Not something we would ever do….

After some serious but surprisingly reasonably priced ice cream

We headed to a music bar that had been recommended to us called blind dog.

Their origin story is a travelling professional musician who met a Greek girl and settled down and opened a bar… they have live music every night, and some (or many) nights it seems the owners play, as they did tonight. Whatever the story they were very very good.

They seem to have a dedicated fan base of tourists and expats but even the salty Greek sea dog Yannis who runs the yacht charter business had heard of them.

Had we not got into the Marina, our backup plan was to anchor in the bay next to Skiathos Harbour. Next morning we had a look in on our way past. Seems it was a popular spot.

I’m going to guess that cruise ship made some serious wash when it showed up in the middle of the night…

The master plan for our last day, hatched when looking at a forecast of light winds, was to head around to the other side of Skopelos. Clearly more wind than forecast but we were fine for the first part.

But as we neared the top of the island the swell got up to 3m and was pretty uncomfortable. We would have to come back that way as well so we went for plan B and stayed the side of the island we needed to be at the end of the day.

Sailing downwind in a big swell is a bit more comfortable.

We had seen some yachts offering day trips in back in the marina with beanbags strapped to the deck for people to sit in.

I’m not at all sure that would have been ideal seating if they came out where we were!

Wind and waves made anchoring in a bay sketchy so we stayed out sailing covering 27nm. We dropped the boat back to the Charter company at the agreed time and went for a swim nearby.

After decoding the bus timetable we headed up to where the rest of the flotilla were based for a farewell meal. Very proud to be awarded the prize for using the least fuel in a week… We had used only 20 litres of diesel.

This has been the best sailing we have ever had on one of these weeks. The Sporades are in the Adriatic which has reliable Meltemi winds. This area is far less crowded than the Ionian, and it all feels a bit more genuine. Tavernas with 10 tables not 100. Skiathos is clearly a tourist place, we are after all tourists, but it feels like a town with a tourist industry rather than a resort with no other purpose, and at least some of the tourists are Greek. The other places we visited were even less dedicated to tourists.

There is another route we could do to the more outlying islands of the Sporades… Maybe next year….

Hasta Mañana

Fairly wild ride over. The winds and the currents here are created by the channels between islands which leads to some odd things. We started being driven along at 6+ knots under just a Genoa by the wind coming down the Volos Channel. Then in the Trikeri channel several systems meet and everything goes all over the place. We had the swell running in the opposite direction to the breeze at one point.

We were going slowly and getting bored when we got to the bottom of the Skiathos Strait and then got hit by winds reportedly gusting up to 30 knots.

Fully reefed on a close reach we were flying along at 7.5 knots which is about as fast as this thing goes.

The approach to the Skiathos marina is literally under the final approach for planes to the airport.

We had a plane directly overhead and the ferry was about to come out. Sorry we didn’t get a picture of that moment we were a touch busy.

Elsewhere in the world there are clearly marked exclusion zones at the thresholds of runways that start at the sea… they don’t seem to feel the need for one here!

There are a few Optimist dinghies in the harbour here.

They always seemed small but up against 40 foot plus yachts they look tiny.

We came to this area to avoid the crowds and today is our free sail day so we can choose where to go. Several of the group are at anchor in the bay of an uninhabited island, but we have chosen to come to a big town as we are told it is interesting.

In complete contrast to the fishing boats we have been surrounded by for the last few nights we are sharing the pontoon with some very expensive toys.

2 outboards is sensible, 3 is showing off that you can afford the fuel (they can burn 100 litres per hour each) and 3 lots of service costs!

We are in a bit early so time for a cold beer and one of our industrial sized 400g bags of Oregano crisps before we hit the town.

Found a restaurant with a view

If you have a yacht that big you get a slightly bigger taverna mooring…

There was girl trying the same trick off the back of a restaurant and a cat thought this was a good opportunity to catch one.

I waited for some time with my camera at the ready but the cat clearly had no intention of falling in even to make good blog content….

Anyway back to Orie. It was a beautiful evening…

Less beautiful in the morning.

