Blow the wind southerly, southerly, southerly
- alixtitley8
- Jul 11, 2024
- 5 min read
Updated: Nov 25, 2024
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 friendly marinero turned up. He threw us our final line and waved cheerily as we departed. We motored back down Lobster Pot Alley, keeping a watch both sides for those little bits of floating lines and danger, and then set sail for our next island, Khios.
Actually, we planning to sail to a tiny called Inousses, which lies just off to the north east tip of Khios. It’s a private island, owned by one of the big Greek shipping magnates, and also houses a training academy for Greek navy cadets. We had been told that there was a delightful and sheltered harbour, so we planned to spend some time there.
Our pilot guide is a few years old, and we knew that there had been a new quay built, although we hadn’t really found a decent plan of the revised harbour. We dropped the sails and entered slowly. It became clear that there were a couple of yachts alongside what was the new quay and we slowly moved over to join them alongside. As we approached, our depth gauge showed 0.9m under the keel although we were some way off, and we were a little concerned it would get even shallower. So, instead, we decided to go up to the north quay where you can also go alongside in the early part of the season (rather than stern-to). We made an executive decision that it was still early in the season, and Richard pulled alongside while I jumped down. As it was just two of us, I take a line from our midship cleat to bollard amidships on the quay. This pins the boat in until we get the bow and stern lines on.
Note I say “step ashore”. The crew member helps the helmsman by counting down the distance to the quay in metres, and only steps ashore – no derring-do leaping. You do not want to be sliding down into the water between the quay and the yacht. But this presupposes that your deck is overly high above the quay. Sometimes it is! But Missy Bear has high topsides, and I often have to jump down onto the quay. This was probably the tallest drop I have had to make since breaking my leg and arm. I landed on my feet with no further breakages, and tie up.
We had just enough time to sort ourselves out before the next yacht arrived – ‘Aegean Blue’ - with the lovely Swiss couple we had met a couple of times already. We helped them, and then the next yacht ‘Nikki’ arrived. And, so it goes on with everyone helping new arrivals to moor up. We chatted to Christiana and Rinaldo from ‘Aegean Blue’ (or, as skipper calls them, Cristiano Ronaldo). They have a Halberg-Rassy, a beautiful Swedish boat, suitable for blue-water sailing.
Now, if I’m honest, there isn’t an awful lot to the island of Inousses. There is the one town, with a post office, a few tavernas, a small mini-mart and a bakery, and the naval academy. There is also wonderful little maritime museum. We, Cristiano Ronaldo and the crew of Nikki visited this gem together the next morning. It basically stuff that the Greek shipping magnates had acquired over the years, such as models of sailing yachts and steamers, and old binnacles etc. Skipper’s favourite was a scale model of the Victory, hand-made by a French prisoner-of-war.
A foot-passenger ferry arrives regularly, and there is a Blue Star car ferry to Athens, so it’s not a totally sleepy backwater. I expect the naval cadets form a constant stream, girls as well as boys.
The weather had been reasonably benign up to this point, and we had got some fab sailing in. Bearing in mind we were heading south-wards, we were happy with a prevailing northerly wind. As the bay is open to the south, any southerly wind would blow in and resulting waves would bounce Missy Bear onto the quay, which would have been uncomfortable. We spent some lovely, relaxed days, swimming in the harbour (Skipper snorkelling with his GoPro) and generally pottering around. We socialised with our new friends Christa and Rinaldo, and also with Angelika and Joachim from ‘Nikki’.
On Thursday morning, Richard and I sat down for our usual weather and planning session, and we agreed to leave on Saturday. Just at that point, I heard my name being called, and went up to find Christa on the quay. She and Rinaldo had finished their planning session and they were leaving straight away! One of their forecasting models showed a southerly squall passing through later for a couple of hours. Whilst our preferred weather model hadn’t shown this, we decided not to risk it and to leave. Richard went to the port police to get stamped out, while I prepared the boat to leave. We intended had a trip of 60 NM to the south of Samos, our next island destination.
We motor-sailed through the southerly gusts down the coast of Khios. It was a bit roly-poly, but actually, it improved. The wind dropped, the sea state calmed, and – to Skipper’s disgust - we had a long, if boring, chug down to Samos.
Samos is a long, tall, and green island just off the coast of Turkey, and marks the southern end of the Eastern Sporades chain, and the northern point of the Dodecanese. We had booked a berth at a small marina on the south coast, Ormos (Marathokampos), where we had been before, but by 16:00, knew that we wouldn’t get there until after dark. So we decided to investigate an anchorage on the north of the island, which is normally untenable in the prevailing wind.
There was already one yacht in there when we arrived, and plenty of small motor-boat traffic from the nearby village. We dropped anchor and smiled at each other. Meanwhile, the small motor boats kept away from us, but whizzed close past our incumbent neighbours, as they’d realised that she was sunbathing on the deck in the nuddy!
It’s a rule of anchoring that as soon as a boat anchors, others will join. “Oh, look, they’re in there, in must be okay, and they must be in the best spot!”. So, before long, we were four boats. It was absolutely sheltered, not a breath of the southerly wind reached us, and we enjoyed a perfectly flat sea. A couple of dolphins with a youngster swam into the bay, and we were privileged and delighted to be investigated by a snuffling Monk seal.
It was so calm we even slept overnight in the cockpit, the first time we’d ever done that. The sky was a vivid tableau of stars. A stream of tankers and other large ships rumbled past. It was just amazing. It was also quite uncomfortable.
But if we hadn’t put up with the boring motor down, we would have missed one of the best experiences of the trip.
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