38:58.46N 26:22.14E Plomari, Lesvos.

Ariel of Hamble
Jim and Valerie SHURVELL
Fri 16 Aug 2013 16:16

15th August, 2013.

 

We had a very windy night at Apothekes and were up until 2 a.m. watching the wind and checking we were not dragging nearer to the shore.  A Turkish like gullet came in and anchored with a party of guests on board and after a while he re-anchored and settled for the night.  I was awaken at 3 a.m. with the sound of an engine very close to us.  Once on deck I found a big French racing yacht only 3 or 4 metres from us which seemed to be out of control with a faulty windlass and a man on deck desperately trying to pull the anchor in and the helmsman trying to move away from us in the huge gusts of wind.  I had to call for the captain to shout a few words of advice.  They did manage to get the anchor in and moved further away from us and put their anchor down again but this time over the Turkish gullet.  This was fine until the crew of the gullet wanted to move in the morning.  Their anchor came up along with the French one and at one time they were towing them along.  Lots of shouting from the French and the gullet very kindly put two guys in a rib and got their anchor off and left.  It is all fun and games out here in Greece.

 

We had been ashore the night before to the taverna. With all the small fishing boats Jim had hoped for fresh fish.  The only fish on the menu was sardines which were very nice but the service was poor.  We won’t be praising the place on Tripadviser!

 

We had a walk around the village the next morning but there was not even a bread shop.  We had noticed a couple of times some boys about 11 or 12 years old who wanted to show us they knew their English football clubs. While we looking for the bread shop they spotted us again and asked if we had watched the London final of the basketball which they were doing on the computer.  The village has wonderful sea views but for kids it is very limiting.  I did feel quite sorry for them when I think of everything my kids had at their finger tips at that age.

 

We decided it was time to move on to the next port of call as the weather forecast showed lots more wind to come.  We had the sails up and out of the buoyed channel we sailed until we passed the small island at the entrance.  The wind dropped to nothing and although Jim tried hard to make the sails work it was useless and we had to resort to the engine.  We clocked up 20 miles on this journey and motored past Vatera and Melinta both with beaches and umbrellas before pulling into the harbour here at Plomari.  In the pilot book it does say there is a surge and quite uncomfortable.  Lovely big wall with lots of rock to stop the sea but late at night the wind starts and the surge soon arrives.  By the time we had had breakfast this morning, filled the water tanks and the diesel man had been the surge had just about stopped.  Jim decided we will stay another night and just rest here for the day as the town is very like Genoa with cobbled small streets and old fashioned shops mixed in with the modern ones.  As you can see from the photographs it is set back from the harbour with 19th century houses which were built when Plomari was a major shipbuilding centre.  The Sedountas River is now usually dry and cars are parked where the water use to be. The town is now known as the “ouzo” capital with five distilleries still in operation.  There use to be soap factories where the local people use to work but they have all closed now.

 

Water temperature is back to 34 degrees!!!!

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