Despite the pilot warning “care is needed in a night approach because of the shoal water” it turned out our anchor spot was pretty good.

Anchorage outside the harbour

We were woken early in the morning with the local fishing boats passing us on their way back in to ofload their catch.

We inflated the dinghy and went into the port.

We managed to arrange a small berth right on the inside, very sheltered. It meant Lily could get some shore leave. There was also a vet, turned out a very good vet, who could arrange to give her a rabies shot which was due and a general check over.

Nea Artaki was a nice little town with a pretty waterfront windmill and church off of which was a floating raft housing ducks in a little “Kennel”

One of the highlights for us was the discovery of a true Pakistani curry shop / take away – as long as you didn’t look to close at the surroundings and the grim young men hanging round the tables. The guy who presumably was in charge was lovely and so was the curry and Nan bread.

Along the front there were some quite up market tavernas.

We hadn’t planned spending too long so after two days we headed off to Melouna, 15 miles further north described on Navily as a delightful anchorage, which it was when we arrived as you can see from the pictures.

Unfortunately at about 06:00 the following morning Louise woke me to say you better have a look outside – we were nearly on the beach getting blown in on gusts of 25 kts. Not thinking clearly we hightailed it back down all the way back to Nea Artaki, because we knew the anchorage.

In hindsight we should have just headed to Ormos Politika 5 miles nearer!

It was a right slog into the wind and waves with the engine whining like a banshee as we had to use quite high revs! I note I had written in the log “pissed off” “very pissed off”. Anyhow made it back to Nea Artaki and after a few phone calls arranged an engineer for the following Monday in Orei.