I’ve just returned from a week in Greece. 'She wot must be obeyed' and I went to the Neilson beach club ‘the Retreat’ at Sivota. It’s on the Ionian coast. Warm waters, turquoise seas and temperatures of around 35 Celsius; it was lovely.

The hotel has steps everywhere and we had the highest room with 241 steps down to the beach each day! Nough said! Talk about accelerating your heart rate each day!

The Neilson team at bar, restaurant, beach and hotel, were as always, outstanding. I cannot recommend them too highly. We have been on several Neilson beach and skiing holidays and all of them have been exemplary.

The Retreat is not great for experienced dinghy sailors. There just isn’t enough wind frankly. The most it came up to was force 2 for the odd occasion. It is a great venue for learning to dinghy sail however. It was also a great flotilla base and several people I spoke to commented on the excellent yacht instruction they were receiving.

Anyway here is the first of a little film on a laser Pico. I’ll post others of kayaking and sailing a Laser Bahia during the week.

These boats were certainly different to Arwen. The Bahia, whilst stable, is a high performance boat and also centre mainsheet rigged. I had to ‘re-learn several things; not least of which was tacking and gybing facing forward; not having a mizzen to keep me head to wind; and a boat on which trim and balance were really big issues!!

Steve