Onboard the Andrea Cay: The search for Europe's best fried calamari

Yes, it’s true – we never have a meal out that one of us does not order fried calamari (maybe because it’s one thing all 4 of us absolutely love… other than wine…) There have been very few “losers” and at the moment the title is held by a small café in Alghero, Sardinia. However, the competition will continue.

We certainly made the right decision to “get out of Dodge” and leave Sicily a few days ago, as they did indeed get 30 knot winds and huge seas. We got to a really nice anchorage Sunday night outside the town of Argostoli (pop. 10,000), on the Ionian island of Kefallonia. The next morning we were bombarded with the same 30 knot winds that had hit Sicily. Even though Greece is a part of the EU, and traveling within these countries is supposedly very easy, the Greeks must be trying to boost their dismal economy by making it difficult and expensive for boaters, particularly, to enter their country. We had no issues going from Spain to Italy, but we were advised by many sources to hire an “agent” to facilitate our getting permission to travel through the Greek Isles. It is quite a rip-off, but after delicately declining the services of the biggest agent in Greece, A-1, we found a local fellow who was much more reasonable and who helped us a lot over the next few days. (Presenting him with a few Andrea Cay shirts didn’t hurt…)

The most important thing he was able to do for us, was to talk one of the local officials into letting us dock at their commercial pier for a night (a bargain rate of 60 euros), which was a huge relief. The winds that night were steady at 30-35 knots and gusting to 45 knots. We had every line on the boat tied to their heavy-duty cleats and even then it was a little freaky.

We had a fantastic day though, this being the first time in over a month that the Andrea Cay had docked (the last being in Halifax). 24 hours of being able to jump off and on the boat – come and go as we each pleased, was very exciting to all of us. We walked and shopped (our allotted 30 minutes) and ate many wonderful meals out. But alas, the seas calmed and the winds died, and Captain Bligh sounded his horn (for real…) in the midst of our gelato splurge indicating we would be left on shore if we didn’t scramble back to the boat immediately. In truth, the captain wanted to get underway so he could get to his nap.