40:06.83N 23:47.26E Koufos to Nea Marmaras
Monday 9th July, 2018.
Not far up the coast but a little closer to where we want to be for the next week. No dolphins or seals on the way but when we arrive after a couple of hours of motor sailing and a stop for lunch in one of the bays by Porta Carras there is a space on the quay for us.
Jim was soon in demand as there were a couple of young skippers we had seen before wanting to gain knowledge from his 40 years plus of sailing and his array of certificates to prove his knowledge. We met Eva from Eva Sailing who is a qualified special needs teacher all year and an owner (1st year) for the summer months. She was desperate to ask questions and generally talk about yacht ownership and its problems. Most of these skippers are making a nice summer living from advertising and taking people from the hotels out for day sails. It is not hard from this harbour as it has beautiful scenery with lots of little bays and very blue water. Unfortunately, the skipper boats are in conflict with the harbour authorities who run the harbour over what charges they should pay as for years there hasn’t been any charge. Therefore the pontoons are broken with holes everywhere and more appearing every few days. To force the skippers to fall into line they have turned the water off on the pontoons for everyone so as a visitor we couldn’t get any water without filling jerry cans and carrying it from farther afield.
The sardine boats use the harbour wall and have their own water tap. There always seem to have 4 boats in and on the last day we were there we woke to find 8 huge ones tied up to each other across everyone’s anchors. Luckily for us we were the first one in the line that they missed. There are not many harbours in this part of Greece but everyone has at least 2 sardine boats and it is incredible to think that all these boats can make a living from sardines as they surely must be nearly fished out.
We walked around the harbour wall and found a very nice restaurant for dinner with a view. The weather is still very warm and the sun shines every day.