Goinground PELEPONNESE 2016

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containing descriptions of ports and marinas. channels of the ports.This was
quite helpful in advance for planning the trip.
For daily planning I preferred to use a topographical map to a nautical chart,
which often is in many rocky areas like the Peloponnese the best choice:
For daily navigation the combination of a 1:150.000 map by Freitag & Bernd
and Google Maps (Sattelite view) worked best. There is an atlas in a larger
scale (1:50.000) available. However the sheets were optimized for land use:
A stretch of one subsequent coastline is to be found on very different pages
and even dismantling the whole atlas did not help putting them in a useful
sequence for paddling.
Every evening I planned the next day based on the weather forecast. Then I
checked on Google possible landing spots and escape points and marked
these on my map.
Night paddles
I did not plan night paddles beforehand. But by starting my trip almost by new
moon I knew I could do night paddles later in the trip if needed. In some
windpatterns in the Mediterranean the wind gets less by dusk or during the
night (not with Meltemi!) and picks up in the morning. So night paddling
especially in moon light is not only a nice but a sensible option. The first night
paddle from Xylokastro was a good and easy start as the sea was really flat
and the first 15km of coastline where clearly marked by lights of a street
following the coast. After moonset I decided to wait for dawn, as there weren't
any streetlights and the visibility was too poor.
The second night paddle along the headland of Kalogria. Was a bit more
tricky: although the moon was really bright I found it difficult to estimate
distances and heights of the cliffs I intended to paddle along. From the cross
check on Google map I had the impression that the cape was a low lying
headland. But in fact it was NOT. The cliffs had a height of about 20m but in
the dark it appeared to me much higher. That confused me quite a lot.
Nevertheless I tried to stick to the basic rule “keep calm and paddle on” - not
always so easily done than said. Note for future practise: estimate height and
distances at dark with features you know.
©Christian Dingenotto 2018 10