the cats joyriding.

Every Friday is Race day, boat of choice was the RS 200 and came 4th, happy with that, apparently the ILCAs always win (obviously a bandit boat on handicap bit like another boat we know)

Saturday is sail a fast boat day (with instructor) or free sailing, Jimmy jumped on the 49er for a blast out, poor old Goose wondered where Jimmy had gone when he headed out on the trap but forgot to clip on and went for a swim! Came back buzzing! I jumped on the C2 catamaran my 2nd capsize with an instructor that week just chatting away forgot to ease the sheets and ended up over and sat on the top side of the hull and having to jump in which felt a very long way down!!

Week 2 we decided to try the cats (thought it might be a bit more relaxing in the light airs and it was!) so joined the instructors on the Hobie 16 and Pacific to refine some cat skills, then moving into a different group, cats with spinnakers sailing the Tiger also the choice of boat for Race day week 2 and winners! Also some great afternoon sailing, flying hulls and capsizing in bigger breeze.

The second week was Jimmys week for capsizing with instructors even though I managed a drink at the prize giving on Saturday night for the first week for 2 instructors Jimmy had to top this with 6 capsizes with 4 different instructors over 5 days on joyriding cats! (This was in 30+knts of breeze, big gusts, chop and sending it!)

All in all a fantastic two weeks, great company to go with (including Jimmy), brilliant instructors, fantastic range of boats, great food, good accommodation, beautiful place, lots of bruises, pitch poles but if that’s not all for you then you can pick and choose your sailing times and they also offer a healthy option package with yoga and Pilates if you wanted to tame it down as well a kids clubs for families.

Would highly recommend to everyone and we will be returning, I think we were the only ones there that weren’t returning customers and that says a lot!