Sunday, November 23, 2014
Great rollicking sail to Malta (about 350 miles from Pylos - just over 2 days); quite strong winds, quite a swell and quite a lot of shipping at times - even buzzed twice by an Italian air force plane - presumably looking for migrant refugee boats). Arrived Malta late evening and had a fabulous celebration dinner (one of several marvellous meals prepared by the expert galley team of Phil and Michelle) and a glass of bubbly to toast an epic sail.
Memorable trip back - rough first evening (anchored for a few hours in the night at a sheltered island so we could have something to eat and get a few hours good sleep) and also rough on the second day (called in to Santorini for shelter overnight); wonderful passage through the Santorini caldera at dawn; great sail across to the Greece mainland (although wind then died completely as we rounded the Peloponnese and we motored for over 12 hours to Pylos on SW coast). Needed to get water, fuel and some provisions in Pylos and so decided to have lunch as well - but then general consensus was that we should stay for dinner (Pylos is a lovely town). Always hard to get crew out of port! Planned a 0600 start next day only to find starter panel electrics had somehow got scrambled. Incredibly, after calls to Turkey (yard which fitted the new electric panel) and Volvo agents in Athens and 2 other towns, we discovered there was a Volvo engineer who was in next town and could be with us at lunch time. He was and problem solved in less than 20 minutes!
Final visitors for the season were Simon, Nicky and Michelle - spent a few days around Bodrum, Turgutreis and Turku buku (Turkey’s St Tropez??). Quite a challenging learning curve for N&S as they hadn’t sailed before. Then a wonderful end of season dinner in Bodrum and we began our journey west to Malta.
Nick and Lindy joined us in Kos and we had a great few days even although sailing was limited by more strong winds (40 plus knots!). Even saw a few dolphins and possibly (unconfirmed sighting!) a whale.
We then spent a few days exploring the islands north of Kos - we especially wanted to visit Patmos (where St John apparently wrote Revelations), Marathoni and Arki. Another tough upwind sail to Patmos but well worth the struggle to see the monastery and tour the island (by scooter). Our sail to Marathoni was one of the best of the summer and the bay we stopped in one of the best we’ve found. We really like the central Dodecanese islands and if we come back to the Aegean this area will be top of our list.
Again we had a fairly tight schedule to get to Kos so had to set off (after freeing the anchor which was tangled up with another boats as he’d dropped his anchor over our chain!) even though the wind on our first day was a bit of a stronger headwind than we’d normally like to sail in. However once we rounded the SW point of Turkey we got some shelter from the island of Simi and headed in to a well sheltered bay for the night. Simi town we knew would be very difficult to get into and as the harbour is very narrow anchors are frequently tangled and worse lifted by other boats! So the bay just south of the town seemed a better bet. There was even a space on the unfinished quay so we managed to park alongside. Mooring arrangements were however improvised as there were no cleats or rings of any sort. We tied off to pieces of wood pushed into drainpipes! The quay however turned out to be less suitable than expected as the wind backed a little and instead of being directly from ahead (as forecast) was funnelled around the bay pushing us side on to the quay. It also strengthened significantly so much so that we wouldn’t be able to get off the quay! Although we had to stay a day anyway to see if the wind would die down a bit. To compound matters the bow thruster had failed - just when we needed it most!
Simi town is a lovely relaxed and very pretty place even although there are lots of tourists. And most importantly there is a great electrician who came in the evening and fixed the bow thruster.
To escape from our berth pinned against the quay we needed the winds to slacken and decided the best opportunity would be very early in the morning. So Helen and I got up at 0330 and in almost calm conditions we set off for Kos which R&J wanted to see before flying home.
Our next visitors, Roy and Jackie, were due to arrive in Rhodes, so we continued south to Rhodes to await their arrival. I’d been concerned at stories of how difficult it is to get a berth in Rhodes and so we had engaged an agent who made it all very easy - for a fee of course! But the actual mooring fee is very low, so perhaps the inability to get a berth without an agent is just a way of ensuring that a proper fee is earned - its just that the agent gets the money not the town!
Rhodes turned out to be a wonderful site - great buildings and fortifications from the time of the Knights of St John and naturally quite similar to Malta (as they were based in Rhodes until forced out by Suleiman the Magnificent and then found their way in 1530 to Malta). We also enjoyed some lovely restaurants and drove to Lindos which is also a very pretty town.
SEPTEMBER AND OCTOBER 2014 CRUISING
Our autumn sailing started in early September from Bodrum. Unfortunately our first visitors, Tom and Carolyn, had flight problems and arrived around 2am!! So they missed spending an evening in Bodrum and most importantly dinner at one of our favourite restaurants in this region. We wanted to show them another of our favourite restaurants (historic sites are everywhere in this area so its great restaurants that make the difference!) at Selimye so we had a tight schedule visiting Knidos (to see a special historic site) and Datca (for our anniversary dinner) en route. Weather was great and we had some lovely sailing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)