Nea Artaki

Scott-Free’s blog
Steve & Chris
Tue 25 Aug 2009 12:03
38:30.7N 23:37.9E
 
Tuesday 25th August 2009
 
Slipped moorings mid-morning with plenty of room to get out of the narrow harbour as no other yachts had entered in the entire time we were there.  Their loss - it's a lovely little place.  Scott-Free behaved very well in reverse all the way out, and we smiled at the thought of Storyline carrying out the same manoeuvre!
 
There was a brisk North Easterly blowing so we put up the yankee and had a lazy sail downwind, giving George the autopilot a rest as it was good fun helming in the 30-knot gusts that could be seen coming across the water. 
 
We hit a calm patch around lunchtime and had to hoist the iron topsail, so settled down to a leisurely lunch of spinach pie bought at the local bakery that morning and salad.  In typical style, the wind then picked up again and things became very lively, so we bolted the rest of our lunch and got the sail up again.  At least after the spinach we had the strength to pull it up, and a comment along those lines referring to Popeye the sailorman led to a conversation in which we recalled all the telly programmes we used to watch as kids!
 
We arrived at Nea Artaki mid afternoon and found a well-sheltered spot on the outside of the harbour wall between two fishing boats, and a friendly fisherman took our lines.  We only had 0.4metre of water under the keel but it was obvious from the water line on the wall that there was another half a metre of tide left to rise.  What we didn't know was how much it had left to fall, so we watched the echo sounder on and off for a while to see if we were going up or down!  It turned out we were on a rising tide and so were fine.  We've got out of the habit of thinking about tides since we've been here, but there is a tidal range locally of between 0.5 and 1.0 metre, so when we're in shallow water we just need to be on the alert.  We topped out at 1.1 metres, so were fairly sure we wouldn't touch bottom in the middle of the night.
 
It was quite a pleasant looking town, but neither of us was keen to explore, so we tidied up on deck and settled down for a quiet evening on board.