Itaka

Knotty Girl
Tanya/Roberto
Wed 10 Aug 2016 17:09
We had nice slow start, a quick swim pre-breakfast and then took our dinghy to visit the "Port Atheni" and discovered that should we have wanted to moor on the little quay, we could have done so, there were enough water, yet we loved were we were! We however came on land as there was a very mini market, where we bought a couple of small things (should we have needed a real "avitallement", we would have needed to walk to the village (about 1 kilometre away). We also had a nice coffee / orange juice watching the activities on the boats that were both in the port and anchored. We then motored towards Thilia Island and had a beautiful swim in turquoise waters between Thilia and Meganisi, followed by a nice lunch of moussaka which we had bought 2 days ago where we had our pulp salad and which proved to be just amazing moussaka! We then had a great sail under main and jib as the wind was good, around 20 + knots. Our plan was to anchor at Kioni on Ithaka Island but when we arrived, around 5 pm, the bay was just too crowded (which reminded us that we were definitively in August!) so we had to look for alternatives and searched for quite a while until we finally decided to anchor close to the Island of Ay Nikolaus, about 3 miles from Kioni on Ithaka. As it was surrounded with sharp rocks, putting the mooring lines was not an easy task and while Tanya was brave to put the first one, Roberto then had to come to put the second one and to secure both of them - namely putting a chain around a big rock and then tie the mooring line to it and protecting the other line with caotchouc pieces to avoid them being cut by the rocks. All in all we were ready by 7:45 pm and deserved a nice appetitive followed by a "shrimps and courgettes" dinner prepared by Kim, which was delicious, yet a challenge to eat as the shrimps were still in their "shelves".

We again looked for some shooting stars and Kim saw a few, before going to bed. The night was Ok, but with some guts of winds - about 15 knots, hence neither the captain, nor Tanya slept very deeply, regularly checking the mooring lines and Renée having to switch off the depth alarm that Roberto had set up on several occasion during the night.