Sailing Sailing

Today was a great day! We left the town of Vathy late, after shopping for a bit. Colleen and I walked the whole length of the board walk to the other side of town.

For lunch we stopped at a bay on Ithaka that had a rock bottom. It took several tries before we were able to get the anchor to hold. I was able to man the windlass until Iit came time to swim the lines. There was a boat in the harbour that was swinging the opposite of the other boats and we could not find a spot that didn’t swing into it. It appeared to be made of tin (Called “Tin Lizzie”). We eventually gave up and found a spot further in and stern tied to the shore.

When we left the bay the wind picked up to 10-14 knots so for the first time we were sailing! We got up to 7.5 knots. Today I was able to do a lot more. We had to beat upwind and I tacked the genoa. I also managed the anchor when we were anchoring at lunch time. I’m trying to take Abigail’s job (not the cooking part).

Stern tying here is the most common way to anchor (or pull up to the dock). I’m sure it is because there is barely any slope to the shores. The steep rock faces keep going down rock walls to at least 5 meters at only a few meters from the shore. Where there are beaches, they are small and there is a steep drop off at about a metre from the waterline. There is barely any tide and no waves – bad place for surfing. There is almost always a huge rock to tie to. It is much less stressful than a single anchor as there is no swinging around. In crowded harbours there is room for a lot more boats. It is early season and there are many fewer boats than would be seen in a month from now.

In the afternoon the wind was great so we abandoned our planned destination on Atoko and sailed past to Kalamos. Port Leones is a town that was wiped out by the 1953 earthquake and did not recover. The church was rebuilt but is the only building around that is intact.

Apparently there was a 6.1 earthquake near Crete today and there were tsunami warnings. We didn’t notice anything.

Dinner was another masterpiece with pork souvlaki, rice,salad and desert was Halva with a berry and red wine reduction. We went to look at the stars before bed.