The crew managed to connect the tablet we use for navigation to the yachts bluetooth audio and watch Mama Mia here we go again! While we waited out the weather.

We waited until after lunch and headed across to Kyriaki back on the Trikeri peninsula.

As you can see the weather was not really the kind that made pictures likely to feature in next year’s brochure.

But it brightened up as we neared our destination.

There is a ‘traditional’ boatyard here, traditional in this case means ‘no sign of health and safety.

The local Tavernas have worked to create moorings for an insane number of yachts in a tiny space. The food and the service were excellent.

Somewhere near the top top of the island is a monastary, with a long and interesting history, but it was shut.

Rather than me summarise the history, you can read all about it here.

https://www.allovergreece.com/Sights/Descr/95/360/en

They have some epic views

This island has no Uber… in fact no cars… and apparently, since the donkey retired, it has just two tractors. Both were busy working as taxis taking people to the monday morning ferry in trailers.

So the plan today was to have a race in the morning. There are 10 boats in our flotilla so here are a few of us getting ready to race in the wind that is going to get up any minute now.

And here we are, probably leading, but in no wind because guess what.. the wind didn’t show…

Everyone decided to abandon after a couple of hours so all our hard work came to nothing.

So we went for a swim and then headed off towards our next destination.. and now of course we find the wind!

Bernard can’t swim that fast and we can’t tow our dinghy this time so he enjoyed the ride from the cockpit.

So here we are in Orei, Oreoi on the map, (not the biscuit the town), which is on a really big island called Evia

40 yachts in the harbour… with 8 power points… so we’ll not be getting any power tonight but we did refill with water.

How do I know? Funny you should ask… woken at 6AM by a high pitched noise… is it Bernard calling to another inflatable Orca? No… Is it a depth alarm? No we didn’t set one… it is almost certainly a battery alarm. Is there a problem with any of the batteries? Well after half an hour of investigation I was confident that there was not! So we’ll assume that was a false alarm and photograph the sunrise before facing today’s bigger problem.

We need to talk about Toilets…. if you are about to eat skip forward to ***

Yacht toilets pump seawater in… and waste out. Simple enough. When we are moored up beautiful bays like this.

We close a valve and waste goes into a holding tank. When we are far out at sea we open the valve and the waste is safely released.

Now what you never want to happen is the tank outlet to block… Let me cut a long story short….. we discovered last night that ours was blocked….

This is when a) having a yacht with two toilets is super handy and b) being on a flotilla with a lead crew who are responsible for fixing stuff is even handier.

I’m not going to give you a picture for this one but basically you block the vent and pump to pressurise the system until the ‘blockage’ can hold back no longer….

My my…

***

OK toilet fixed.

We left just before this lot arrived.

22 miles sailing in really nice wind.

Down a long channel gybing to avoid running dead down wind then up to the island of Paeleo Trikeri.

The wind is basically a sea breeze blowing off the islands… so manged to do a full 360° from the bottom of this route to the top!

Bernard had a swim.

And here is our rather picturesque but seriously cramped harbour for the night.

Off for a walk to try and find the monastery….

We have picked our boat up from a marina 30 minutes down the coast from the main base so we got up at silly o’clock to head up for a 9AM briefing (we got a free coffee for our trouble)

A nice breeze so we headed off as soon as we could to find a secluded bay for lunch.

Pretty much deserted until about 5 other yachts and a part boat showed up!

Lots of fish… the guy in the middle is called Fernando so we used our old “throw the crumbs from lunch in the water” trick and he invited all his mates over

More sailing in the afternoon to our evening stop back at the other end of Skiathos.

Just need to hop in the dinghy and head to a punch party before dinner….

Er.. except the crew seem to have disappeared in the dinghy and left us sat on the boat?

Slightly more complex travel than usual. We flew to Skiathos (Google the famous airport) without incident. Then we needed to get a Water Taxi to where our boat is.

