Log 33e Into the Greek Aegean-Samos to Crete

 August 20th:-  we finally left Turkey from Kusadasi for the 20 mile sail to Samos. It should have been a comfortable broad reach as we were going just a bit south of west (WSW), but the north and northwest winds were not co-operating, and we had to motor into increasing head winds, reaching force 6 to 7 by the time we got into the channel between Samos and Turkey. However we were able to motor sail up the Samos Channel close hauled with only our genoa until approaching Pythagorion.

 We passed the New Harbour for yachting and sailing clubs (pontoons were in but few sailing boats alongside) and went over to the town docks to moor bows to using our own stern anchor in a reasonably wide space so we would not crowd our neighbours (Ha!). The skipper of the Greek charter sailboat on our port spoke English quite well as he has Canadian and Greek citizenship and lived in Montreal for several years.

We went over to the Coast Guard to check in and were directed first to the Port Police who were also Passport Control. No problem, and we found them a few blocks up town from our mooring. I entered on my British passport (not stamped as I am an EU citizen) and Judy on her Canadian (stamped in). Then back to the Coast Guard who completed some forms and stamped our transit log (two years old now, but still accepted until filled with stamps) and checked our SSR registration as a British vessel, and charged us 29.00 Euros. We were then sent next door to customs who checked our documents, filled out some more forms, and charged us 15.00 Euros. We were in Greece! It was a smooth and efficient process.

However when we went back to Veleda we found a gigantic (70 foot) Greek motor yacht squeezing in to starboard of us, a space which would not fit its size, but it shoved all the boats closer together as he winched this 5 metre wide monstrosity into a space a 3 metre wide boat would not fit! Then a crewman proceeded to hose down the upper deck, at which point Judy yelled some unkind words about the spray coming down on us. We had a twenty foot wall beside us, and the noise and stench of its generators all night long. Welcome to Greece!

The town was pleasant, the port area ringed by tavernas and tourist shops, and several grocery stores, hardware stores and an internet/DVD shop up the main drag. We sent some E-mail and I enjoyed a Greek Gyro.

We checked the bus schedule as next day we went over to Samos Town on the north coast to pick up some parts for our Simrad wheel pilot, and get a Greek SIM card and calling credits for our mobile phone. We have an unlocked mobile (Nokia 6310i) with a pay as you talk service for which we buy a SIM card, and get a new phone number, in each country. We then can purchase calling credits which we put on the mobile, allowing us to call out for whatever time the credits give. This way we do not pay for incoming calls. However in Greece such service does not permit data transmission unless one has a contract, and thus we can no longer send E-mail from the boat via our mobile as we did in Turkey. Now we have to copy our E-mail notes and logs onto a floppy disc (using Rich Text Format), go to an internet café, and cut and paste from floppy disc to AOL and send.

We can receive, but to save, we have to copy the message, transfer it to Microsoft Word, and save it on the floppy as a Rich Text Message. Of course each internet system we use is a bit different, but we have managed so far OK. It takes about 20 minutes to download any messages, and send out a log and any prewritten notes. If we could send from the mobile we could use the automatic “flash session” on our laptop’s AOL, and messages would be downloaded, saved and all waiting messages sent, all in a space of less than 5 minutes.

After returning from Samos Town next day (after paying another 430.00 Euros for the parts for a 3 year old self steering system) we walked (3 or 4 kilometres in the hot afternoon sun {“only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noon day sun!”} up to the Evapolinos Tunnel. This was the main reason we wanted to come to Pythagorion, to see this 1034 metre aqueduct tunnel completed in 524 BC. It penetrated a mountainside (digging from both sides to meet in the middle – quite an engineering feat for the time) to bring the gushing mountain springs water through to the ancient town. It was cut on two levels, one for human passage to do repairs, and a lower one for the water. In the Middle Ages the townspeople used it to hide from marauding pirates.

We went down the narrow passage into the upper section, and along half the route, noting the access shafts into the lower water channel. Quite impressive!

We had been asked to check out with the Coast Guard, which we did. We were charged 4.90 Euros for two nights, and cleared out to Leros, our next island of call. We find the smaller communities more efficient in their procedures. We were surprised our two year old transit log was still valid, but we were told it would be valid until all the spaces were stamped.

On our way out we hailed Teva, the French boat we met first in Poyraz on the Black Sea then again a few weeks later in Sarpdere Limani (Turkey), which was anchored in the roadstead outside the main harbour.

Again we had to motor into light headwinds the 32 miles over to anchor in Ormos Partheni on North Leros (37° 11.61’N, 026° 48.35’E), a blah anchorage in a sheltered bay with a few fishing boats on mooring buoys and several fish farms in the surrounding bays. As we arrived early we did an oil change and topped up the fuel tank before going to bed.

We left early next morning, Aug. 23rd, for the 47 mile trip to Astipalaia in the Dodecanese, initially heading for Panormos on its northwest peninsula, one of our favourite isolated anchorages (see Log #27n). We started out in a light force 2 and soon were wing on wing in a brisk force 4 from the NNW heading SSW. However by noon it was a force 6 to 7 causing me to wrestle the whisker pole down and go on a broad reach with a double reefed main and a 50% genoa. By 1500 we were still in heavy force 6 to 7 winds with 2 metre waves across the northern tip of Astipalaia. We had furled the genoa and found a tear in our main at the second reef point. It was very heavy going even though the wind was in the right direction for us.

