Strong winds

On Monday morning we sent the outboard up to the yard for repair, but they reported that it needed major work doing and advised us to get a new one, so we ordered a new Suzuki 6hp four-stroke at a ridiculous Greek price. It was specially annoying because we had intended to get a new two-stroke inTurkey, where they are still sold and we could get the tax back, but that is life. When the outboard arrived on Wednesday it turned out to be a long shaft so they had to send it back.
Kai played with Dionysus and Kostas on Monday and they discovered that at the back of the cafe was a PS3, so Kai invested this week's pocket money in playing on the PS3 with his Greek friends. When his money ran out they let them go on playing free, and of course Kai decided that he wanted to stay in Lakki for a couple of days, supposedly to play with Dionysus and Kostas, but most of the time playing with them on the PS3. Lin and I could stand no more of is, so we decided to leave on Wednesday morning, though the forecast was for northerly winds force 6-7, so our options were limited.
We sailed round to the other side of Leros, to Vromolithos, which we naively expected to be sheltered. We anchored in the most sheltered spot, only to be told that we had to move because this was the swimming area. We anchored at the other end of the bay, with a kedge out from the stern to keep us off a moored fishing boat, and Kai went up the mast to reattach our flag halyard, which had come down when the string on the old Greek flag had broken.

The wind got up in the afternoon and the fisherman came by to check his boat. He was pleased to see that we had a kedge out to keep us off his boat, but insisted on relaying it for us and warned us that the holding was bad there as the sand was very soft, but both anchors were buried deep in the sand so we thought we would be OK, but we decided to eat on board rather than going to Dimitri's taverna.
We set the depth alarm and went to bed. Lin woke up to the howling wind to find that we had swung very close to the fishing boat and the depth was down to 2.5 metres - the alarm buzzer had not worked. When we pulled on the kedge we found that it came straight up - the fisherman had dropped it on a thick bed of weed - so we decided that we had to reanchor, eventually finding a comfortable spot after one failure, though we also found that we had a loose connection in the nav lights - more things to fix.
Next morning the wind was still blowing at 25 knots in the anchorage, so we decided to go up to Lipsi, motor sailing upwind in a steady force 6 with a double-reefed main and no genoa in big seas, arriving at Lipsi and getting on the quay at lunchtime. Kai soon made some new friends on the quay and disappeared until dinner time. After dinner he shot off to play football with his German friends. When we wanted to go to bed Simon set off to find him, but another festival was under way, with music and dancing. Simon dragged Kai away and as we got back Becky phoned to say that Andrew had asked her to marry him and she had accepted, so there was much rejoicing and Kai was determined to celebrate by going back to the festival and dancing until midnight, when we eventually collapsed into bed.

First week with Kai

We flew back with Kai on July 23, getting a 7 am flight from Gatwick with a very tight ferry schedule to get to Leros. Things started badly as were held up for an hour on the runway at Gatwick waiting for air traffic control clearance. Although the flight made up half an hour of the backlog, we waited for ages for our last bag to come off and then faced a taxi strike at Kos airport. We just managed to leap on to a bus to Mastikhari as it was leaving, and the bus driver called ahead to hold the ferry to Pothia until we arrived. We rushed to the ferry and got to Pothia in time for the hydrofoil to Leros, but we did not know where it left from or where to get the tickets. The information office was closed but the Port Police were very helpful – it turned out that the hydrofoil left from right by where we had landed from the ferry. Kai ran ahead to hold the hydrofoil, Simon staggered after him with the bags, and Lin went to get the tickets. Simon and Kai managed to hold the hydrofoil till Lin arrived, jumping on as it pulled away from the quay, and we got to Agia Marina on Leros where, fortunately, the taxis were not on strike, so we got across to Lakki and on to the boat, which was intact but filthy dirty!

We spent Sunday sleeping in, chilling and stocking up, but the mobile shops were closed so we had to wait until Monday morning to get our new SIM cards for the laptop and ipad, which took hours because the Wind shop’s internet connection was down and another shop gave us the wrong SIM, so there was a lot of toing and froing, with the guy at Germanos finally sorting us out. We eventually got away a bit after one, only for the temperature gauge on the engine to shoot up. We dropped anchor off a beach and Simon dived over to see if the intake was clogged, which it was not. When he opened the door of the engine compartment he found that the raw water pump had fallen off – all four bolts had worked loose. He patched it up enough for us to motor sail to Agathonisi, which we reached about 7 pm.

We had promised Kai that we would spend a week on Agathonisi, where he had made a lot of friends last year and when he came in June. The first evening he spent playing on the beach with his local Greek friends, but got annoyed with them when they sat around talking, not unreasonably, in Greek and leaving him out.
The following day, Tuesday, he made a new friend, Emilio, from Athens, who was staying with his grandmother for the summer and who spoke quite good English. Kai and Emilio had fun fishing together, catching a lot of little fish, which they dissected with a plastic knife, concluding that fish are built just like us.