We found the taxi

They called around the local bars until they found the driver but we had to wait a bit while he had a cigarette…

We had not had time to acclimatise to Greek islands sense of urgency so this was a bit irritating… we asked why we were waiting and turned out the taxi we thought we had booked just for us is in fact waiting for the Frankfurt flight. They had a clear plan, we had a clear plan, would have been easier if we had the same plan…

So the people on the Frankfurt Flight show up after about half an hour and we head over to Skopelos where our boat is.

The local Kayak Club seem to be out for an evening paddle.

Lots of Greek form filling in to do now before we head for dinner….

The forecast was for very light winds so we spent hours pouring over several wind forecasting apps to work out the best route.

Complete waste of time. We tried for a couple of hours but there was no way we were going to make it back to base so we gave up and used the engine.

This boat is a fairly modern 41ft Jeanneau and does about 7 knots under engine. Something of a contrast to some of the boats we had a few years ago (see day 3 2012)

We stopped for lunch at a place called the Blue Caves, passing the Green Caves on the way. These are on an island called Kolcep quite close to Dubrovnik so there are loads of day boats.

Here are the Green Caves

Hard to see the caves but if you zoom in you can see at least 6 boats anchored there. We motored on to the Blue Caves.

You have to be slightly mad to try and anchor in against the rocks amongst that many boats but we got in there with one other yacht.

Great snorkelling in the caves.

Just time to come back the long way round to take in a view of the old town before heading into the marina.

This may beat even last night for the most awesome place to put a bar.

Also spotted this on the way round

Looks like the guy who designed UEA did some work out here as well.

The charter company have 30 boats to get into a very confined Marina in the space of a couple of hours so it gets a touch busy. We managed to avoid all the many, varied and expensive options for messing up and get our boat into it’s space without incident beyond a bit of a debate with the refuelling station who couldn’t believe how little fuel we had used.

After everyone had enjoyed their first stationary shower in a week, we concluded that we had done harbour-side seafood restaurants, so we would take the opportunity to head into Dubrovnik’s old town. The taxis do more than 7 knots so it does not take long.

Absolutely stunning.

On a quest for a post-dinner ice cream we stumbled across an orchestra playing in a square. So unlikely though it may seem, to conclude, I leave you with the Dubrovnik symphony orchestra, Danjela Pintaric and 100 or so random tourists singing the anthem of the mooring rope.

The water really is that colour. We went for a snorkel to hang out with the fish.

After lunch at anchor, we had a slow sail to our destination for the evening back on Sipan Island.

Loads of small bays around here where there is some wildlife

And some wild life.

I wonder if we should get a yacht with a slide next year?

Anyway ahead of us here is our destination, Sipanska Luka.

We are on a mooring at the beach bar where the island is only about 10m wide.

They have booked us in for drinks at 6pm, so that we can watch the sunset.

You have to give them this one… a pretty spectacular location for a bar.

After another excellent dinner, some sampling of the local beers, and the interesting tender ride back to the boat in the dark, it seems that some of the wild life is moored near by….

The forecast today was for very little wind, sunny intervals and showers. The showers never showed up and we had 10 – 15 knots of wind all day.

Our planned destination was 14nm upwind of us, so we tacked up between Miljet island and the mainland covering 25nm in total.

Stunning views and a variety of passing traffic

It seems there are almost no free moorings in this part of Croatia. In Greece you usually can moor up on the town key for free and then choose a restaurant. Here, nearly all the moorings are owned by restaurants and you can use them for free as long as you eat in the restaurant. We’ve seen this system in other places but here it seems to only option. So in Polace there are 5 or 6 restaurants all with their own bit of quay so you have to decide where to eat before you moor…

Anyway tonight there is no organised stop and all the boats are at different places before we meet up again tomorrow night. We have booked ourselves in Konoba Barba in Prozura. A tiny little village.

We are moored to one of their buoys.

And as you can see it is not busy!

Just time for a swim and a shower before a cold beer and dinner.

They grill the fish outdoors on a fire here. I’m guessing anybody who ordered it last night was pretty unpopular.

Meanwhile… the cat didn’t say a word the whole evening.