Season 4

View from Marathakampos village After our lovely night in the quiet anchorage on northern Samos, we sailed around to the small marina at Ormos (Marathakampos). The wind had picked up early morning, and was still blowing southerly, stronger than we had anticipated. We put a reef in, and set off. We had an excellent sail down through the windy channel between Samos and Fournoi. We knew it would be windy as it’s marked as such in our pilot guide. The wind funnelled and squeezed

The time had come to leave Lesvos and to continue our way southwards. The forecast was still looking good for a Monday morning departure, and a trip of 48 NM, for which we would allow just over 9 hours. Normally, with these longer voyages, we would be on our way by 06:00, but as we were in a Mytilene marina, we had to wait for the marineros who start work at 07:00. But it turns out that the marina would let us leave unassisted, and we were already slipping our lines when a f

We were up early on Friday morning to make use of our hired car.  I needed to call into the marina office before we left, and Richard waited for me outside. He wasn’t hard to find as he had used the time to pair his iPhone to the car's media system. Alongside Google Maps, he had “ Bla Bla Bla Cha Cha Cha ” blaring out. I suggested we put the music off until we were outside the town, as it’s easier to navigate in a bit of peace. Unfortunately, this was impossible. We would clo

Missy Bear was heading home on the last leg of her spring adventure clockwise around the northern Aegean. We were sailing southwards just off the Turkish coast from Lesbos. After Samos we would leave the Eastern Sporades and arrive back in the Dodecanese. Missy Bear 'Coming Home' After spending a delightful, few days on the tiny and charming island of Oinousses, we sailed south to Samos, and anchored in a beautiful sandy bay on the north-west corner. This beach is a gem, but

Lesbos is the third largest island in Greece (after Crete and Evia), and the eighth largest in the Mediterranean; there’s a good pub-quiz question in the making. But Lesbos wasn’t always an island. It was linked to what is now Asia Minor, and it had a sub-tropical climate, so perhaps it lay much closer to the equator? The land was covered in forest, which included species such as pre-historic conifers, giant redwoods, palms, large deciduous varieties, and even cinnamon (which

It was fun in Sigri to catch up with Ron, Matty, and their two Jack Russells, Captain Jack, and Sammy the Sailor. After a visit to the Museum of the Petrified Forest the next morning, we set off again round the south side of the island. He sailed into the large Kalpos Kalloni, heading for Apotheke Bay.  You dont see too many channel markers when sailing in Greece Captain Dick had to do proper pilotage to get Missy Bear up the shallow entrance. Basically, this means detailed,

Greek-speaking refugees from Turkey Imagine, if you will, being five years old. Your father and older brother are still locked up in an internment camp. Your house has been burned down. Your mother has been crushed in the quayside throng, fallen into the water and drowned. Men are now fishing for her body with hooked poles, to try and loot any personal possession she might have been carrying. You are effectively an orphan (as your father and brother will probably soon die of

Shipping passing Lemnos by Today, the world passes Lemnos by. The Marine Traffic app shows how the cargo vessels and container ships spewing from the Dardanelles, ride the maritime highway, passing between the island and Türkiye enroute  to Athens, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, and beyond. Although there’s an airport, this sleepy island is still not that touristy, despite its nature, history, wonderful beaches and water-sports. And not so many yachts arrive here, p

Myrina quay from the Kastro I left you last time when we had just moored on Myrina town quay. Myrina is definitely a town and not a village. There is a new town quay for visiting yachts and the lifeboat, and the much older, smaller fishing harbour, that is surrounded by tavernas and next to a sandy bathing beach. Old fishing harbour, Myrina We walked from the harbour into a narrow pedestrian street, covered above by a pergola with climbing plants providing shade. Absolutely d

or "Towards the Eastern Sporades " When anyone mentions the ‘Sporades’, most people, like me, think of the islands of Skiathos and Skopolos, in the north-west Aegean. I would certainly have failed a pub quiz if asked to which island chain Lesbos and Samos belonged. But, dear reader, they are also the Sporades, albeit the named “Eastern Sporades”. [ Ed, ‘sporades’ in Greek means “those scattered”. It basically referred to all the islands that were not in the Cyclades ] That me

