We had a lovely few days in Nafplio, visiting the museums and Tiryns archeological site. To get there we walked for one and half hours along a deserted railway track, that at the beginning seemed to be a good idea, until the brambles and overgrown foliage started to rip our legs and any bare skin to pieces, not to mention the rickety bridge we had to get across that had definitely seen better days. Unfortunately when we eventually got to Tiryns the gates were just closing so we had to walk all the way back again and then walk in again the next day (along the road this time) and we got there during opening time. It was well worth the walking, they are still digging on this site and uncovering all sorts of archeological artefacts from the 5th to the 3rd C BC. Most of the artefacts are now housed in the large museum in the main square of Nafplio. Having visited the site, the museum artefacts on display were made all the more interesting, you could piece together the bits of the story of the site and the area of Nafplio.
Tiryns archaeological site
We left Nafplio and headed back to Porto Kheli for some shelter from some more forecasted strong winds and spent the next few days on board working but managed some walking around Porto Kheli archeological sites. These were much smaller than at Nafplio, but still interesting.
Strong winds have been blowing down the central Aegean for weeks now, we are so pleased that we made it back to the Peloponnisos ahead of it.
As soon as the strong winds abated, we decided to visit Spetsai but instead of going into the town quay, that sounded horrendous, we decided to go into a small bay to the South of the island that looked as though it had good shelter and good holding in sand and mud. It was certainly small, very rock strewn but did have good shelter from the winds from the N NE NW, we were expecting N NE winds. Unfortunately the swell coming into the bay was from the South so we had a very uncomfortable night rolling beam onto the southerly swell while the wind held Muskie pointing to the NE. Not wanting to leave Muskie in this position while we went exploring we decided to leave the next morning.
With the news that my niece, Hannah, and her boyfriend Joe were on holiday in Greece and had made it to the Peloponnese the decision was made to sail back to Nafplio to meet them. The wind looked promising for a lovely sail back up the gulf and it did start well with a fresh NE breeze F4. We got the sails up and turned off the engine only to put the engine back on again about half an hour later when the wind dropped to 1-2kts. Then it picked up again and the sails were back in use until the wind dropped again and we were back on engine. This happened for a couple of hours until the wind died completely and we were left with no option but to motor sail the rest of the way to Karathona bay - we did not want to face the Port Police in Nafplio again after booking out last week, so we didn’t to go onto the town quay.
Karathona bay is a large open bay with good shelter from the southerlies and North winds, the holding is good in sand so we were quite happy to spend the next couple of days at anchor meeting up with Hannah and Joe.
Joe and Hannah arriving by dinghy from the beach to Muskie
Muskie in Karathona bay Nafplio
The walk into town from Karathona bay to Nafplio
Karathona bay headland