We thought the entrance to Panormos would be straight down wind, difficult to enter and might have heavy swells as it faces northward. We “chickened out”, and jibed the main to head to Vathi on the northeast peninsula, a well sheltered inlet we had been in before. We dropped the main, motored into the quiet inlet, and dropped anchor at the far end in a bay below the monastery in 15 feet of water (36° 37.26’ N, 026° 24.66’ E). We were gale bound here for three days, with winds howling down the valleys from one side and the other, gusting from zero to forty or fifty knots in less than a minute at times. We were rotated around our anchor from one side to the other for three days. Fortunately the anchor held well, and we had no fear of dragging. However the howling winds surging down the valleys and directly over the mountainsides was a bit disconcerting.

The second day I took Sprite out to the entrance to see that there were still two metre swells in the main bay. So I explored this end of the island. I went up the road past a mountainside chapel to the crest, where I could see across the ridge to the whitecaps frothing on the east coast. This peninsula was almost deserted. There were several farmsteads with drystone dwellings and animal shelters at the end of the bay, all deserted except for one hovel on the mountainside. There were stone walls all over the desolate barren hills, marking land possessions and grazing areas, but only a few dozen goats and sheep and one forlorn goatherd. The stone walls stretching over the hills reminded me of the walls in the Outer Hebrides, miles of walls in the middle of nowhere, assembled with a fantastic amount of backbreaking work. There were several circular stone shelters with branch, mud, and stucco roofs, which might have been used as human dwellings at one time, then for animal shelters.

On the shoreline I saw several smaller round beehive shaped shelters in varying states of repair. These stone structures could be anywhere from 20 to 2000 years old. I entered one small whitewashed chapel on the hillside to find a nice mosaic tiled floor, a blue altar wall with a few icons decorating it, and a small table with candles, matches, a small sand box for the candles, and a couple of greasy plastic bottles, a mop, broom and dustpan stuck in one corner. There was a second more decrepit looking chapel a few hundred yards up the road, overgrown with foliage, a stone shelter beside it. I didn’t want to climb over a fence and through the thick gorse to check it out.

However I did walk up to the monastery on a hilltop overlooking the inner end of the inlet. No one was there. It consisted of two buildings separated by a small inner courtyard. The view from the back was a panorama of the hills and fields in the valleys below. Some of the fields looked recently tilled, but others were barren and dried out, all separated by stone walls. From the front side was a spectacular view of Veleda in the bay several hundred feet below and up the mile-long inlet leading out to the narrow dogleg entrance. One building was locked, but through the dusty windows I could see it was just a hall with some benches and tables stacked up and a kitchen area with sink and stove, all dusty and long unused. Across the small courtyard was the other whitewashed building with three doors with reasonably modern locks, but unlocked. The first one I opened was a small chapel, with the traditional altar wall and icons. The next two were probably monks’ cells in that they were domed whitewashed open rooms with a small platform at one end, possibly for mattresses, and an alcove in one wall. One room was empty and the other had some tables and chairs stacked in it. It was hard to tell how long it had been since the rooms or chapel were used. It could have been months, or years. Below the monastery on my way back to Sprite I passed a more modern dwelling with a patio overlooking the bay, but its windows were boarded up and the door locked, just another empty house.

This end of the bay may have been a small community of a dozen homes at one time, but now is a deserted area with only one house inhabited, and a few small flocks of goats and sheep wandering around the barren fields. However we enjoy the isolation and Veleda was safe even though subject to strong gusts from all directions.

We had a chance to relax, swim, read, do various maintenance tasks and the delay allowed me to get caught up on my logs. A couple of sailboats anchored up near the entrance and went out into what we thought would be heavy winds and seas. They were possibly charter boats that had a deadline of one or two weeks chartering and would have to be back at the charter location by a certain date. We had the luxury of time, and could wait for better weather.

We arrived on the 23rd and departed on the 26th just before noon, having hoisted a double reefed main (Judy had repaired the tear above the second reef) before weighing anchor. We had a relatively good forecast, and thought we should try it, with the option of either returning, or going into Panormos on the western peninsula.

It was heavy going, close hauled into a force 5 to 6 WNW wind for the first six miles until we cleared the wide bay between the two peninsulas of Astipalaia, and headed SWS in a more comfortable force 3 to 4 in which we shook out our reefs and shut off the engine for a relatively pleasant sail for the next 15 hours, on our way to Crete 99 miles away. At dusk we put in a single reef for the night sailing, a precaution we frequently take when passage making overnight. Then we put in a second reef and reefed the genoa about 40% before 2000 as the wind was working up to force 5 to 6 (20 to 25 knots). However by 2030 we set the full genoa, and had a good sail until about 0400 when the wind died, and we dropped the sails and motored the rest of the way, arriving at Agios Nikolaos (35° 11.19’N, 025° 43.0’E) in Crete, where we entered the marina and picked up a mooring buoy going bows to the dock at 0645, having covered the 99 miles in 19 hours, mostly under sail.

Next log