If you ask a British tourist in Greece what they know about the Cyclades, they are likely to give a variety of answers, depending on their background.
Your average ancient Greece historian is likely to tell you about Delos (the centre of the Delian League), an island deemed to be the birthplace of Apollo (the sun god) and his twin sister Artemis (goddess of hunting, childbirth, the moon, and interestingly, chastity). Her Roman equivalent is Diana, if you wondered. The island has extensive archaeological sites to explore.
Others may rave about Santorini, which erupted more than 1,500 years BC. This still-active volcanic island is the only volcano in the world with a submerged caldera.
Your average party-animal may refer to Mykonos, as the town has become famous for its glitzy outlook, where the glitterati mingle with the tourists, backpackers and hen-party crowds. I read recently how a mother and daughter had ordered two mojitos and one plate of crab claws in Mykonos town, and had been supposedly been charged six hundred euros!!
But ask a yachtie what they know about The Cyclades (pronounced Kick-lah-dees in Greece not Sickla deez) and it’s quite likely that they might reply “the Meltemi”.
The Meltemi wind starts to blow in June, builds up to strength in July and August, and dies off at the end of September. It is a strong northerly wind, with north-east and north west variations depending on location, and can blow from Beaufort F4 up to Force 7-8. And I am sure there are many sailors out there who can attest to even higher wind strengths than that. [With thanks to Rod and Lu Heikell for this description]. And the Cyclades are renowned for this gusty wind during the summer months:
"creating short, choppy and bouncy seas,
perhaps that’s why Brits pronounce it the Sick ladeez?"
Having earlier motored around Cape Maleas at the bottom of the Peloponnese, we now had to cross the Cyclades in June to get to the Dodecanese on the eastern side of the Aegean. We will then drop downwind to Rhodes and hop across to Turkey later in the year.
Time to do a little research and update our weather apps!
The Cyclades can be split into northern, middle and southern islands. When sailing west to east it said to be better to keep to the north in the spring. So, we had planned to hop across the northern islands. Then we caught up with our old pal Richard Kouvaris from Greek Sails. He recommended coming down into the middle as the winds would back to the north-west the further east we got, to ‘lift’ us across on a much more comfortable sail. Our skipper jumped at this chance to visit some of his favourite islands. (Incidentally, our friends Rosemary and Lawrence had taken the middle route a few weeks earlier).
With Sari and Thorne on board, we set off from Olympic Marina to Kythnos. By now, First Mate is checking the weather apps several times a day. ‘Windy’ allows you to plan your passage on a chart, select the date and time you wish to set off, and then shows you the wind, wind gusts and sea state for the trip. It is an excellent app, and we have used it extensively. However, our old friend Poseidon (a Greek weather app, not the god) can be more accurate for Greece and Turkey, but I’ve not worked out if you can plan a passage in the same way.
We screamed along to Kythnos. [Ed – probably a bit quicker and more lively than I had planned as a shakedown sail for our new guests]. I have to admit we didn’t see much of Kythnos as we anchored on the inside side of a beautiful double-horseshoe bay, separated by a sandbank. Ursa Minor (our dinghy) took us all ashore, and we ate at quite an upmarket taverna. You can tell it was upmarket as they didn’t sell wine by the half kilo (a 500ml jug) but only by the bottle. Not cheap, but absolutely delicious.
Following Richard K’s advice, we then dropped down into the middle islands, with Serifos as our first port of call. The weather was with us, and we had a reaching sail, ending up in the port of Livadhi, where we were lucky enough to go stern-to on the outside of the quay. It’s a very pretty town with the main town (chora) up the hill. We cheated and taxied there and back, but got chatting to some French folk off a catamaran who walked up and back down again in the blazing middle day sun. I thought it was “seulement les chiens foux et les hommes anglais” who did that? But never mind. The Chora provided the typical Greek vistas: deep azure skies; a white church with a light blue dome. Just wonderful.
Skipper wanted to visit Paros [Ed – I had been there and to its sister, Antiporos, in 1987 after the trireme trials. I had very little money and so I slept on the beach under an upturned wooden boat. It turned out that I shouldn’t have slept on the beach, and got prodded awake very early by the hard baton of a local policeman]. We thought we might spend a couple of nights here. The wind was supposed to from the south and the large of Naoussa would provide good shelter.
The town harbour had mixed reviews regarding how well it was maintained, so we anchored just outside the harbour. Plenty of boats went in and out, and it all looked fine as it turned out.
Yacht Money Penny (Judith and Al) joined us here, down from the Sporades, and we had a fun dinner together and it was super to catch up with them. They entertained us with their tales of a spontaneous invitation they had received to a wedding in the Sporades, in the actual church where the Mamma Mia wedding was filmed. The happy couple had honeymooned while sailing a yacht called Mamma Mia!
Naoussa is a very pretty town with expensive shops and expensive sushi restaurants. Richard forgot to bring shoes when we went ashore so had to buy a new pair. I was so impressed by this strategy that I, too, forgot to get dressed on one trip, and had to buy a few sun-cover overshirts. 😊
On the second night, the crew of Missy Bear decided we needed to have cocktails ashore. We sipped our Aperol Spritzers and watched the guests mingle at the ‘breakfast’ feast for a glamourous Indian-Greek wedding. A few hundred guests were all fabulously attired. It looked like a Bollywood film premier, and it was so splendid.
