Island Hopping

In our third and fourth weeks we went from Kythnos to Siros, Mykonos, Rinia, Delos and Paros. There were some fabulous sailing days with good winds, calm seas and clear skies. We saw dolphins a couple of times (Common Dolphin we think) moving along with young ones - we took time out to drift and watch.

In Mykonos we moored in the “marina”. This is much like most marinas in Greece - built with 13 million euros of European money ten years ago and still incomplete and unmanaged (and in this case built on the richest island in Greece - just where the investment wasn’t needed). Rant over. We got the bikes out and cycled the 2 miles into Mykonos town each day. A complete contrast to other islands, Mykonos is highly touristed plus takes 3 cruise ships at a time. That said, it’s still definitely Greek and a clean charming town.

To refill our water tanks, you have to buy water from a water tanker. This was 15 euros so we had to make the most of it. So while I was on deck with the hose and dealing with the water man, Kate was below doing all the laundry. The water man must have thought we had bottomless tanks as Kate rinsed everything thoroughly.

We anchored just off Super Paradise beach on Mykonos. This is the party island, famous for nudity, outrageous gays and partying on the beach. Super Paradise is reputed to be the most outrageous. But alas, when we swam ashore all we found was neat rows of sun umbrellas and sun loungers, and everyone was fully dressed and thoroughly civilized. What has the world come to!

One night we watched Shirley Valentine on the laptop and worked out where we thought it was filmed. We sailed round, anchored off and took the dinghy ashore. Sure enough, right there was a sign saying “as seen in Shirley Valentine”, so we went in and had our “half kilo” of wine overlooking the sea and quoting lines from the movie.

We sailed to Paros knowing we had to find a safe anchorage before the forecast strong winds arrived. The “Meltemi” is a northerly wind which blows for a week at up to gale force and it was coming in 2 days. We chose the town of Paroikia - a very protected bay with a town big enough for all our required supplies and facilities - and parked in the bay. The wind came, blowing force 5 to 6, and the bay was safe and relatively comfortable. We motored the dinghy across the 400m to town (not getting too wet) for meals out, visits to the internet café, shopping and just for something to do. (One day Andy had the fun of rowing back into wind after we ran out of fuel.) We were there for 6 days waiting for the wind to die down.

On day 3 we thought the wind had died down a bit and decided to move on. We left our mooring buoy, prepared the sails and motored out to find horrendous seas. We bounced around, got drenched and generally were not having much fun. It only took a couple of minutes to decide to return to our safe little buoy. We met Bill and Bunny, the Americans on the boat next door, and did visits and return visits for chats and drinks aboard each other’s boats.

One day we rented scooters - one each, both red (and red helmets), 50cc - and circumnavigated the whole island. This was great fun, even if we were buffeted about by the wind and Andy had a fuel leak onto his exhaust pipe (he fixed this early on). After 6 days we left Paros heading north for calmer weather. The forecast gave us a 36 hour window to get away from the Cyclades before the Meltemi returns - this time force 7 to 8! But that’s our next story…

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Part of trip: Greece - the Aegean

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