Gythio

S/V Goldcrest
David & Lindsay Inwood
Wed 28 Jul 2010 13:00

Possibly our most varied day’s sailing so far…  We left the little anchorage early, as it was gusting quite hard already and we expected that it would become too tricky even with 2 anchors down.  So we put the sails up with high hopes of a good reach (wind coming across the side of the boat – fast & comfortable) all the way up the coast.  We started off with reefs in 18kts of wind & rocketed along – for 40 mins, then the wind died like it had been switched off & we had to motor.  That became the pattern of the day – the engine went on 5 times, with winds from dead calm to 28kts and everything in between.  We got the boat doing 8.5kts for a while – just too exciting for words!  It goes without saying that this was nothing like the forecast, so as we approached our destination at the head of the gulf (forecast dead calm), the wind blew us right into the harbour.  Again we would have preferred to anchor, but the anchorage nearby had no shelter and was quite small & shallow.  So we’re now alongside at the end of the main town quay, in crystal clear waters surrounded by thousands of tiny fish.  It looks a bit like a tropical fish tank, the result of millennia of selective pressure from humans taking everything large enough to eat!  We hope we are out of the way of the ferry which docks here from Crete tomorrow. 

 

Just along the quay from us is a very quirky statue of a mermaid:-