On Wednesday Kai made another friend, Nicolas, who is Norwegian, has an ipad, and was on a one week charter with his family.

In the evening there was a big festival to celebrate the name day of the island, which is on Thursday. Motor boats came pouring in all afternoon bringing people in for the festival, and one tripper boatload arrived in the evening. After a meal at Yanni's we walked up the steep hill to the school in Megala Hora with our Norwegian friends and found a seat in the playground,

where the whole population of the island was sitting at trestle tables having a meal of souvlaki, sausages and so on.

At about 10.30 the music began, with a group of local musicians,

and the local folk dancing group started the dancing.

And the announcer broke into song

Soon the floor was filled with dancers, and Kai joined in almost at once, dancing joyously until 1.30 in the morning.

The next day our Norwegian friends left, Kai went fishing,

and the Greek navy arrived to show the flag - and to have a swim on the beach.

In the afternoon Kai's Italian friends from last year arrived on the ferry. Kai had a great time fishing and swimming with Alessandros, Katerina and Mikhelangelo.

On Thursday night Alessandro slept over

and the boys had great plans for after Lin and Simon had got to sleep, but fortunately the boys slept first.
On Friday another smaller Greek navy boat arrived.

On Friday night Kai walked across the island with his Italian friends to a little taverna in a bay on the other side of the island. By the time he got back we were all ready for bed.
On Saturday morning we decided that we were almost out of water so had to go back to Leros to fill up. So it was goodbye to Katerina

and to Alessandro and Mikhelangelo

and we set off sailing. Kai has become such a good crew that Lin can take a leisurely approach to her duties.

We decided to stop for the night at Arkhangeli, where Kai did some great rowing

and made some new British friends who were on a chartered motor yacht anchored across the bay. They offered Kai a ride back in their dinghy, but he decided to swim back, all of 300 metres.

On Sunday morning we came back to Lakki and filled up with water, where Kai spent his whole week's pocket money playing computer games in the internet cafe.

Chilling

John flew off on Friday and we waited for the forecast gales, although each successive forecast downgraded the promised gales and in the end we only had 36 hours of strong winds. Nevertheless we stayed in Lakki until Wednesday, doing odd jobs and making new friends. The forehatch cover had blown away on the way up to Vathi, so we took some material and a pattern into the luggage/shoe shop/general repair shop, where they promised to make us a new one. Unfortunately the new one is too small and we have run out of material, so we will have to try again.
On Wednesday we had a very slow beat up to Arkhangeli, the island just off the north end of Leros, in a light northwesterly wind. We anchored just off the beach. There were quite a few boats there when we arrived, but most people just stop for lunch and there were only three other boats remaining for the night.
Arkhangeli is inhabited only by goats, a few rabbits, lizards and maybe snakes. Every evening the goat man comes across in his little motor boat to give the goats food and water and as soon as he starts sounding his horn the goats run from all over the island.

In the morning we had the bay to ourselves - it is a wonderfully peaceful place,

sheltered from all directions,

with friendly goats

and, from the top of the hill, views to Lipsi (and Patmos) to the north

and sleepy Leros airport and Partheni boatyard to the south.

 
On Thursday afternoon we were joined by our friends from Lakki, Jacques and Brigitte, who sail a Moody 376, almost identical to our boat but a bit smaller, and by nightfall, when we joined them for a drink, everybody else had gone. We had intended to move on, but since Arkhangeli was perfect we decided to stay another night. During the day a superyacht anchored further out, with a fat old man and his younger female partner serviced by three crew (a quick check on the internet revealed that it was 32.5 metres long, designed by Tony Castro, built in 2002 and sold on in 2009 for 7.8 million, but no good for us because it only sleeps six).
On Saturday morning we said goodbye to Jacques and Brigitte and motored (no wind) down to Lakki, where we are leaving the boat for three weeks while we spend a few days in the Peloponese before going home for a couple of weeks.

