Monday 26th September, Wildlife and the 3 A's

It's been a fortnight of variety - we have again been as far east as you can go without bumping into Turkey and are now back in the central Aegean.

A note on recent wildlife:

A bright blue kingfisher perched on our guardrail whilst at anchor in Levitha, unusual in saltwater

Big bottlenose dolphins (not the little commons) between 1/3rd and ½ our boat length

Big shy turtles with their heads just breaking the water surface

Lizards so tame, one climbed on my foot for a look, and came to eat a bit of peach we put out for it. (See lizard pic, sadly none of the kingfisher)

From Ikaria, a visit to Samos again and seeing new bits all the time. We stopped in Pythagorion - that of Pythagoras fame I described last year - to sit out a few days of strong winds. What we hadn't realised on our previous visit was that the town is built on and over a previous 6th C BC ancient city called Samos - a port with impressive walls, paved roads and squares, temples & agoras, workshops, villas and baths, decorated with intricate mosaics and frescoes. Remains are dotted about the town and we visited an excavated site and museum that has over 3,000 artefacts and statues from 5th C BC to 7th C AD.

Then the 3 A's: Agathonisi, Astypalaia and Amorgos. Agathonisi is just off Turkey, a wild little island that last year had migrants outnumbering inhabitants by 10:1 - a difficult time when we were last there. Now the only evidence of these events are the last remaining broken dinghies, RIBs and abandoned lifejackets dotted about the coast. A beautiful spot.

After a quick overnighter at halfway house/island of Levitha (complete with kingfisher), we met up with friends Shirley & Colin (Silent Wings) on the butterfly-shaped island of Astypalaia. It was Shirley's first visit here - we took the bus up to the Chora with its line of 8 windmills (and Australian butcher) and climbed further up to a ruined castle containing no less than 3 beautifully maintained chapels. Dinner of mixed mezes at a restaurant on the beach finished the visit off - great little place run by a Turkish lady Anastasia and her Greek husband.

The wind was due to pick up. We want to get north and west into the "little Cyclades" to visit some of the islands we have not yet explored. We do realise we might get stuck. Silent Wings would have liked to join us but they have a visitor arriving in Kos soon and can't risk being held up. So they headed back east, we made our way in two hops to our 3rd A, Amorgos. We had been here in May on our way to Crete and visited the famous Monastery perched on the side of a vertiginous cliff. Here we did get "stuck" for 4 days. Very nicely so, mind. It is great hiking country and we followed some of the trails; up to a dam (devoid of water), over to a partly excavated Minoan site, around the bay and up a headland to try and see how turbulent the water out to sea was, and up above the Chora to its set of windmills and views on the other side of the island.

The island has a good road, all hairpin bends as usual, so we hired a car to go its length and breadth. It is stark country: craggy cliffs, high hills with white-washed villages and just pockets of cultivation - a lot of it vines. They are noted for some of their organic wines and the local rakimelo - raki distilled with honey. Apart from the artful port and Chora, it's an awful lot of goats, old men with donkeys, windmills and hundreds of Cycladic chapels. We really liked the island.

We have had company sitting out the wind - Austrians, British, Italians, Dutch and charterers from all over. It isn't so much the wind (F6/7) that stops us all, but the huge seas that lick up. They pick you up, throw you over, spin you, drench you and spew you out like a bit of flotsam. A young Dutch couple arrived in an old little 31' boat. They had had a hard slog to get there and tried to moor stern to next to us. They put their anchor down and reversed: the boat went sideways. After lots of forwards & backwards and slewing about they finally got close, threw their warps to the waiting helpers only to find they had omitted to tie them on to their own boat! They pinned themselves sideways onto a little British Sadler's bow. The only way to get them off and clear was to get a line from our bow to theirs and Richard winched them back alongside us using the anchor windlass, all the while hoping our anchor would hold both our boats in the gusts. We continued to keep them safely attached to us while they rowed out, first a 2nd kedge anchor that dragged, and then their main anchor again (having "broken" their windlass they thought). Finally in the dark and very tired, that anchor seemed to be holding. For security through the night though, we kept them attached to our boat, and we in turn had a slackish safety line onto our Austrian neighbour the other side. We all survived a surprisingly good night.

But this sitting out the wind lark has to stop - it was time to try and make some progress. Yesterday morning (no harbour dues, couldn't find anyone to pay, water filled, couldn't find waterman to pay) so ventured out. The port is in a mile-long inlet; there is an invisible line across its entrance beyond which is the swell and breaking water. It was still a F6, but we rode the swells with water crashing over the top and quarter until we reached the calmer waters sheltered by Naxos and other smaller islands. We are now here in Schinoussa for a swim, fine sunset and an amusing time watching the anchoring difficulties of arriving boats - most of them of the 50'+ variety. It looks a lovely spot, there is another blast of wind on Wednesday, so will stay put and see what Schinoussa throws up….