7000 miles and "thousands" of yachts!

Serafina
Rob & Sarah Bell
Sat 15 Aug 2009 19:40
37:22.4N 26:44.5E

Saturday 15th August

Our departure this morning was delayed by Sarah who rowed ashore to revisit
the beach and search for those perfect stones. A full hour and a half later
she returned declaring this to have been the best beach ever! She also had a
bag full of exhibits.

Got under way at 10.40am heading for Arkoi Island and the light breeze that
took us gently out of the bay, quietly picked up to eventually whisk us
along at 7 knots under just main and staysail. We got a bit of a clue as to
what we might find when we got there by the number of yachts sailing on the
same course as us. More yachts under sail here that we have seen at any time
this year.

Kept sailing as long as we could as we approached the big group of islands,
but tacking through the channels with a dying wind eventually become a bit
pointless. The additional problem was the increasing number of boats
whizzing around here. Suddenly we have arrived in the tourist and charter
yacht area on a Saturday of all days. Every bay that we passed now was
jammed with boats of all shapes and sizes, from fast inflatables to huge gin
palaces. We however were party to some secret inside information from Nigel
and Karen who were here a few weeks ago and knew of a large bay that almost
nobody uses because the pilot books say it is very deep and therefore tricky
to anchor in. We really could not believe our luck when we arrived to indeed
find it completely empty whilst every other cove or bay was packed. We
picked our spot pretty much in the middle and settled back on the anchor to
see what developed.

So many of these people act like lemmings and as soon as people saw us in
here we were soon joined by a gin palace and a large catamaran, both of
which took lines ashore and were about as far away from us as was possible.
By dark, we had been joined here by just two more yachts, one of which was
plainly a charter yacht on its first day out. They did finally get moored
up, but the performance of trying to get a line ashore and then remembering
to go back out and drop an anchor several times over was very entertaining
for a while at least.

Sarah went ashore to have a look around this part of the island and brought
back photos of the other bays around us all jammed with boats, after quite
an extensive walk without a hat - not sensible, but would have necessitated
waking sleeping beauty to retrieve said hat! We cannot thank Nigel and Karen
enough for this gem and for the benefit of the boats following us, we are in
Port Stretto (East Bay) which is the right hand bay of the twin bays shown
on the map. The west bay is busy, but does have two fixed buoys provided by
the taverna, plus a small quay also provided by them. Access to the taverna
though is very easy from this side anyway.

Tried a bit of fishing as the sun went down, but as usual, not a even a
tickle.

Passed a small milestone as we approached the island as we clocked up 7,000
miles.