Windy days

We set off for Nisiros early on Monday morning with a gentle Northwesterly breeze, flying the cruising chute to keep up a decent speed. We arrived in Pali

in time for a late lunch in our favourite taverna, Afroditi, where they wanted to know where Kai was (everywhere we go we are asked, 'where is Kai?'). We swam off the harbour wall and went back to Afroditi for dinner. With strong northerly winds forecast, we decided that it was time to start heading north for John to get his flight back, so we headed for Kos marina next morning (we also needed to do some washing and get some boat bits - to replace an exhaust pipe that had sprung a leak and other bits and pieces). We started with no wind, then a bit of a breeze for a short while, then nothing at all, then as we approached Kos we suddenly had 20-25 knots, and even more as we turned the corner to thread our way through the windsurfers. We tied up in the marina, got the washing on, and could not get any of the boat bits we needed.
Next morning was blowing hard, so we set off to beat to Vathi with one reef in. We sailed on one tack to the Turkish shore, then tacked back towards Pserimos. As we came towards Pserimos the wind was gusting up to 30 knots so we tried to put in the second reef, but the reef line jammed so we decided to motor the rest of the way to Vathi, where we got into the last comfortable spot on the quay. In the afternoon Lin and John walked up to one of the ruined early christian churches.

We were just going to bed at about 10 pm, with the wind howling, when a German charter boat came in, having just picked up their boat and left Kos at 6pm. They blithely dropped their anchor across ours, despite our protestations, insisting that there was no problem, 'it is just like camping', then scraped their rudder on the rocky bottom, despite shouted warnings that it was shallow, before getting tied up at the second attempt. Next morning we we ready to leave at 7.30, and eventually managed to rouse our neighbours, with much shouting and use of the foghorn, so that they could release their anchor chain and avoid our pulling up their anchor. We got away OK, with two reefs already in the main, but once we got out we decided (Lin's still sore back decided) that we would be more comfortable motoring up to Lakki, on Leros, in the lee of Kalymnos, which we did, though the wind and the seas did not turn out to be as bad as we had feared.

We tied up in Lakki marina on Thursday afternoon and hired a car for the day on Friday, to show John the island and get him to his flight. We got the exhaust hose at the boatyard in Partheni, John checked in for his flight to Athens, and we crossed the road for lunch in the taverna opposite the airport, before John flew off:

Having seen John off, Lin and Simon went round to the war cemetery at Alinda, which we had never managed to find (because we had been looking in the wrong place), then in the evening to Dmitri's taverna in Vromolithos, which again we had failed to get to before because he had been closed on our previous attempts, where we had a wonderful meal with a stunning view.

The forecast was for gale force winds over the weekend, so we, like most others, decided to stay in Lakki and do washing and jobs on the boat until the gales blew out.

Days with John

On Wednesday evening there was a central total eclipse of the moon in Agathonisi.

On Thursday morning we left Agathonisi early and had a quiet motorsail to Arkhangeli, a little island north of Leros with very sheltered anchorages. Our favourite little bay was taken, so we went in the larger bay.

We left next morning soon after dawn,

intending to sail to Amorgos, but it was a close reach in a force 3-4 so we decided that it would be more comfortable to sail on a beam reach to Astipalea, keeping the cruising chute up all the way.

As we approached Astipalea

a couple of dolphins frolicked under the bow.

We have met dolphins a few times this summer, but none of them have wanted to play.

In Astipalea we moored on the new quay

and met up with Yanni and Bettina, alongside whom we had been moored in Pothia. They had just got back to Astipalea having got their tripper boat certified by the Port Police in Kalymnos.

On Saturday we walked up past the windmills

to the castle, through the arched entrance.

This was a Venetian castle, built on the site of the ancient acropolis, three sides of which were made up of conjoined fortified houses. According to our guide book 3,000 people once lived inside the castle (against a present day population of the whole island of only 1100), though we suspect that this includes those who lived in the chora, outside the castle walls.

The views in all directions were magnificent.

When we got back we rented a four-wheel drive jeep for the day to drive all over the island, mostly on unmade roads.

We had an excellent lunch at Asti Fagi, on the beach at Skhoinontas, the owner/chef of which had been trained in Bristol.

After lunch we drove up to Vathi in the north, where Lin and Simon had anchored fifteen years ago, stopped off for a swim on a deserted beach

 tried to drive round the back road (track) to Agios Ioannis monastery, but after half an hour the road was closed off by a fence, so we had to drive all the way round the other way, past the main town

till we eventually got to the tiny monastery,

in its spectacular setting in a ravine, with views across to Santorini

with wild rhododendrons (or the like) growing down the slope

We got back in time for showers before we filled up with water, and had bacon and eggs for dinner.

On Sunday morning we set off for a tour of the highlights of Astipalea by sea.

Yanni had recommended that we visit the two islands of Kutzomiti and Kunupia, where he had laid moorings just of the beach which we were welcome to use. Kutzomiti is separated from the neighbouring island by a narrow rocky channel.

Kunupia is one island, with a sand bar joining its two halves in the middle.

On the way back we found ourselves converging with a fisherman laying his nets

We finally anchored in Skhoinontas (third time lucky - the sand is very fine so the anchor just ploughed a furrow the first two times),



so that we could go back to Asti fagia for dinner,

before setting off for Nissiros early on Monday morning.