Last week of the family

We were stuck in Patmos by strong North winds, but everyone was happy to sit by the hotel pool and swim now and then, while Kai found he could use the computers in the hotel and play on their Wii.  We ate out one night, where Charlie enjoyed his dinner:

The wind had dropped enough to leave for Arki on Sunday morning, though it was still a brisk 25 knots most of the way, close reaching.

We found a good spot on the quay in Arki and Kai immediately made some new friends, particularly Elian, a Belgian boy of his own age and temperament.
We had dinner at our friend Nicolas's taverna to find that his Polish girlfriend was back in Poland expecting their baby. Charlie, as usual, stuffed himself with bread and his favourite kolokithokeftedes (courgette croquettes).

On Monday Charlie and the grownups went round the corner to the beach,

while Kai went fishing in the dinghy with Elian and four Italian friends.

 We had planned to go to Lispi for the big festival on the Monday so that Kai could do some Greek dancing, but we decided that we would all rather stay in the peace and quiet of Arki, where Kai was happy to play with his friends. Jade and Amie found some kittens

On Monday afternoon Kai and Elian went off rowing in the dinghy to find a good spot for fishing,

but they learned that it is much easier to row downwind than to row back, so they had to tie the dinghy to the rocks at the bottom of the bay and clamber back over the rocks.
Later in the morning a fisherman came in with a 45 kilo tuna,

which Kai and his friends watched Nicolas gutting, and Lin and Becky had fresh tuna for dinner.

We left Arki for Lakki on Tuesday morning making good speed with a moderate north wind and the cruising chute. Kai watched a video

and read his Diary of a Wimpy Kid

The girls slept while Charlie played with the iphone

Becky sunbathed

and Andrew tried to catch a tuna.

On Wednesday morning we sailed down to Pothia,

for the visitors to take the ferry over to Mastihari. In the afternoon we went to the town beach, which was pretty mucky and the sea was too warm to be refreshing, but even the girls swam.

Everyone was up and ready to catch the 8.30 ferry on Thursday morning.

and we said goodbye.

Our visitors spent the day in the Mastihari water park, where they had a great time, before going to the airport for the evening flight home. Lin and Simon decided to head straight back to Lakki, because Pothia was too hot and busy to spend a couple of days cleaning. We had no wind until we rounded the corner of Telendos, where we were suddenly hit by 20-25 knots of northerly wind, with full sail. We rolled up a bit of genoa, but did not bother to reef the main because we did not think it would last, but in fact it kept blowing all the way to Lakki, much of the sacrificial strip of the genoa becoming institched as we rolled it up, so the first thing to do in Lakki was to send it off to the sailmaker for repair.

On Friday morning we slept in until 8.30 and were disappointed not to wake to Charlie's chuckles. Although we can rest at last we are already missing everybody - especially Charlie's laugh and Kai's enthusiasm.

Full House

We ended up spending three nights in Lipsi with Kai. On Saturday we had a hot walk over the island to a rocky beach with beautiful swimming. Luckily we hopped on a bus back.

Kai made some new French Swiss friends and on Saturday night there was another festival - Kai dancing until 12.30, when we managed to drag him back to bed.

On Sunday we went back to Lakki so that we could clean up the boat ready for the arrival of Becky and co and for Kai to play with Dionysus and Kosta, the children of Vassili, the harbour master. Unfortunately Kai discovered that the marina cafe had a Play Station behind the bar, on which he spent all his pocket money and then got credit from the cafe to keep playing. He was such a good customer that they gave him some time free as well, so we had a heavy struggle to get him to do anything else.

The new outboard arrived on Tuesday, giving us just enough time to start running it in. It is a vast improvement - Lin can even start it now and Kai is happy driving it.

We left Lakki on Wednesday 10th to go down to Kos town to pick up Becky. The wind was getting up and by the time they arrived on Thursday evening it had reached a full gale, which was forecast to continue through Friday. Becky and Andrew arrived with Charlie, Jade and Amie late on Thursday evening and we all huddled in the saloon for a takeaway, after toasting Becky and Andrew's engagement,

while the wind howled outside, with a beautiful sunset.

Luckily we managed to stay an extra night in the marina, while loads of people were being turfed out to make way for the returning charter boats, some of whom had a bit of trouble getting in.

It looked better on Saturday morning so we set off for Lakki, motor sailing north-west into a north wind with a double-reefed main, with Charlie happy in his car seat.

  It seemed fine for the first hour or so, but then the wind got up to a solid force 6 and the seas built up so we rolled up the genoa and motor sailed under main alone, though everybody was increasingly miserable, with some of our visitors being sick and the rest feeling bad.

Everyone was very relieved to get to Lakki and to have a day to chill out.

Kai was not on his best form when told that he could not go on the Playstation, and in his fury tore up his last five euro note and threw it into the sea. Becky recovered half of it, but Kai could not persuade the cafe to take it, so he decided to burn it.

We planned to stock up at the shops on Monday morning and go up to the anchorage at Arkhangeli, forgetting that Monday was Paraskeli and all the shops were closed. Fortunately Simon met the old mad who runs the grocers passing in the street and asked him if his shop was closed. He said it was, but he opened it just for us so we could whip enough off the shelves to keep us going and we got to Arkhangeli for Monday night, finding our favourite anchoring spot free and having a gentle afternoon swimming and running-in the new outboard. Jade and Amie summoned up the courage to jump in to the sea from the boat.

Charlie had a bit of a fever and we had run out of Calpol, so we decided to go straight to Lipsi to get to the pharmacy, getting a nice quiet spot on the end of the quay.. We got some Greek Calpol, but Charlie still had a fever so Becky and Andrew took him to the doctor, who checked him over. Kai met some old friends and made some new ones and stayed out dancing past midnight each night, while the girls searched in vain for some decent night life.

On Thursday morning, with stronger winds forecast for Friday, we sailed over to Patmos in the (vain) hope of finding more excitement for the girls. We had a fast reach with some chuckling all the way,

some keeping watch,

some sunbathing,

some keeping guard

and some still sleeping.

In Patmos the girls found no exciting night life, but we did find a hotel swimming pool which Charlie loved, and along the quay was Alinda V, an Alfred Mylne ketch built in Glasgow in 1934 and recently completely refitted (http://www.southamptonyachtservices.co.uk/PDF/Alinda.pdf)- that is what I call a real super-yacht.

On Friday morning Becky, Andrew and Kai took the bus up to the monastery and walked back down, though they could not find St John's cave. 

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.