Nicolas had arranged to sail to Astipalaia from the Dodecanese where he had had guests out for the summer. Whilst in Patmos he had made friends with a French / Australian guy – Thomas. Thomas was also coming to Astipalaia on his own boat, where he would be joined by his partner Albert (also French).

Albert & Thomas

Sylvie, Nicolas’s sister was flying in as well. It was all set for fiesta time – we did not realise just how wild it was going to be!

It all started innocent enough. We had all hired scooters for a few days and headed into town to meet up with other Australian sailors, a Pilot & Stewardess from Quantas who were travelling the world on their boat with their young children.

Lunch in town

That night we all decided to visit a local restaurant in Maltezana called 7Asteria, not far from the anchorage. It was owned & run by Elleni & Costas. We were the only diners but some family members had been visiting and were still there partying. Costas and Elleni had obviously had a few and were up for a good time. After we had all eaten the wine and ouzo began to flow – the two young Australian kids were bedded down inside the restaurant on mattresses. Greek music was ramped up and the dancing started , Costas dressed up in some sort of plant clothing with a hood and began spraying us with what we think was water but could easily have been ouzo wafted on large ferns. Plates were smashed – now illegal in Greece – and at some point he swiped all the house wine off the table to replace it with “good bottles”

He had bag pipe music that he loved and that went on at some point with Louise, Diane & I attempting to demonstrate some sort of highland jig.

Unfortunaely we were all so drunk we have limited and poor pictures of the antics!

Albert decided to get up on the table and strip – our sides were splitting –and so were our heads the next morning.

Costas had to give ne a ride down to the anchorage on the back of his scooter as I fell off mine trying to get it off the stand!

The next day when I walked up to pick it up he had the same bagpipe music blaring as soon as he saw me coming up the hill about a mile away.

We donated our big Saltire for his restaurant that now has pride of place on his wall.

Costas & Elleni

A wild, very wild, night , great Greek hospitality and a load of fun. I will remember them fondly for many years to come.

We didn’t know it at the time but the rest of Diane’s holiday was to be spent in Astipalaia, 10 days in all. She is a right Jonah with the weather. We kept checking for opportunities to scoot across the 30 odd miles to Kefalos bay on Kos where she could easily have got a taxi to the nearby airport but there was absolutely no chance with any forecasted breaks in the weather. 30 miles is just the short hop to number 2 below! In the end she got the overnight ferry with Albert which roughly follows the full charted passage to Kos town at the other end of the island.

She was transported to the ferry terminal on the back of my rental scooter – luxury holidays are us eh?

The ferry was by all accounts very plush so at least some recompense and comfort at the end of her holidays and she had Albert keeping her amused all the way, not to mention an open invitation to his house on Patmos.

Diane & Louise’s first foray into Astipalaia town was on the local bus. The island is typically Cycladic with whitewashed houses and Hellenic blue painted doors. It’s very picturesque.

Longish passage south past Koufenisia, Schoinousa and Amorgos to Astipalaia

Early start today it was calm with a moderate swell in the bay. I was up at 06:30 and by 07:00 we were off the 56 miles to Asipalaia.

Sunrise over Amorgos

Kalantos back on Naxos in the distance at sunrise

We would head either for Panormis, the bay on the top left of the chartlet below or Vathi a sheltered inlet on the top right.

Destination options on Astipalaia

In the end we chose Vathi because we could go into the taverna here (previously blogged) after a long day to save cooking on board – or so we thought!

On rounding the SW tip of Amorgos we took a right battering. I was expecting wind and waves but it was far worse than I imagined. 39 knots on the beam. At 11:40 I see from the log “OK now”. So very different from our previous visit a few weeks earlier. It’s not a place I would want to revisit in anything other than light airs & calm seas.

A long and tiring day rounded off by a big swell in the afternoon.

Arriving and anchor down at 16:30 to find the taverna was shut !

The next day we sailed down the east “ Butterfly Wing” of the island into Ormos Schinouda and the village of Analipsis, where while anchoring the top of the windlass guide sheared off – lucky white heather. But there was no danger just something else to be fixed in the winter.

Diane arrived early doors at the beach off of which were we were anchored. As usual she was ferried aboard by plush tender for breakfast.

 Who’s the fat bloke in the “plush tender” then ?

The very high winds prevented us from leaving Paros so an enforced stay for Diane – not too onerous though it’s a lovely island.

Louise took her on the bus back to Naoussa for a visit.

Naoussa harbourside

They also took the ferry to Andiparos where Tom Hanks has a house. No sighting though and they nearly got stuck as even their ferry considered it too rough to return. They had to get a different one leaving from another part of the island, hitched a lift and had a bit of a walk when they got back to Paros.

