Wednesday 31^st August – Khalkís – Voufalo, Evia

38:18.146N 24:07.183E

We slept well after our transit late last night.  We woke to find a mirror calm anchorage and to see we hadn’t done too bad a job of anchoring in the dark.  We weighed anchor and carried on down the channel, breakfasting on the way. 

To wake us up, we first had to navigate under the tall suspension bridge just beyond the anchorage.  The channel is fairly narrow and winding leading up to bridge and as we approached we saw lots of small fishing boats directly below the bridge, riding the current in our path.  Kindly, they drifted apart as we approached, forming a passage through the middle for us.

The calm continued and we motored on down the channel.  As we approached the anchorage at Voufalo, a couple of dolphins came to join us and spent 5 minutes playing at the bow, doing back flips out of the water ahead of us – just like visiting the show at Windsor safari park.  At times I felt one of them was making eye contact with me from beneath the bow.

We anchored early afternoon and I swam the anchor in clear water.  Voufalo is an almost landlocked bay, with a sand spit providing extra protection across the entrance, and just a few houses forming this small hamlet.  It has high ridges around it with wind generators on the top. 

The pilot book describes the danger of a small sunken motor boat 2m below the surface in the middle of the bay.  It is still there and is marked with a plastic water bottle which we could just see poking above the water when we arrived but unfortunately it disappeared beneath the surface at high water.  Sadly it is fouling a prime anchoring spot – it could really do with being dragged to the far end out of the way.

We thought we might be the only visiting yacht tonight but early evening two French yachts arrived; we warned them where the sunken boat was as the marker was still hidden.  The chap from the second boat rowed out to it in his dinghy once they were anchored up to have a look and to check they would swing clear of it.

On Passage: Khalkís – Voufalo, Evia

© Pyxis 2011