It’s now Wednesday the 14th June. A week from now Diane arrives on a cheap direct flight from Edinburgh to Skiathos one of the Sporades, an island group not too far north of where we are at the moment.
It means we have a little time to explore the Gulf of Volos.
However today we are just heading across the strait from Orei to Ak Stavros, just before the entrance to the gulf proper. There is a little sheltered corner known as Aghios Dimitrios. It’s only 5 miles or so away but we still have a whine so I am going to dive under the boat again – this time to clean the antifoul off the propeller. This is the last thing we can think of that might be causing the whine. In previous years we had never antifouled the prop.
We will see?
It is a lovely sheltered spot that we have to ourselves so we decided to stay a couple of days lazing about.
Aghios Dimitrios
Friday 16th June
It’s a bit overcast and threatening rain today as we move around into Ormos Ptelou and a little bay east of Loutro called Pighadi. You have the option of anchoring off the beach or on the east side or, according to Navily, pick up a yellow buoy. This is what we did but not sure if it was the one intended – we will see!
It’s a sleepy village and as it was raining on and off we decided not to bother blowing up the dinghy to go ashore. We still have the whine!! Louise thinks it’s a bit quieter though.
A tower on the west side of the bay is locally called Achilles Tower & Pighadi is said to be the place from which Achilles set sail for Troy and ultimately his appointment with the underworld (after his Achilles heel incident).
Pighadi
Saturday 17th June
The sun is back out and we are heading around to Vathoudi & a little village called Milina that has been recommended. It is situated on the SE corner of the Trikeri peninsula and is well protected by the Alatas island in the west and the peninsula itself in the east.
There are quite a few boats permanently on mooring buoys here and we did try to arrange for one from, it turned out, a Scottish lady, but unfortunately the timing was not good that night for her to come down to the anchorage.
On arrival just after 7:00pm & having logged just over 22 miles we circled the moorings hopefully looking for a free one. Hannah & Kieren were here and had picked up a buoy on chance – turned out to be your “wummins”. She wasn’t happy at first the next day but relented when Kieren explained he had arrived late the previous evening & offered to pay or move. We also managed to find a vacant one that looked suitable, next to a French yacht who advised it would be OK to take it, happy days.
Nice sail to Vathoudi
Approching Milina
Our mooring from the boat & ashore (Camira centre)
There used to be a Sunsail jetty here but it has long since gone as has Sunsail.