 Andiparos (windy) day trip

We did meet up wit Dale and Linda for a spot of lunch and I got details of his swinging bathing platform – details later – bet you can’t wait eh?

Evenings were spent amusing Lily during her mad half hour aound dusk.

On Saturday the 25^th the winds abated enough to begin our trip south. The 1^st stop was Kalantos bay on the south of Naxos. Our passage took us through the narrow and shallow strait between Paros & AndiParos, very scenic.

Stenon Paros Andiparos

There are some vicious rocks on apprach to Parioka

On 26th September 2000 the ferry Samina hit Portes rocks (low lying rocks not far from these above) on approach to Paroika , the ship sank in 40 meters . Over 80 people drowned – the worst maritime disaster in Greece in 35 years.

Route South

On arrival in Kalantos this time we anchored off in the bay and had dinner on board. 26 miles or so travelled – I had to dive to clear the speed & distance log again.

Kalantos bay anchorage

It’s now the Monday 20^th September. Miss Diane is flying out for another sailing break on Camira tomorrow. Hopefully we will get further this time. Well – we have to as she is flying into Paros and back from Kos.

Rather than leave and return we decided to just stay in Paros Town Bay and have explored numerous restaurants to take Diane to. The most expensive but very nice was Dionysos and today ashore we priced a bottle of wine at 6.50 euros that we paid 27.00 euros for! Ah well.

Last night we tried a recommended Thai restaurant and got talking to a French couple who are starting up a new business a boutique auberge in the Dordogne. They had visited Scotland and took our e-mail perhaps well get an invite to the grand opening?

It’s been relatively calm for our stay here but the winds pick up again in a couple of days time before dying away again so perhaps we will have even longer here, that girl is a Jonah!

Anyway the plan had been to stay a couple of days anyway so a few more makes no difference I am sure they will enjoy wandering around the wee alleyways and shops – me I’ll be having a Nescafe frappe or beer depending on the time of day .

The plan thereafter is south to Despotika , maybe Amorgos then down to Astpaliaia.

Just got the outboard engine back this afternoon, apparently the impellor was far too small that had been fitted by “the engineer” back in Mytilini. Seems to be tickity boo now ……. well so far, lol

We saw Amir & May again before she headed back to Israel with the two kids and Amir to Romania, where he keeps his boat.

May, Amir, Ronni & Noam

After the 3rd laundry trip this morning we  bumped into Dale & Linda, Scots pals we met in Kalamata . We had kept in touch on facebook. They are in Naoussa and are planning to motor round here tomorrow. Unfortunately they fell off their scooter and both have cuts and bruises but Dale has also fractured his arm, so sailing will be difficult for a wee while!

We are hoping to meet up over the coming days after they and Diane arrive.

Louise was complaining again about the lack of hair drying facilities on the boat, another winter job I think? Anyhow she took the opportunity for another hairdressers visit on the back of this picture .

Paroikia is built on a gentle slope beside the sea with steep slopes behind. It is typically Cycladic, the houses, shops, churches are dazzling white cubes with bougainvillea and wisteria providing splashes of natural colour.

The old quarter around the 13^th century castle is full of narrow winding alleys and archways, stone houses and chic boutiques with wooden balconies

Pictures of Parokia

Heading out that night to collect the luandry from the worst & most expensive laundrette in the world!

  The Clampets wi their bag of washing at the taverna , lol !

After 9 days on anchor in Lageri bay we headed around to Ormos Paroikia, a large double bay off Paros Town. It was a early start to take advantage of hopefully calmer weather.

An hour and a bits passage around to Paros town , seas still on the biggish side

We managed to sneak into an anchor spot at the very north of the bay just in front of some fixed moorings, hopefully this would be sheltered when the meltemi started fully again.

Amir & May were still here as well but farther out in the distance.

It was calm so we attached the outboard relatively stress free on this occasion – normally always a palaver given our lack of bathing platform and the soft bottomed dinghy and Louise’s dodgy back – one of these days I will drop the dinghy in the drink I’m sure.

It was half a mile one way across the bay to collect water in our jerry cans – two return trips were required. On the first return the engine packed in, overheating I think, so it was rowing job back. So much for my previous engineering prowess eh ?

Similarly on the second trip !

We have both agreed if we continue with this lifestyle we need to splash out (sorry!) on a new dinghy & outboard engine.

Having just completed the shuttle we noticed Amir had his sail up which seemed strange. Turned out he had grounded his boat on a sunken mole and was wedged tight. Now my dinghy and crap engine couldn’t pull you out of bed but we needed to try to help anyway so I rowed out and jumped aboard. After half an hour with help from a rib and a powerful dinghy, together with his anchor we managed to back him of the mole and re anchor his boat with no real damage done (we hope).

