As I write this, we’ve crossed over the Aegean, gone through the Corinth Canal and up the Ionian and are now in the Bay of Kotor in Montenegro! So this and the next post will only be quick summaries of our travels so that I can catch up! (Sorry!)

After Lipsi, we sailed (yes really!) north to Arki where we attempted to anchor in three different locations but failed at each attempt to get the anchor to set – so we headed further north to Fournoi where we found a really favorite anchorage right on the southern tip of the island.

We stayed in Fournoi a couple of days and then decided to move up the island some – but again, couldn’t get a comfortable set on the anchor, and in the end decided to simply move on again – this time to Samos and an anchorage on the north coast to gain protection from the southerly winds…

In the gap between Fournoi and Samos we experienced a dramatic acceleration zone with winds blowing 30, gusting to 45knots. Very uncomfortable and occasionally we’d see the wind falling off the high mountains of Samos looking like steam. Unfortunately, when putting in the third reef to the main, we managed to rip the back of the sail (leech) as we turned towards our anchorage with over 50 knots over the bow.

We rely on the App ‘Navily’ for our anchorage information – and this one spot had only one review – but at least it was a good one! As we got closer to it, we fell into the shadow of the mountains, the winds dropped and we were able to anchor safely in front of a very pretty stony beach. We could watch the wind hitting the sea just a few hundred yards behind us, but our spot was nice and calm. Exhausted!

We got an early start the following morning in rain – and headed to the south side of Samos to gain protection from the northerly ‘Meltemi’ winds and planned to stay there a few days (turned into 8!) and make repairs to the mainsail. Samos was really nice – we got to tour all over by car. Most interesting was the underground aqueduct – they managed to dig from both sides of the hill and meet in the middle! (Something the Brits and French struggle with!)

Our next planned stop was Ikaria – but once again, when we entered the gap between Samos and Fournoi we experienced the same acceleration zone, to turned tail and sailed with the wind back to our favorite anchorage at the southern end of Fournoi. What a great bailout! We stayed several days!

Finally we left Fournoi and headed towards the Northern Cyclades – specifically Rinia. Quite a long passage – 65 miles and along the way, had a close encounter with another yacht (Breukens) going a similar direction – and both of us were flying spinakers! Thank you Astrid for the excellent shots of us!

From our anchorage on Rinia we were able to dinghy over to the island of Delos – the old center of the Greek nation. It’s only a small island but gains protection from all wind angles, so was a natural place for a large city. And boy are the ancient ruins at Delos huge!

From Rinia, north to Tinos for a few days in a lovely little bay with three tavernas. We sampled two of them – excellent! Had a super walk up to the village high above the anchorage.

Then on to Yiaros (Devil’s Island), an uninhabited island that used to house a large prison for political prisoners. Unfortunately, anchoring there is notoriously difficult and we were unable to get comfortable in the small space – so we didn’t stop but continued on to Kithnos, to a wonderful anchorage which featured both a hot spring (sadly only bathtub sized) and a sandy isthmus between Kithnos and the smaller island of Loukas.

While there we watched the filming of a short Nescafe commercial… The crew had been setting up for days, when the actors arrived, they spent the whole day (7am – 7pm) doing the filming, and followed by another couple of days taking down the sets – for a commercial that last maybe 30 seconds!!! Great fun to watch though!

We were able to leave our anchorage, head into town for some supplies, then come back to the other side of the isthmus where we were able to complete a couple of nice walks.

We finally made it to mainland Greece, arriving under the temple to Poseidon – a quite dramatic relic right on top of the hill.