Kayio 30/06/2012
Open Blue
Tim & Manfreda Penfold
Sat 30 Jun 2012 15:59
We woke up in Sarakinko to find the wind rapidly building from the North. We did want to spend the day there as the beach was beautiful, but as the morning went on the wind just kept getting up and up. It was the Meltimi wind blowing over the mountains to the north of us, and the weather forecasts I had been looking at did not show it reaching this far, so we were expecting to be nicely sheltered where we were. But they were wrong and by lunchtime it was gusting 35+ knots in the anchorage.
We decided to leave and cross over Kolpos bay to the other side where the Meltimi should not reach.
It felt like a real gamble at the time and we literally got blown out of the bay with gusts of over 40 knots propelling us West with only the tiniest bit of genoa unrolled.
As I had hoped, the further West we went the more the wind eased until we were sailing along nicely under full sail, with only the waves to remind us what we had left behind. Again we saw some dolphins playing, and this time they weren't interested in coming to play in our bow wave, they were having far too much fun surfing down the swells behind us!
Kayio was a beautiful natural harbour with a very small village to one side. There were only a few yachts and holiday apartments here and the village felt quite desolate and even a bit desperate. It was a feeling that we would get all the way around the Peloponnese until we got back to the Ionian, although the countryside of this area of Greece is stunning, the towns and villages left us feeling a little bit disappointed. In fact I don't think we had a decent meal out until we got back to the Ionian.