The Island of Crete

First & foremost, we apologise for the length of this blog, but we have been here a while & Crete is the largest of the Greek Islands!!!

Anyway, on the 22nd June we departed Folegandros at the crack of dawn, heading for Chania. However the winds had a different idea, blowing SW to W, Chania being SW of us, so we soon changed plans and headed for Rethymno, half way along the northern coast of Crete. 14 hours and 100 NM later, sailing all the way at a healthy 6+knots, we arrived, shattered and pleased to see the big swells could not follow us into the marina. We moored up safely and wandered into town for a much needed refuelling stop, food and vino!

Our first sunset in Rethymno!

We spent the next couple of days chilling out, exploring Rethymno and trying to clean the boat with water pressure less than, as David said, he could pee with!

The Old Venetian Port of Rethymno (not where we were sadly)

Rethymno at Night!

Rethymno was a great central point to explore the island from, the first day out we decided to brave the infamous Samaria Gorge. At dawn we rose to see the sunrise and catch a minibus to take us to the village at the top of the Gorge, Omolos  and then started the decent to Agia Roumeli on foot, only accessible via the Gorge or by boat! The pictures tell the story, hiking boots over trainers would have been better, but 21km’s later we arrived, with somewhat aching muscles and sore feet. It was amazing and we were glad we did it !

Samaria Gorge

Then the end and the 2 most welcome sites, something other than water to drink and a different mode of transport than our feet!

Agia Roumeli, a town clearly created to provide much need sustenance to the Gorge hikers!

We had an hour or so to wait for the ferry to put our feet up literally, enjoyed a Sol each, had to be done and people watched!

The ferry finally arrived and having grabbed a seat on the sightseeing side of the boat, we admired the stark and devoid of human life scenery to Hora Sfakion, which included the briefest of stops in Loutra, a very quaint village totally cut off, not that we had a chance to get off the ferry to explore!.

Loutra

Hora Sfakion

We finally got back to Rethymno at 9 in the evening, where we crashed and burned.

The following day we hired a car for 3 days and drove to Chania, the 2nd largest city on the Island, centred around the Old City with the Venetian fortifications and Harbour, now a conservation area.

Wednesday we headed off to the must see Knossos, and then onto Iraklion. Knossos is said to be the site of the largest palace of the Minoan Civilisation, covering an area of 22,000sq metres &  1200 rooms!

Iraklion is the Capital of Crete. Aside from the Venetian fort in the Port, it was rather disappointing, very commercial and we didnt stay long.

Fortunately we had had the foresight to pack a small overnight bag, so we continued eastwards driving through Hersonissou and Malia, typical Benidorm type resorts that we chose not to stop at, (especially with David’s past experience of the place on a previous boys trip), towards Elounda, Plaka and the view of Spinalonga across the bay and finally to Agios Nikolaos.

Agios Nikolaos, which owes its name to the tiny chapel on a little promontory in the inner harbour, the “Lake”. We were lucky enough to find a nice small hotel overlooking the “Lake” in the town centre. After wandering around the town, stopping for a drink or 2 to soak up the atmosphere, we picked a fabulous restaurant for dinner, “Migomis”(well worth going to if you ever find yourself there) overlooking the Lake with all the lights, very romantic.

The view from our Hotel

The City by Night

The following day we continued eastward to the town of Sitia, but timed it rather wrong, as big black clouds soon enveloped us and it poured down. We didn’t stay long, opting to drive the long windy roads back to Rethymno. Thank God we did, as during the afternoon the winds turned North blowing straight into our safe haven, where a charming Italian boat had arrived and decided he preferred our second bowline to the one still available and picked it off our boat. Suffice to say our stern fenders did their job. Choice words were exchanged between the two chaps, later smoothed over by the Italian’s wife! Some say what goes around comes around, or is it Karma, but, they left the following morning an hour before us and as we departed, they were being towed back in via a powerboat!

We made our way along the northern coast to Iraklion, with a NW5 gusting 6 pushing us along nicely. Seaclusion and us, even coped well with the growing swell, which by the time we arrived in Iraklion Bay we estimated was easily 3+ metres, we were surfing, that was until we had to turn into it to put the sails away, our nice clean boat was then very much salt ridden! It was a bit of hairy entrance into the main Iraklion commerical port, but at least once we were behind the extensive sea wall, the sea was calm, even if it was still blowing 25 knots. We were lucky to get a place in the Old Venetian Port where we stayed put for 2 nights until the wind and seas dropped a little.

Sunday 1st July, the winds ceased to such an extent we found ourselves motoring around to Spinalonga Lagoon, for once grateful not to have the wind, and dropped anchor in a very peaceful bay.. haha, 2 hours later that peace was broken by a party boat dropping anchor not far enough away from us and blaring crap dance music out for the best part of 3 hours, at least we had 4G to watch the Austrian Grand Prix which took our minds off it!  Finally they left, peace was restored, we had a wonderful evening spent over dinner with vino of course and playing cards.

The following morning we had planned to get close to Spinalonga and take the dinghy ashore to explore, after all you cant come to Crete and not go there! We left our peaceful bay, with not a breath of air, rounded the corner to face katabatic winds (24knots +) and thought better of it. Plan B, we went round to Elounda bay, said to be the best safest anchorage on the Island in NW winds, sadly on arrival it was blowing a southerly! Fortunately not for long, the wind came round, we dropped anchor at the head of the bay in the most beautiful clear turquoise water, jumped in the dinghy to go ashore and take a little ferry across to the Island.

Spinalonga

Elounda

We then returned in time to watch Brazil beat Mexico in the World Cup in a bar and then hopped back into the dinghy, only to find that whilst the wind was North West, the swell was south east. With nowhere to go, we soon knew we were in for one of my rolly polly nights. To cap it off, we also discovered our creak had not been fixed and spent 2 hours tweaking our rigging in the hope we could sort it ourselves. Sadly no joy so what were we to do other than tuck into a bottle of red wine!!!

We were grateful the following day to head into the Marina at Agios Nikoloas (despite it being a very cramped marina and horrible mooring) where we had booked a space for 4 nights to wait out the Meltemi before we try to cross the notorious Kasos Straights to Kasos, Karpathos and then onto Rhodes, not an area we want to be caught in, in a forecasted Force 7/8 with 4/5 metre swell!s

So here we are….waiting, but we have made good use of our time, with help from a chappie going up our mast to flush out some fittings that might be the cause of the creak, here’s hoping, sunbathing on the beach and watching England win against Colombia after a nerve racking penalty shoot out!