15 Jul - 16 Jul 2004 Navpaktos

Mediterranean Sea
Gulf of Corinth
Hellenic Republic of Greece
Navpaktos
SY "Kamu II" at anchor, off the beach, outside the tiny medieval harbour.

Click below for a bird's-eye view of our anchorage:

Click here for a summary of this year's travels:
2004 Map

Motoring through the Straits of Rion/Anti-Rion and under the new 2,880 m long, five-span (longest span: 560 m), cable-stayed suspension bridge with an air height of about 80 m, an engineering masterpiece owing to several solutions applied to span this difficult site (with a considerable water depth of 65 m, with unstable and doubtful ground for the foundations, with seismic activity, with the probability of tsunamis and with the expansion of the Gulf of Corinth at a rate of about 30 mm in one year due to the tectonic plate movement).

Visiting the minute medieval harbour of Navpaktos, once the best on the N coast of the Corinthian Gulf, now accessible only to the smallest craft, with our new hard tender and climbing up to the Venetian castle which towers impressingly over town and harbour and which successfully resisted a four month's siege by a 30,000 man strong Turkish army in 1477 CE.

Remembering the year 1571 CE, when 206 galleys and 6 galleasses, manned by 12,920 sailors and carrying almost 28,000 fighting troops, of the united European forces, consisting of a Genoese and Venetian squadron, the whole Mediterranean fleet of Spain (with Miguel de Cervantes aboard) and a squadron from the Papal States, decisively defeated the Ottoman main fleet of 222 war galleys and 56 galliots, manned by 13,000 sailors and 34,000 soldiers, under Ali Pasha, in the Battle of Lepanto, the five-hour sea battle that saved Christendom (for the time being).