Old and New - friends and islands Thursday 8th October

It turns out our friend Vasilis on Thetis (a physicist with satellites as his speciality) has a dual existence. He lives in Washington DC with his American wife, but also has a house overlooking the sea, complete with vineyard, on Samos island, where summers are spent. He is a founder member of www.cruiserwiki.org for the Med region as well as having his own interesting website www.sy-thetis.org . We first met in Leros Boatyard last year and will be hauling out again at about the same time very soon.

Having beaten a Naiad 361 comprehensively on the sail from Patmos (not racing you understand) to Lipso, we joined up yet again with friends Colin & Shirley on Silent Wings. Lipso is lovely, but we all decided we wanted to go to the little island of Agathonisi not far from the Turkish coast - another new one for us. It was now our turn to be beaten as Silent Wings overtook us in their Malo 37 on their favourite point of sailing - ouch! Must do better. The island is small (only 150 inhabitants), with a pretty little port, surprisingly good roads that intriguingly lead to nowhere, a cave (disappointing), and a Megalo Chorio and Mikro Chorio (Big and Small hill villages). Due to its proximity to Turkey, it also a large influx of migrants, with up to 200 people per day landing, outnumbering the local population completely. They are registered quickly and shipped out on the afternoon ferry; this has become a daily procedure. We stayed a couple of nights, going ashore for small excursions to Cave Beach and to have a coffee at an overcrowded taverna, whose owners were struggling to provide food and refreshment for the migrants. The patrol boats came and went throughout the night, silently and without lights. An idyllic setting combined with an unusual stay.

From here it was back to the nature reserve island of Arki, a favourite spot, where various nationalities seem to gather. We got there first (hooray!), leaving poor Silent Wings with the last space and a challenging mooring exercise - we felt the tiniest bit guilty…. We walked up to a brightly painted chapel perched on a hill and back down past a farm towards a helipad, meeting the owners of Norwegian boat "Maja" along the way. Half the fun of cruising is the interesting range of people you meet - more of them later. Dinner chez Nicholas Taverna, he born and bred on the island, lovely man. His father builds and paints colourful little boats that bob in a "mini harbour" created a few steps from the restaurant.

Now it is time to head Myrica in the direction of her home for the winter. We came back to Lakki on Leros, to do a few jobs whilst attached to the land and to stock up on a few supplied to see us through to home time. Here we met up again with Maja and were treated to coffee and liqueurs on their beautifully kitted out Fisher 30. It turns out they are not Norwegian (they live there), but he (Jens) is Danish and Jeannette is French - they married originally in Canada. They have a summer house in Denmark also - a travelling pair! They are heading for Turkey to meet up with friends, so we passed on what information we could to help. Jens is an earthquake specialist, so is planning a little diversion later to Ankara to talk seismology with colleagues in this earthquake prone zone. Jeannette keeps an entertaining daily blog (don't know how she manages) http://www.havskov.net/.

We bought some more favourite very long (1 ft?) thin green beans, the name for which I have failed to discover. I asked the greengrocer about growing them - he took me to the back of the shop where there were sacks of dried pulses, bean and odds and ends. He showed me one that he claimed was the seed for the green beans - I asked to buy a handful. He put a whole scoop in a bag. As an afterthought he added a scoop of another variety, and then yet another - a very tiny dark green pulse (lentil-like except very round). I think he was hedging his bets. He refused any payment for them - nice man! I will try growing all three and see what comes up. Jeannette liked the story, so we shared out a small packet of the seeds.

Friday is lift-out day, Thursday we left Lakki to head up to Partheni in the north where the boatyard it, stopping en-route for lunch and last swims in lovely Archangelos, a small islet off the tip of Leros. Then it's over to a boatyard buoy for the night to be ready for the lift first thing Friday morning. So starts the process of putting Myrica to bed for the winter - the countdown begins.

ps. bit of time lag here due to lack of connection. Last blog up shortly.