Home sweet home!

We went back home for the first week of July to see family and friends, doctors and dentists and flew back from Birmingham to Rhodes on July 9^th. We stayed in a little pension in Rhodes old town for two nights so we had a day to look around the old town.

Rhodes old town from the catamaran

The town was packed with tourists, with two huge cruise ships in the harbour, but the museums were very quiet and beautifully laid out, so we spent most of the day in them. We took the catamaran to Leros on Friday 11^th July. Mia Hara was filthy after being left for ten days, covered in dust and pollen from the trees. Angiris told us that a lot of the muck came from bees, which fed off the pollen then dropped the residue as they flew past.

Syrian refugees continue to flood in, more arriving every day and camping in the garden of the port police until they are shipped off to Athens.

On Saturday night we went to a wonderful concert in Evros boatyard. It was a musical biography of Manos Khatzidakis (best known outside Greece as the composer of ‘Never on Sunday’, which must have been his worst song judging by the music we heard). The concert was part of the Three Moons Festival, which is an arts festival that has been running for a few years and has events coinciding with the full moon in June, July and August, and had been organised by Takis Fragkous, a double bass player who had returned to Leros and recruited his friends to play. The lead singer and guitarist was Vasilis Giadakis, who was brilliant, and Deopoina Stefanidou, singing and playing the piano, was fantastic (you can catch bits of their work on Youtube). The audience was nearly all locals and was very enthusiastic, singing along beautifully to some of the best known songs. The group played for three hours, with a short break, and were as full of energy at the end as they had been at the beginning.

On Monday night we had planned to go to a performance of Aeschylus’s Persians in the castle, but it started late and we were too tired, but afterwards we heard that it was another fantastic event.

Before we left for England we had taken our outboard in for repair. It turned out that it needed a new float valve, which had to be sent from Athens. When we got back it had still not arrived because they had also been out of stock in Athens, so we had to leave without it. We had also been waiting for a new part for the watermaker, to double its capacity as we do not motor very much so were not making enough water. Unfortunately it was held in customs in Athens and we got a demand for a massive amount of paperwork, including the original invoice, a Paypal receipt (we hadn’t paid by Paypal), our tax number and registration, a copy of my passport and an authorisation with signature certified by the police. Fortunately Anna in the marina let me use her scanner and the port police were very helpful so we got together the documentation we could and sent it off. It turned out to be enough for them to release the parts once we had paid 25 euros in import duty and 85 euros in fees to the agent, but we decided not to wait for it to arrive before we headed north to pick up Becky, Andrew and the kids from Samos.

We left Lakki on 15 July and had a lovely sail up to Lipsi, where we anchored overnight in the bay to the south of the island. We left early next morning to motor up to Arki, where we got a good spot on the quay. After a couple of days swimming and chilling we sailed across to Agathonisi to sit out the forecast stronger winds before going on to Samos.

Agathonisi was almost empty when we arrived. There was one Russian crewed Turkish charter anchored in the bay, who left in a hurry soon after we arrived when the Port Police called across asking for their papers, and one million pound Turkish catamaran which had overtaken us on the way in and whose owners were very helpful getting us in alongside them – it turned out that they knew us from last year, when they had had a rather less fancy yacht.

We had already noticed in Arki how few yachts there seemed to be compared to previous years and Maria and Voula both told us that it had been very quiet all summer. The shops and tavernas are clearly struggling. Maris told us that she is thinking of leaving because the school cannot get a teacher for its kindergarten (4-6 year olds). A young teacher only gets 700 euros a month after the cuts and at least 300 has to go immediately to pay rent, so it is not surprising that they can’t get anyone.

We will leave for Pythagorion on Samos on Monday 21^st to get ready for the arrival of Becky and co first thing on Wednesday after their overnight flight via Athens.