Kioni 19/05/12
Open Blue
Tim & Manfreda Penfold
Sat 19 May 2012 21:17
We left Sivota after lunch on Saturday after finishing the work on the boat and feeling great at being free to go where ever we chose again.
The wind was up and blowing from the west, so it was a tight fetch to Kioni on Ithaka which is where we wanted to go. By the time we had the mainsail up and Fred and I had deliberated about where we should head for a while, we could easily make it. The breeze built to over 20 knots and we had a full main and small amount of genny out, we ended up reaching across the short 10 miles or so to Ithaka fully pressed and hitting a new top speed of 8.99 knots.
I have to admit that we should have had one, possibly two, reefs in the mainsail for those conditions, but I haven't threaded the reefing lines yet, so it was all main or nothing!
It was actually good to see how she handled being pressed that hard, and I have say I was quite pleased how in control we were.
Arriving in Kioni, we dropped the sails and motored into the bay, to find huge gusts of wind funnelling down the hills and through the harbour. We did wonder for a while what we were doing here, as it seemed at the time a most inhospitable place for boats. But we anchored stern to the town quay anyway and eventually later that night the wind stopped. Our first attempt at mooring went quite badly as the anchor didn't hold and we dragged towards some jagged rocks. But after a bit of faffing about and entertaining the locals we got nicely secured.
That evening we set about gutting and cooking enourmous amounts of small fish that we had been given by some locals in Sivota, with some success as Fred and I had a nice supper, but by the time it was ready the girls weren't so keen.
In the morning we went for a coffee\ice cream\explore in town and started to really appreciate it as a truely beautiful and peaceful spot.
Here's a picture of us moored in Kioni.
