Having recently enjoyed many delightful places on the western shoreline of the Argolic Gulf, including few days at Monemvasia, we chose relatively favourable conditions to sail past 'the dreaded' Ak Maleas (which has a particularly bad reputation for nasty conditions) heading further west into the adjoining Lakonikos Gulf. We initially dropped our hook in a beautiful sandy bay called Ormos Frangos, on Nisos Elafonisos. Visited here before. Stunningly lovely beach and unrivalled place to swim. Unfortunately our first overnight was bumpy - with los of SW swell finding its way in. Next morning we were toying with the idea of moving on. Conditions settled although suddenly became 'not nice' so at three in the afternoon we pulled up our hook and moved on towards Plitra, about 20NM and to our north. The first few NM were quite energetic. We had been getting lots more protection than had been realised. Once in open water we were into F6 with 2-3m seas on the nose. We knew we would be putting these bad conditions to beam, soon as we could clear the most SW headland, Ak Ay Marinas, aptly marked with the sign of a wreck on charts! Being on our lee-shore we needed to tack couple times to make certain we didn't join it. Once clear we enjoyed a wonderful sail, beam reaching with double reefed jib and mainsail averaging 8kn for next couple hours. As we approached Ormos Xilis we knew we're gonna be only yacht on hook that night.