Finds us cleaning the boat, doing odd jobs, and trying to survive the heat.
The day started badly, with the generator failing. It stopped once, then restarted, and stopped again. Although we were planning to shop and get the boat ready for our visitors, this came first! The dry goods locker was emptied, the floors lifted, and the seating dismantled in record time. The problem was easy to diagnose: no cooling water was coming through. The raw water pump was opened up to reveal only two rubber arms left on the impeller. Where the rest had gone was difficult to imagine. It had only been replaced in November! Fortunately we had a spare. We then mounted a shopping expedition. We had not been back long before the sound of an aircraft approaching made us look up, and there was Viking, 5 minutes early. Mo stayed to tidy the boat, while I took off to the airport. I need not have hurried, because two flights arrived together, and to make life interesting the luggage was mixed up on two conveyors! We moved back to Ormos Siferi for a quiet night and enjoyed a swim.
In the morning, we returned to the harbour, anchored, and then ran several trips ashore to the bus stop to fetch drinking water. Once this was done, we set off south from the harbour to the island of Nisidha Tsoungria. From our viewpoint to the north, the beach looked most attractive. When we reached the island, however, we ran out of depth very suddenly, and found ourselves turning sharply away over a rocky reef. We anchored off, had lunch, and then set off to explore by dinghy. The snorkelling over the reef, with deep ravines between the rocky outcrops, was some of the best we have seen. When we had had enough of this, we set off across to Panormou on Skopelos, and anchored in the southern bight with lines to the rocks ashore.
We left our anchorage in Panormou, and motored around the south of Skopelos, this time without rough seas or incident. We stopped for lunch and a swim at Ormos Stafilos, before sailing on to Ormos Tzorti. We needed to visit Patitiri for shopping, but we felt that the shelter there would be better. We anchored, and were joined later by one other boat only. The wind piped up strongly offshore for a while.
We had a reasonable night, despite the weather. The wind reversed overnight, and in the morning we found ourselves rolling in the relative shallow water with an onshore breeze. We decided to move, and went down to Votsi. We had not been in there before, and we found that it was very crowded with local boats and permanent moorings. We managed to anchor in the corner, and laid a kedge to hold us off the rocks. One of the locals came down to express concern about his stern drive, but we assured him that we would not be long and would maintain an anchor watch. Pete took everyone to Patitiri in the dinghy, and I stayed on board. After lunch, we set out for Peristeri under jib alone, as the wind was still quite fresh. The only incident was when a motor boat with a couple relaxing on the foredeck insisted on passing at some speed alarmingly close to port: I could not prevent myself from blurting out (forgetting the kids present) "Look, she's giving him a BJ!". Fortunately I was not challenged to explain the technicalities. We anchored without further incident alongside an Austrian boat, Bloody Mary. The children enjoyed making friends with Joanna and her brother.
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| Pete with Emma and Beard | Debbie and Tom |
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| Hi Jinks on Deck! | |
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| A quiet moment... | Singing along.. |
Our exit from Peristera was slightly unplanned. The family were ashore with the dinghy, and as I returned from a long snorkel trip, I noticed that one of our shore lines was very slack, and the rudder quite close to a rock stack. Very rapidly I concluded that we were yet again on the move, and shouted for the family to return asap. Meanwhile Mo (who was oblivious) and I got ready to move, left our shore lines for Peter to recover, and started to recover the anchor. When this emerged it was predictably covered in a ball of weed, and had to be cleared before we could re-anchor and await Peter's return. He managed to make it complicated, by wedging the dinghy anchor under a rock, necessitating two dives, one to place it and another to recover it. One stern line had wedged itself into a crevice in the rock it was wrapped around, so that too was tricky.
We re-anchored for lunch, before sailing up to Steni Valla. The highlight of the trip was when we caught sight of something in the water close to starboard. Everyone came up to the shout of 'Dolphins!'. It was however no dolphin, but a seal, presumably one of the rare Monk Seals whose colony is on the protected and inaccessible Piperi island at the eastern extremity of the Alonissos National Park. He disappeared from sight as other boats approached.
We found ourselves a berth close to the 'Glass Bottom Boat' space. We had not been there long before some Italian motorboats came and filled the space beside us: one in particular was abandoned on our stern quarter with no fendering, and slack lines.His problem was made worse as we were held off the quay as there is a lot of ballast that would endanger our rudder close to. Bill and Angie came on board for a drink, and the family made off later to the beach. When one of the Italians set off, he managed to pick up our anchor chain, and possibly moved the anchor. As we were not happy Peter and I laid our kedge, necessarily at an angle that crossed over one or two lines.
It was busy in Steni Valla. Anchor lines were crossed, left right and centre. Debbie and the children went off to the beach, while Pete and I recovered our kedge which we had laid across some others the night before, and which had now had more anchors laid across it! Pete joined the others, and Mo and I visited Angie and Bill. We visited Costos' shop, but found that he was out of red wine boxes although we picked up what we could. He wanted us to spend 50 euros with him before he would give us any water, and we decided to do without. We enjoyed a relaxing long lunch under the trees at one of the tavernas. Unfortunately, by the time we returned the Glass Bottom Boat had laid its anchors over ours, so we had to wait until it departed before we could leave ourselves. We motored over to Nisos Peristeri, and anchored. We enjoyed snorkelling around the wrecks - there were two lying side by side, suggesting that they had been abandoned there deliberately.
We had a reasonably peaceful night. However, soon after breakfast, the Rocna seemed to go a'wandering yet again. As we were on the move, we decided to go around the corner into Ormos Vasiliko. Pete noticed a cove, and we anchored off, with a line ashore. The snorkelling was good. After lunch, we recovered the dinghy and got ready for sailing. We beat against the northerly wind, and anchored in the most south eastern arm of Ormos Kira Panayia, as recommended by Bill.
We stayed put the next day. After snorkelling and exploring ashore, the family decided to try to walk to the Monastery. Its position was shown on a smaller scale chart, but bizarrely not on the larger scale, so we estimated its position and entered that into the 'free with antifouling' GPS. They found it hard going, but encountered two friendly farmer/monks mounted on donkeys who offered a lift back if necessary on their tractor. The route was steep, and they managed to reach the eastern shore of the island, across the bay from the monastery buildings.