We had a longish passage of approximately 40nm to do yesterday so had an early start as the sun was coming up.
Heading east towards the Gulf of Patras, there was little wind but the views were great and the day was ahead of us.
The wind picked up but, unfortunately, didn't change direction and, eventually, we saw the Rio-Antirrio bridge in the distance. The bridge is one of the world's longest multi-span, cable-stayed bridges and the longest of the fully suspended type.
5nm before the bridge, we had to call Rion Traffic to let them know we were approaching the bridge and requested passage beneath it. There are two options for smaller vessels, one to the north and one to the south of the channel. We had to provide the overall length of Arcturus, together with the height of the mast, previous port and destination. We were then told to take the northern route with one pillar to the left and three to the right and were asked to check in again 1 nm before the bridge for authorisation to proceed beneath the bridge. The bridge is quite a spectacle as you can see from the following images:
With the wind and tide, it was quite choppy through the channel but, once on the other side the wind abated giving us a gentle cruise to our next port of call at Nafpaktos.
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