Position 39:32.378N 24:59.160E

Nisos Evstratios is a small island with a population of only 300 that is located about halfway to Nisos Limnos. The trip was great with favourable winds and we sailed all 45nm making very good time. I was reasonably confident going into the harbour as both the cruising guide and the Ipad showed there was plenty of depth. There was an old tatty ferry berthed but that had left plenty of room on one side of it to go alongside the quay as described in the cruising guide. Minka was nicely lined up to park when I noticed the ferry had a thick line from its bow right across the rest of the quay so I had to quickly rethink my plan.

To avoid the line which you can see in this picture I detoured into the inner harbour only to find a line under water right across the entrance along with a lot of other floating lines.

Fortunately I managed to turn Minka around but then we went aground on the other side of the inner harbour entrance which is charted at 2.7 mts and we only draw 1.5.

This picture shows Minka’s track

The squiggly bits after we turned around are where we wriggled to get off the sandbank. Eventually as you can see in a previous picture I went onto the ferry terminal in front of the ferry. I think what has happened is that the ferry has built up a sandbar when it uses its thrusters to park. We went from 3 mts depth to aground in about 2mts so the bank must be pretty steep.

Anyway after all that I went for a beer. This really is a lovely place.

Some quite old houses either survived the earthquake in 1968 or have been rebuilt.

Some new building

Some open spaces

….and back to the harbour.

I would like to stay tomorrow and have a good look around but Minka’s berth is a bit exposed with the current wind strength and direction. We shall see….I am also told the ferry goes out at 0630 tomorrow so I might have to move.