With the boat to ourselves, the pace slowed down a little. We love having people out to the boat, and it's great that people want to come, but we are conscious that this trip is their vacation, so we want it to not be too boring. This keeps us moving. When we are on our own we can embrace the boring and take our time. With Hali and Bryce on their flight Kate climbed to the highest point on Kos, then we sailed over to a long sandy beach on the western side of the island and dropped anchor in 4 meters of clear water. We stayed there for a number of days, foiling in the marginal wind. The beach clubs were far away, and the water was flat. We relaxed.
Eventually it was time to keep moving, and we had a positively painful sail up to Leros. The wind was light to nonexistent all day and shifted through 360 degrees. It took us a long time to make our way up to the big bay where Lakki is situated. We anchored near the mouth of the bay, and dinged into town to meet some friends aboard Out Yonder, an Outremer 52. We had an enjoyable round of drinks and a nice dinner at a place run by one Italian woman. Leros is home to an old mental institution as well as a huge refugee camp. Accompanying this is a strange vibe, and some overly aggressive police. We managed to avoid them, but have heard several stories of their overzealous nature throughout the summer. With this in mind we headed out in the morning for a more secluded anchorage. With a strong south in the forecast we needed a place to hunker down and found a fairly well enclosed bay on the north coast of Leros.
We sat through a few days of wind and rain, taking advantage of some nice foiling on a couple of the days. On the fourth day the wind shifted, and we woke up to a north wind making the anchorage rather uncomfortable. We left in a hurry and motored five miles directly into the wind to a very picturesque bay on the south coast of Lipsi. We ended up spending a few days here, very much enjoying this small island. There wasn’t really much to explore, but the town was nice, and everyone was friendly. We visited a small local farm and got some local produce and wine, which turned out to be much stronger than we thought it would be.
Leaving Lipsi, we tried to sail to Arki, a small group of islands directly to the north. As we started going, it turned out we were making excellent progress towards Samos, a larger island we had been wanting to visit. We changed our plan, and dropped anchor in a perfect little bay on the south coast of Samos. With a backdrop of huge cliffs and interesting canyons, we were happy with our change of plan. Later in the afternoon, a north west wind blew into the anchorage, making it a little bumpy, but providing great foiling. I had what was probably my best foiling session so far, working up the coast, and enjoying riding the waves back down. In the morning Kate ran and I went for a bike ride, enduring the heat to climb up to a little peak 3500 feet above the ocean.
A few days later it was time to pick up Bennett, who was to join us for a week. He was staying in Kalymnos, so we made our way down there, enjoying a nice sail for our anniversary. We anchored in the channel between Kalymnos and Telendos, and after picking Bennett up we hiked down the south side of Telendos to do a long, easy climb. I think we did around 8 pitches on interesting limestone, before topping out on the island. We hiked down the other side, and ate dinner at a nice taverna, inset a little from the waterfront. We met a couple of nice Belgian guys who bought us a bottle of wine.
From Telendos we sailed around the north side of the island to a quiet and small anchorage on the east side. It was a micro-bay, and we were able to safely shoretie in the corner, avoiding the worst of the northerly swell. There were two climbing areas within easy distance of the boat, and we had fun checking them out and climbing a few routes. The setting was pretty unrivaled, with not another person in sight. After two nights there, we moved a few miles south to an exposed anchorage near Vathy. We took the dingy around the corner and played on some deep water soloing routes that were entertaining. We ate dinner in town, and climbed at another nice crag that was just around the corner.
As the next day dawned, it was time to try and sail down to Symi, an interesting sounding island between Turkey and Rhodes. We started off with a light wind battle down between Kalymnos and Kos, tacking multiple times, before rounding the corner and having a slightly better angle to the south end of Kos. We spent the night in an unremarkable anchorage and were up early the next morning. More light wind followed, and it took us the whole day to make it to Symi. We pulled into a spectacular anchorage, with huge cliffs rearing up on every side of a deep bay. The cliffs had climbing routes on them, but information was pretty limited. We thought we would give one a try in the morning.
It was a fun outing, but maybe not five star quality. After three pitches of bushwhacking and loose rock in the heat, we rappelled off. Jumping in the ocean after such an adventure is always welcome and we cooled off while eating some snacks. Then the coast guard came by and kicked us out. We motored around the corner, and found a nice spot to shore tie in a fiord. We spent two nights there, and took Bennett to the ferry terminal around the corner in the main town.
We decided that Symi would be the furthest south we would go in the Aegean islands, and plotted our course north. Sailing north in this part of the world is a lot harder than sailing south, so we were ready for the day of tricky sailing to get out of the wind shadow of Turkey and up to the south coast of Kos. We spent a rather miserable night there, due to a strange swell in the water, and left early the next morning, opting to head around the eastern side of Kos. This quickly became exciting as I struggled to re-rig the stay sail while rocketing along at 17 knots. We had de-rigged it to make tacking the genoa easier, but the wind became a bit stronger than we were expecting. Once we were set up with the stay sail, it was a long day of tacking up through the straight, dodging traffic, and finding nice spots where the wind blew at a better angle for us. After a long day of sailing, we made it back to Kalymnos, and settled in there for a few days of climbing. We met some cool folks who were out on a sailing/ climbing trip, and their guide, an Italian guy who had a company; Vertical Sailing. He runs climbing and sailing charters in Kalymnos, which is pretty cool.
From Kalymnos we went back up to Arki to sit out some stronger winds, and enjoyed decent foiling conditions. We are both progressing fairly quickly, which is fun. It is nice to be in the easy part of the learning curve. We were pretty much alone in Arki, and foiled every day. As the wind began to die, we turned the boat west, as we had to be in Athens in a week to pick up our next group of crew.
The sail west was a mixed bag. Beating into two meter seas was mixed with doing 9 knots across a glass flat sea. We spent a couple nights back on Kithnos, and I went for a fun bike ride. We made landfall back in the Saronic Gulf at Agistri, and spent a few nights there at a spectacular anchorage, backed right up to the cliffs with lines ashore. The water was deep and clear, and we had easy access to a little concrete landing spot to go on runs and bike rides.
From there we went up to Agistri town to buy some fuel, then across to Athens, to pick up a family of four for the next week.
