Skiathos & Beyond - Lyn & Steve
Gillyb
Fri 22 Jul 2011 12:24
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Position: 39:09.7N 23:29.8E
Greetings All, Since our last blog we have
had Lyn & Steve with us, celebrated another birthday for Gillian (ice
cream a birthday treat see picn) and have managed to visit several
lovely harbours and bays on Skiathos, Skopelos and Alonnisos. Tired and
with lots of dirty washing we are now on our own again back in Skiathos. Its hot
and Friday 22nd July.
Back to our arrival at Skiathos harbour on the
14th - as we entered what is at best a compact harbour we
saw several spare places on the yacht pontoon so thought we were in luck.
However, as we positioned ourselves to reverse onto the pontoon we were waved
away by a "nice" Greek chap who said we could not use "his " pontoon and would
have to anchor. No problem - so off we went and dropped the pick only to
look up and see the end of the Skiathos runway really quite close. OMG, on
checking the chart we were indeed in the restricted area and so we quickly
raised the anchor and moved to an empty and inviting mooring buoy clear of
the runway approach (second pic taken from mooring - this was not the biggest
ferry we saw here). Not many minutes later and our "nice" Greek
gentleman arrived and told us that we were on "his" mooring and must leave at
once. Welcome to Skiathos!! As it turned out this xxxx did us a
favour because we went just round to the next bay (Siferi Bay) and anchored
beneath the cemetery - dead quiet which Skiathos town is not. It also
proved to be a great place to pick up and drop off Lyn & Steve.
From Skiathos we set off towards Skopelos and
Alonnisos the latter being where Steve had booked a dive on the monday. After
some very gentle sailing and looking into a few places on Skopolos we arrived
off Alonnisos and headed for a delightful tiny port called Patitiri and an even
smaller bay next door called Rousoumi. The size of harbour seems not
to worry the Greek ferry operators who run large ferries in and out of most of
them. We have no idea how it is commercially viable! Anyway,
Rousoumi proved to be delightful and we spent a very peaceful night there.
Next day we decided to recce Steni Vala another tiny bay where the dive
centre was located. Having put our nose in, found the Dive centre HQ (a
taverna) we anchored in another tiny bay we spotted on route and only about half
a mile to the dive centre. The two nights we spent here were very tranquil
and the only other living things we saw were 3 goats.
Tuesday we headed for the port/town of
Skopolos in the hope that we could get some water. How very different from
Skiathos! we got a warm welcome, had plenty of room on the town quay and were
able to plug into electrics and get drinking water. Hooray! (Picture
shows quaint narrow streets in the town) Despite a forecast for a big blow
overnight on Wednesday, where Skopolos would have been the perfect hurricane
hole, we decided to move closer to our drop off point at Skiathos and headed for
another sheltered bay called Panormou. Clearly we were not alone in this
selection of a good place to sit out a blow and not long after we were nicely
anchored and tied to the shore a lot of other yachts arrived. Despite some
chaos everyone eventually managed to get a spot and we all had an uneventful
night despite the 25-30 knots of wind.
So that the swell could die down we waited at
Panormou until after lunch then had a terrific sail back to our bay on Skiathos
which, having cut this as short as possible, is where we started.
More Island hopping and exploring
tomorrow.
Bye for Now
Gilly B
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