Wpt 1 is the row to collect water and just above Wpt 2 you can see the underwater danger Amir’s boat grounded on.

Busy anchorage but nice all the same

We both noticed that Lily seemed at lot more at ease here as well , maybe a good omen.

All in all a busy arrival in Paros Town.

I am sure Nelson Mandela wouldn’t have minded me plagiarising the tile of his auto biography, “Long Walk to Freedom” in my view a book everyone should read.

Anyhow, one of the (then unknown) drawbacks of our anchorage is that it is out in the middle of nowhere with not a lot else.

We are anchored in the bay with the green dot upper right and the town you can see is center bottom

There are no shops, no tavernas and the only distraction is willy watching, if you are that way inclined, we are parked just off one of Paros’s Naturist Beaches.

I did all this in the 80’s when I ran a youth hostel in the south of Crete, but there I was accompanied in the main by young Scandinavian & German ladies. This beach, unfortunately however, seems to have a dearth of such, favouring mainly the other gender. At sundown there are some interesting Ugandan Relations as Private Eye called them going on in the bushes.

Well the forecast was correct the following was an excerpt from the Greek weather warnings:

NEWS
High winds wreaking havoc with island ferry connections
[InTime News]
Newsroom
07.09.2021 • 08:33
Strong winds left dozens of ferry boats tied up at port early on Tuesday morning, with the islands of the Aegean cut off from the mainland as wind speeds reached 8-9 Beaufort at sea.
Ferries at the capital’s main port of Piraeus were not sailing for the islands of the Cyclades or the Dodecanese, but only for the Argonsanic. The picture is similar in Rafina, east of Athens, where ferries bound for the Cyclades and Marmari remain tied up, while the nearby islands of Kythnos and Kea could not be reached from Lavrio, in southeast Attica, either.

What this meant in practice was that,  for the very high wind days, one of us would stay on the boat & the other would head into Naoussa Town some way away for a wander & provisions. You can see from the Google photo the distance involved.

Still good to get off the boat though!

The long walk in and the beaches approching Naoussa– the arrow in the picture is Camira and that is only half way.

Naoussa was originally a little fishing village that has expanded into a tourist resort. It’s very chic with many samey boutique shops competing for business in the old winding alleyways.

There is old Venetian fishing harbour with great protection for the fishing boats and new “Marina” that affords little protection. On the day Louise walked in she witnessed lots of ill at ease crews up on deck as they were bounced around inside the marina.

Naoussa town & fishing harbour

The old Venetian harbour, Naoussa

On my “day in” I had managed to cultivate 6 blisters before I had even got half way . In addition to a backpack full from the supermarket I had bought two 6 packs of water. I was knackered by the time I returned.  A Greek guy on a scooter on my way back took pity on me and took the two big packs of water leaving them by a wall farther up the road for me.  Louise had been even luckier getting a lift back all the way with two Belgian girls.

My fuelling stop at the last chance taverna for a couple of  Alpha’s before heading back.

On the day I dropped Louise on the beach I nearly capsized the dinghy on the way back to the boat trying to start the engine and pirouetting in the waves. Louise had met people off another boat in the bay and they were all hysterical on the beach watching me.

Initially they had invited us onto their boat but rather Louise invited Amir, Mei, and their kids Ronni & Noam from Israel back onto our boat that evening – Mei was only out for a holiday for a couple of weeks and was not keen on the sailing life being a wee bit apprehensive on the boat, and her innability to dinghy ashore herself meant she felt a “prisoner”  (See later blog re Louise……lol), not to mention her lack of facilities.

Now Amir has 1,300 watts of solar power, a full screen TV, fridge & freezer, electric hob, microwave, washing machine, water maker, dishwasher, and a full size plumbed in and tiled shower room with electric water heater – all on a 40 foot yacht !

Louise thought it would be a hoot to show her our facilities, lol.

They are a really nice family and we spent time during our stay on each other’s boats before they left for a night in the marina and then round to Paros town.

On Amir & Mei’s boat

The only picture we have of the actual anchorage in Lageri bay 

A brief lull in the weather gave us a quieter day we both could get off the boat together and we decided to take the bus from Naoussa to Paroikia (Paros Town)

I had to “borrow” Louise’s soft flip flops to accommodate my blisters but still had to stop part way in to wash my feet and put on plasters. The flip flops are now mine!

Happy Feet

The bus only takes about 40 minutes and the return one was at 16:30 perfect gave us time to explore Paros town.

Geese waiting at the bus station – no idea where they were headed though?

We had read about a restaurant with a great write up, used mostly by Greeks and workers on their lunch hour. It did have picnic tables outside so you could “sit in “ turned out fantastic , friendly guy, freshly made food each day and reasonable prices. So after a wander and a drink we headed there for lunch.

