Our 2nd Leg across the Aegean!

On the 27th July we had a small window in the high winds to leave Tinos Harbour with our one functioning sail, so we got up early, said our farewells and set off at 6am to do the 44 nautical miles to Kythnos and the tiny town of Loutra on its east coast.

By 6:30am we had a single reef in our Genoa, so glad we left when we did, otherwise it would have been a handkerchief, again, and had a great sail across, arriving at 12:30, not bad at an average of 7NM’s per hour. By the skin of our teeth we grabbed the last spot inside the tiny harbour, otherwise we would have been on the outside wall, where a number of boats ended up and they had a horrendous night with the swell on their beam, even to the point that their masts touched at times.

I had forgotten just how tiny the harbour was with very very very little room to manoeuver, including dropping our anchor, but we did it as a team effort without incident.

All we had to do now was wait for Stavros to turn up, but he was dealing with an emergency on the other side of the island, so we had to wait for him to fix our main as once again we had a small window in the weather early the following morning, to continue across to the mainland.

So we used the opportunity to have a little wander to see if anything had changed. We came here back in 2017 when we hired a car and explored the island, so didn’t feel the need to do so again. For those of you who want to know more about our travels on this beautiful island back then, just follow this link…. http://www.yacht-seaclusion.com/the-beautiful-island-of-kythnos/. As for Loutra, nothing much had changed except the restaurants had smartened themselves up, with their prices to! but the harbour was the same, still just as manic as ever!

Unfortunately Stavros couldn’t get back to us that day, but said he would come at 7:30 and it would only take him 10 mins, so we were still hopeful for an earlyish start. We therefore did the inevitable and shared a pizza, Greek salad and 1/2 ltr of Greek wine on Greek chairs right on the beach, it was such a beautiful setting, it just had to be done.

We woke bright and early, got the boat ready to set sail and then sat and waited, and waited, the Greeks are no different from the Spanish and Stravros finally arrived, after a call to jog his memory at 8:45, checked out the problem and then decided he didn’t have the right tools so had to go way and get them, maddening particularly as we watched his slow progress as just about everyone on the quay seemed to have a problem and wanted to chat to him!!!

But return he did, and 10 minutes later our problem was sorted, so once again we said goodbye to this lovely village and headed out to sea. 2 hours later than intended. Sadly we had missed this small weather window and for the first hour we were banging head into a 3 metre swell and 25 knots of wind under engine until we could get the 4 miles north to the top of the island and turn westward. Sails then came out under a full reef which lasted for about an hour and then as the wind dropped we managed to release them to their full extent and get up to a healthy 7 knots, passing a tiny island, uninhabited except windmills, the name of which we have no idea.

A few miles on, we lost the wind entirely, which was predicted and another reason why we had wanted to leave earlier than we did, we ended up motoring the last 4 hours, finally arriving at the bay just off Ermioni on the mainland at 20:30. Tired, ready to eat something, drink some vino and crash, but first we had to find a suitable and comfortable place to drop the anchor. When we finally did and David went to the bow to do just that, he called back to say that we had another issue, the anchor would only drop at a sickly snails pace. It couldn’t be a power issue as we had been motoring for 4 hours which meant our battery was full to capacity. Still we just managed to get it down and hoped to God we would be able to lift it in the morning, we then looked at each other and said WINE!!!! It would have to be tomorrow’s problem!

28th July 2022