Athens to the Ionian Islands
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Leaving Athens late in the day on the afternoon breeze, we head for Salamis Island to ready ourselves to pass through the Corinth Canal the next morning. Having a great sail for the first time in ages, we see in the distant, bobbing up and down, a small craft waving frantically at us. A fishing boat and numerous ferries have ignored them, but we feel obliged to investigate. Rolling up the headsail and the main crashing everywhere, we find it's a young couple in an inflatable, run out of petrol. Fortunately we had enough in our dinghy and hopefully they made it the 5 miles to Athens.
Being very cagy about who they where, we guessed he was an Olympian too embarrassed to tell us.
The Corinth Canal is a man made canal 3.5 miles long, 20 metres wide, 250 metres high and 8 metres deep. It's a short cut to the Ionian Islands between Peloponnisos and mainland Greece. 
The lime stone it is cut through is beautiful and the water a teal blue. We have the perfect day to go through as the wind can funnel through here and make it very difficult building up a strong current. For its length, it is renowned as the most expensive pass in the world, but to us the awe inspiring experience and saving in extra miles; the E 190 was well worth it.
The Gulf of Corinth can also be very windy but we have to motor, no wind and very hot. Its 30 miles to Galaxidhi, a very small port near the Delphi ruins. We are almost ruined out, but this is a must see.
As we tie to the wall, suddenly the music started playing, horns blowing and police car sirens going off. A startled look around and down the road came the Olympic torch. We haven't got away from all the excitement yet. Great to see the whole town out, flying flags and dressed for the occasion and of course the day before the flame was in Delphi. Here the Pythrian Games in honour of Apollo where held every 4 years, thousands of years ago in the stadium that is still standing.
The marina at Itea is closer to Delphi, so we head there the next day, and bus up the mountain 30 miles. The valley is green with olive trees and high up in the mountain terraced into the rock face is Delphi, the geographical centre of the world for the ancient Greeks. The Temple of Apollo is being restored and the Theatre and of course the Stadium are quite magnificent, with quite a climb up over polished marble steeps to see.
I am also fascinated by the concrete aqueduct of water that flows beside the road. Its 10 feet wide and the water flows from the top of the mountain down to the valleys below to service their needs.
Looking forward to Navpaktos where you enter the Venetian castle walls and inside is a very small harbour, we are not disappointed. 
With barely enough room to drop anchor and go stern too, we find a very pretty sight and stay the night even though it's loud music all night from the numerous bars around the castle walls.
Generally we have not been impressed by the Greek food, restaurants offering the same old food everywhere. It's a real treat when you do find a good one and Navpaktos, with its trendy restaurants and bars, is the home of Maria Loi who specialises in ancient Greek cooking. She has a TV show and has written a book on recipes for The Olympics and is now the 5th best seller in Greece. We enjoy ourselves and have both lunch and dinner at her establishment, Koyzina.
From here we can see the impressive new Rio-Antirrio suspension bridge which crosses the narrow 1 mile strait at the western end of the Gulf of Corinth. The opening is tonight ahead of time for the Olympics and they boast the fire works will be bigger than the Olympics. Traffic control under the bridge is monitored with contact and directions mandatory from 7miles out for every vessel.
It's amazing seeing all the super yachts and powerboats obviously heading for Athens and the Olympics. As we left Navpaktos we heard Spada calling up bridge control. Spada is owned by Peter Cornes, a New Zealander and he told us he was on his way to Athens.
Calling into Patras, the 3rd largest city of Greece, to meet up with Colin and Tammy Selwood from Sydney, we find the marina disgusting. It's so smelly it burns my nose, with the charges higher than Athens, we are very quick to get out and cross to Cephalonia 50miles away and clean water. How can they let it get so bad? Before we left we took the opportunity to top up our diesel, from the diesel truck that all ports use. Ian thinks they have dodgy gauges because our usage suddenly went from 3.5 litres an hour to 5.6.The engine is certainly getting a work out and the Med is living up to its reputation of 60 % motoring.
The crossing to the Ionians is more motoring, and with night drawing close we stop at Andrea Bay (of course we had to stop here) at the southern end of Ithaca, the home of Homers Odysseus. Oh what joy to be back in beautiful clear green water.