Sundry pics Paroika

I have pictures of our wanderings in the picturesque old town but will not include all in this blog because as you will see later, having seen the bay, we decided to sail around and anchor of Paros Town and have pictures from ashore then – so no “doublers” by accident.

Lunch at Lemon E

Not only helping decide to come here it was a very productive day in that we got cat treats, currently running out and rationed, cat litter and Louise got CBD oil to see if it would improve the terrible time she is having with her back. Let’s hope its not the same as the muffin she had in Amsterdam.

On the return we discovered a bus connection that would take us part way back to the anchorage saving us a lot of walking – just as well we were loaded up with a trip to the supermarket, again!

Back at the bus station waiting for our connection, I wonder if the geese had enjoyed their wild day out?

Apologies for chart city in this particular blog.

I have included them to show our actual route of 33 miles versus the 16 miles as the crow flies and just less than 7.5 hours vs. 3.0 underway!

Only 16 miles but impossible

The wind and waves prevented the direct approach. Even if we had motored the slamming and banging into the waves would have been intolerable. It was tough enough as it was.

The overall passage

Originally we headed from Naxos to the south of Paros (waypoint 2) where we would judge if it was feasible to head up to our ultimate goal the large bay at the north of Paros, or take refuge for the night in one of the two bays just west of waypoint 2.in the south. The weather the next day was forecasted similar and we had to get there before the week end so if it was possible we would just get it over with in one hit. We reckoned if we short tacked up the coast it would keep us out of the bigger seas further out in the channel.

A close up of our tacking pattern up the coast of Paros

It was a long tiring day. The wind was 27 to 30 knots all day and when we reached the north of Paros the last 5 miles around the top were tortuous, the biggest seas I’ve ever seen in the Med. There is a possible shortcut through some rocks & islands on the NE corner (between say wpts 24 to 28). I’ve never been so glad I didn’t take it !

At about Wpt 26 not only big waves on the beam but a superfast ferry passed close by as well just to add to mêlée !

Lily was petrified at this point and Louise had to go down and keep her company. Unfortunately I couldn’t take any pics at the time but there are a few before we fully turned which gives only some indication of the sea state to come.

As usual it looks nothing in the pics

Talking to Bruce later he said they too had a rough time here and also told me a yacht had been capsized here last month! I am not surprised.

I never been so glad to get into shelter and put the anchor down.

At 17:30 we were anchored in the NE corner of Lageri bay, Naoussa, Paros.

It was still blowing 18 knots in the bay but what a relief.

A blow was expected imminently so we had to find a secure bolt hole until it passed. We thought we had found one on the south coast of Naxos. The bay was reportedly good holding with little or no waves albeit the wind gusts would be fierce.

Only 5 miles away.

There was also the option of a place in the little harbour if there was space. There was, so it was an ideal spot to stop as we could let Lily off the boat for a wander as well.

Kalantos bay & harbour. The canteena / lean too is up the hill

About an hour after berthing we heard cat screeching accompanied by Lily high tailing it across the open ground near the harbour being chased by another cat. It’s a shame everywhere she goes she’s always the stranger wandering onto other cat’s territory. She stayed near the boat for a bit but then strayed again. No bother this time so we thought all had calmed down and she was minding her P’s & Q’s with the locals and shying clear of confrontation.

A Greek woman charter skipper on the boat next to us took a shine to her and had asked the harbour master if his Alsatian dog was OK with cats? . He initially had apparently answered Yes, but on our return from dinner that night he approached us and warned that “ His dog liked people but not cats”  He was a nice dog, unfortunately he liked chasing cats!  To be fair at least he warned us.

This was going to be an issue as it wouldn’t be fair to lock Lily in for however many days it took for the weather to calm down. He did offer to keep his dog home the next day but that was equally unfair on the dog and in addition we did not know how long we would be stuck here. We decided to leave the next morning.

It was lucky we had already washed the boat and filled up with water earlier that day to allow us an early start although where to we were still quite unsure.

There are no shops in Kalantos, just a farm, a taverna across the other side of the bay and a canteen shack at the top of the hill looking down on the harbour. Dinner was prepared for us up there alfresco on a BBQ accompanied with the locally made wine – a very interesting taste.

The climb & views from the canteena

Perhaps it was a godsend we had to leave. The canteen affair was very expensive for what it was and 20:00 euros for one night in the harbour was over the top for Greece, where more often than not there is no charge. It would’ve been a costly confinement in the end.

They were very nice though and gave us a plate of figs & honey to take away.

I couldn’t give a fig

Anyhow we were off in the morning despite the worsening weather.

An Israeli had couple arrived during that night and were keen to see inside our Moody, so before we set off we gave them the guided tour of our 9m palace!

Hello & goodbye Kalantos – a flying visit