Our original intention had to be to explore anchorages around the first and second fingers of Khalkidhiki. The third finger, Mount Athos, is a holy region with a large number of monasteries. Devout male worshippers can book to stay on retreat at the monasteries, but it needs to be booked six months in advance, and you are not allowed to anchor off the peninsula. Women are not allowed within 1NM of the entire land mass. Long weekend to Thessaloniki However, the more I research

It was my first time to Thessaloniki. But my father, Walter, reminded me that I was not the first in our family to have been there! My great uncle (my Grandma Crooks' brother), Walter Chambers, had served in the British Army there during WWI. He had been overseeing building of new roads in Greece, some of which, ironically, would be used by the Nazis a few years later. I suppose that my great uncle was in the British Salonika Force (BSF), that formed part of an Allied front

Those of a devout nature should probably stop reading now. My blog today draws on scenes from Father Ted and Monty Python. Again, if you are not very familiar with these comedies, then it’s probably not worth continuing. Fathers Ted, Dougal and Jack, and the inimitable Mrs Doyle with her teapot, live together in a rambling house on Craggy Island. Who can forget Ted sitting at the window holding up small toy cows to Dougal saying, “ OK, one last time – these are small, but the

We were sad to say goodbye to our new chums Michaela and Toby in Nea Klima, especially after such a fun afternoon out with them around Skopelos, re-living scenes from the Mamma Mia movie. But we had to return to Skiathos town to check out of the Sporades with the Port Police. Our departure was slightly delayed by a yacht coming in next to us, as Richard felt duty-bound to help the skipper with his lines. It was a hen-party over from Portugal, with a group of scantily-clad yo

Alonnissos (National Marine Park) The Mediterranean monk seals remained elusive. Charlotte suggested that we would see some basking on one of the many sandy coves around Alonnisos. I replied that spotting them in that manner would be unlikely. Notwithstanding the fact that it is not breeding season, the Monk seals here have become a reclusive species.   Nevertheless, with our binoculars trained on the shoreline over 200m away (this specific area within the National Marine Par

[Goodbye and Hello] Gulf of Volos It was getting time for Tony and Lynn to depart. We had originally planned to sail to Skiathos, from where they would fly back to Bristol, and from where Charlotte would arrive two days later. But we had lost a day waiting for the Chalkis bridge to be fixed. This would mean them departing for Skiathos on the day of their flight, which didn’t leave much contingency. As a result, they caught the Flying Dolphin from Volos to Skiathos the day bef

True confessions time: Until last year, I’d never heard of Evia. I knew there was a large island off the east coast of the Greek mainland, and I knew the water between them formed a sort of inland waterway, but Chris Tarrant would have had to phone a friend for me to name the island. Then last year, floods and storms catapulted Evia into the news headlines with huge flooding coming just weeks after ferocious storms. On our first night at anchor off Evia, we made a shocking di

The low pressure system A low pressure was tracking eastwards along the Mediterranean, south of Crete. The curling, gradient air-flow of the depression was, of course, anticlockwise. And that meant that the wind would bend around, and down, over the Sporades from the north-east, hundreds of miles north of the eye. It would also drag some cloud and the odd rain shower over us.   Our Windy weather app was showing red colours, not our preferred greens. This meant that the wind g

Those of you who follow our blog will remember that 2023 wasn’t a great sailing year for us. We didn’t make it out to Missy Bear at all in the spring, but managed six weeks bumbling around in the autumn. When I started my physio at Cirencester Hospital a year ago, the physio asked me what was my goal, in terms of what movement I was trying to recover.  I know that someone with a similar injury to mine had said she wanted to be able to get her bra on by using her hands behind

We had to put the heating on last night. It was about 22:00 and we were inspecting the back of our eyelids, waiting to head to the square, outside the church, for the Easter day celebrations that would  start at midnight. It had been a cloudy day, with the odd short rain shower. So maybe it was psychological, but I wanted Missy Bear to be warm and welcoming when we crawled back in later. It was hard to believe that two weeks earlier Tony and I had been swimming off the bathin