We continue (slowly) on our way eastwards visiting some beautiful quiet bays. This is a lovely lovely area with many good anchorages, great sailing winds (perhaps a little strong at times and particularly around the exposed headlands), friendly and kind people (we asked a lady and her daughter in one town where the post office was and were aghast when the lady insisted her daughter go with us (it was a few blocks away) to ensure we found it!) and great history. We've had some great sailing (including a super downwind run with the gennaker - although I accept I should have taken it down earlier!). Great to have Roy and jackie onboard allowing us to hand over the helm and take it easy. We were also particularly grateful to another yachtie who helped us moor up after I'd made a real mess of mooring in a strong cross wind. He jumped in his dinghy when he saw we were having difficulty and rowed across, took our stern line and tied it off for us. We'd seen him at an earlier mooring and formed an unfavourable opinion as they had a large dog onboard (too hot, not able to exercise properly etc). However, he turned out to be one of the nicest people you could ever meet. Sadly, it turns out he and his wife were on their last sailing trip as they've sold their boat and are emigrating to Montreal (from Istanbul) where their daughter lives (after studying at McGill). They had got ready to leave the anchorage but kept having "one last swim" before they left - think they will really miss their sailing and the warm weather of Turkey especially in their first winter in Montreal. [ Sailing Note - mooring stern to is the norm in Med sailing and whilst fairly straightforward coming in to a pontoon or jetty (particularly if there's someone capable onshore to get the windward stern line on as then the boat can be controlled with the engine by taking the weight on that line while getting the other lines on), it can be rather tricky in strong winds in an anchorage when trying to take stern lines ashore to tie off to a rock. Key problem is that there are several jobs that need done very quickly - laying the anchor, reversing/positioning the boat and getting ashore in the dinghy with lines to tie off to a friendly well positioned rock. In a strong wind its often very difficult in our dinghy just to row against the wind and if pulling a mooring line may be impossible with the drag of the line in the water. However, we think we've learned a lot about this recently and have some new ideas on a better technique - mostly from making a real hash of it on a couple of occasions! May tell you how it works out in a future blog!]