By now, my weather apps are telling me that the wind is going to swing around to a northerly, and is going to blow. Could this be the Meltemi? We could easily sneak up into one of the coves in this glorious bay, but two nights here is probably enough. The glitterati (some of them undoubtedly wedding guests) have parked-up their huge floating gin palaces everywhere, with generators on the go, bright lights all night, and sporty little tenders zooming their guests ashore, careless of the wash they create for anchored yachts. Time to move on.
Our skipper had a yearning for a quiet bay, away from the buzz of 21st century life. We sailed down between Paros and Naxos, enroute for a small island called Iraklia - just for one night - before seeking shelter from the northerly wind. After a few hours, we decided we weren’t happy with our anchor in case a swell came in. As the tiny harbour was now full - and the bottom was rocky in any case - we headed around to the next cove, where there were a few yachts, two tavernas ashore, of which one was open. We later ate a delicious selection of mezes after skipper had dived down to check our anchor, and ensure we hadn’t hooked the thick, high-voltage, submerged power cable on the charts. As we lay in our bunks that night, we congratulated ourselves on a sheltered cove, good anchor holding and a quiet surround.
Well, two out of three ain’t bad (good idea for a song maybe?). I woke at about 02:00 thinking I could hear music. I could hear music. Richard could hear music. Sari and Thorne could hear music. The closed taverna turned out not to be a taverna, but a nightclub. Actually, it played a really good soundtrack - Blondie, Tina Turner, Womack and Womack etc. At 04:00 someone with a sense of humour played “Rock Around the Clock” and I have to admit, I did smile. They had closed by 05:00, to our relief.
At 07:00 Richard was up: although we had good anchor holding, the water was getting very sloppy in the veering wind. As our next bay would be much more sheltered and just a couple of miles away, we upped anchor and chugged across to the island of Skhinousa to settle back down again. There was only one yacht there and that departed soon after, so we had the whole glorious bay to ourselves.
Given the weather, the plan was to stay here for two nights. In that time, we went ashore, explored the Chora further inland, and walked on to the main port to watch the ferry come in and out, because we don’t really get to see the sea much.
‘Windy’ showed the wind was due to pick up later in the week, and the crew agreed to move onto Katapola on Amorgos, which has a reputation as a long, thin, mountainous and windy island. We could expect a gusty Beaufort Force 6, and a bit of a bumpy sea as we approached, but it would be worth it to get there.
Skipper and First Mate had a bit of a conflab about reefing. Skipper bid one reef to begin, raising to two when we cleared Skhinhousa. First Mate showed her hand early – two, she declared, and maybe three later. I don’t know why Skipper ever bothers giving his own views on reefing – First Mate is usually right. With winds gusting 30 knots, (Force 7), three reefs in and a boat speed of 9 knots (and well-heeled over), Sari voiced the opinion that this wasn’t quite how we’d sold this trip to her, and I was inclined to agree. ‘Windy’ had not got it right. But hey – we did an 18 NM journey (from raising the anchor to being tied up) in 2 hours and 20 minutes!!
And boy were we glad to have water and power on the quay as we had all got salty wet. I was the first to take a greenie, and went below in disgust.
I won’t bore you with the paperwork we have to do in Greece, but we visited the Port Police to get our transit log stamped. They asked us how long we were staying? “One night”, we said, but maybe more depending on the weather. I asked if it was a Meltemi, or just a standard northerly wind weather system, and how do you tell? They told me “If it dies down overnight, it’s a Meltemi, but if it keeps blowing, then it’s just a standard weather system”. Well, it kept blowing. We needed to make a decision – it was 7 hours to our next island. Should we stay or should we go? The forecast was no worse for the next day, but due to get stronger later in the week.
Which is why I was up at 06:00, making sandwiches for the trip (having checked the weather which seemed to be looking a bit better on Windy, but worse on Poseidon). Skipper put his waterproof on, Thorne sat up top. Sari and I provided crew support by tucking ourselves downstairs and chatting. As we left the comfort of the sheltered harbour, a friend texted me they were leaving the bay of Levitha that was to be our destination: we had calm seas and a NW F4 to look forward to, but the seas to get past the long, thin island of Amorgos she described as having been “horrible” on their trip.
But do you know, it wasn’t that bad (thanks to Skipper’s expert helming). Winds were a bit lower than forecast, but we still put three reefs until we sailed up to the calmer waters, followed by a catamaran and a monohull. Once in calmer waters, the wind dropped. And dropped. And eventually we had to put the engine on for the last mile or so, and I even made Richard a cup of tea. 😊
The island of Levitha is a useful staging post between the east part of the Cyclades and Dodecanese. It has an extremely sheltered bay at the south of the island, where many yachts moor up, ready for the final hop east (or to gird their loins for the sail westward). It has one taverna (a 20-minute walk uphill over a rocky path, with a torch required for the return). It has four inhabitants (the taverna mother, two sons and a daughter-in-law), and lots of lots of goats. A few itinerant fishermen from Leros and Kalymnos hole out in the bay. What it doesn’t have is any internet access. And even the taverna has had its satellite access stopped since Russia invaded Ukraine!
We therefore resorted to a good old-fashioned method of weather forecasting. We looked at the flags and pennants on Missy Bear, and decided it was OK to set off to Leros, our summer destination, four hours sail away.
As we got near, the wind picked up, and if we’d been going much further, we’d have put a reef in.
But you know what? Skipper couldn’t be a***ed.
And here we are now, in Leros.