The Last of the Cyclades.

Sunday 17th June, We set sail for the tiny island of Skhinousa, part of the Little Cyclades on a lovely close haul tack in NW3 winds until they died a couple of hours into the 21NM crossing. Aside from watching the storm gathering to our right, preying it wasn’t going to hit us, it was a lovely crossing!

We entered the tiny harbour of Skhinousa, hoping to drop anchor, but although there was space, we were not entirely happy with the less than 2m under our keel, so after a quick sight see of the one bar and quay from the safety of our deck, we motored off round the corner to drop anchor in a nice open and deeper bay, hoping our bow creak would not be an issue. It wasn’t long before  that we realised that no was the answer, but the sea was calm so at least it was liveable, well sleepable for the night, with the aid of ear plugs!

Skhinousa

The following morning we decided we needed to go to Naxos for help with this problem and started to lift the anchor, only to be beset with another problem, the windlass wouldn’t work… argggggghh. Finally after repeated attempts we were grateful it was an intermittent problem which meant that at least David didn’t have to lift it by hand, and we set sail northwards for Naxos.  Aside for the torrential rain that washed our boat for half an hour, the weather was calm enough for us to remove the controller for the windlass and clean all the points ready to try again, which we duly did outside Naxos harbour but to no joy. Thankfully our boat is small enough to be able to grab one of the moorings at Naxos that had laid lines, and with the help of the harbour master, Nikos, we tied up safely and awaited an engineer. Simple solution we needed a new controller & circuit breaker!

Naxos

Whilst Naxos is the largest and most fertile island of the Cyclades, the super high speed seajets that arrived 3 times a day sent a wash into the marina so severe to cause our boat to badly yaw and jar against her mooring lines, so we were not comfortable leaving her for any length of time to explore the island. When the last ferry of the day had left, we did have time to have a wander into the tiny old town which was very quaint, the new town not worthy of any photos, grab a bite to eat in the back streets and settle in to watch England bring home a victory against Tunisia, much to David’s relief, especially as he saw a guy cheer when Tunisia scored their penalty and enquired where he was from, expecting either a reply of Welsh or Scottish, and to not be disappointing, when they said Scottish, so thankful for Harry Kane’s late winner, David simply told him that he suspected that that might have ruined his night, as we left.

The following day, the engineer returned with a new controller, circuit breaker and a stop bolt to stop our forestay moving, and hopefully the creak.  A few euros lighter, we left the harbour to drop anchor outside, away from the wash of the ferries in the marina. With the wind blowing to keep us stable and cool we had a relatively peaceful night on anchor, I say relatively as a ferry came in at midnight to dock for the night leaving its generator running all night, hey ho, at least the creak seemed to have gone!!

The following morning we got up early to set sail for Ios. As seems to be the case with this trip so far, nothing really goes to plan, so after 10 seconds of pulling up the anchor our windlass tripped out requiring a reset, a few more seconds, it went again, all in all it took over 10 resets to get the anchor up, so we headed back into the marina to find our previously friendly engineers again.  David had popped into town to pick up some bits that I had forgotten to put on the shopping list, believing they wouldn’t turn up for a while. Sadly for me, they arrived promptly and were not so friendly this time. Having managed to drop and pull up 10 metres of chain without a problem, they accused us of of not knowing what we were doing, putting our windlass under too much strain etc. After explaining that was not the case and applying logic to negate their other “reasons” for the problem, their Greek temperament came to the fore when they ripped out the new circuit breaker (thankfully it is not an essential part), threw the cost of the part back at me (although not their time), stormed out of the boat, leaving me in tears (borne out of frustration more than anything!) A huge hug from my hubbie soon sorted that out when he returned and we were not too sad to leave Naxos for Ios.

Our first stop on Ios was a beautiful bay just west of Ios Town, where we dropped our pick hopefully for a peaceful night…. ha ha ha!

Thankfully this wasn’t Spain and the music died down at midnight! Not so thankfully we soon discovered we hadn’t fixed the creak! The following morning we motored round to go exploring in Ios Town. We were a little surprised how small it was, although the number of ferries that came and went and the people they deposited reinforced Ios as the mecca for backpackers it is claimed to be.

Ios Port

The Chora Overlooking the Port

After a whistle stop tour of the port and the Chora, we departed Ios for Folegandros, to set us up for a great sail into the morning, southwards to Crete. It was another lovely sail for about 18NM, passing some very interesting rock formations….

Folegandros from Seaclusion.

Folegandros is a tiny island with a tiny village, a little off the beaten track, so we were a little surprised to find the quay full on arrival, and 4 boats already on anchor in the tiny bay, not that it mattered as we intended to anchor so as not to disturb anyone by our 4am departure.  We were then even more surprised when during the course of the afternoon over 20 boats rocked up, mostly catamarans and none part of a flotilla. It made for an interesting evening which I will let David tell you all about……

So with 20 boats all anchored in a fairly small bay, it was inevitable that some boats were closer to some than others, ours being one, with a catamaran next to us that meant we had about a metre between us at the worst swinging point, however it didn’t stop a solo British skipper on a yacht having a moan to a crew on a USA chartered yacht about the distance between them, and given they had at least 10 metres, then I don’t think he had anything to worry about when assessed against our own predicament, but he kept on and on to the USA skipper, getting a little more frustrated after each request, this escalated with the USA skipper, suggesting to him, probably a little sarcastically, ‘Did he want to come over and join them for a cocktail, to which the Brit, responded with, ‘I would rather stab myself in my dick’. There is clearly no according to taste. The US skipper then just made some comment regarding ‘typical Brit’ and then subsequently ignored him. Mind you after going to bed early in readiness for our own early start, the peace was again shattered, but this time by a catamaran full of Germans who decided it was ok to play loud music for all the bay to hear from about 11pm to 1am, which in itself was not horrific but after hearing ‘I come from a land down under’, by Men at Work 8 times, it was starting to get a little irritating, To cap the night off perfectly, one of the women on board clearly out of her head, whose loud laugh sounded like a goat being slaughtered, proceeded to mock everyone in the vicinity who was complaining about the noise, understandably!

After the “entertainment” came to an end, creak or no creak, we were determined to get at least a little sleep, moving into the aft cabin and as far away as possible from it, with the alarm set, so at 4am we rose and crept out of the harbour, setting sail for Crete,  although it was sorely tempting to drive past the German catamaran on the way out and give them a few blasts from our foghorn, our other sleeping neighbours being the only thing that stopped us!

So, next stop Crete in about 14 hours time!