This morning dawned bright and sunny… Brochure weather.. Here is the view from our balcony.

We headed up high to the top of Avoriaz to ski where the visibility had not been so great yesterday. Avoriaz sits at the end (what is the name of the end of a valley opposite the head) of a hanging valley, and some of the best skiing is up at the head of that same valley. Here you can see Avoriaz from above.

When you consider the architectural train wrecks that were built in the Alps in the 70s and 80s you have to give whoever designed this one a bit of credit really don’t you? The steel lift tower on the right of the picture is not bent by the way, that is the wide angle lens on my GoPro helmet mounted camera. The idea today was to have it set to take a picture once a minute, this means I have a small number of pictures of the view, and a lot of the buckles of my rucksack, my gloves, the back of someone else’s head in a lift queue… But it kind of works. Here you can see a great field of Moguls under a lift. They are a bit obsessed with Moguls around here, I hate the things give me steep but smooth any day…

We skied down to Chatel which is another resort, but still in France. I managed to miss a small track and skied into an area where the only way out was a drag lift with a 20 minute queue… 25 years ago we complained about the lack of signposts around here, they must have spent10s of millions on new lifts since we were last here, surely they could manage a signpost or two? Anyway here are today’s vital statistics captured from the tracking app (or appli in French apparently)

We eat in this evening, which meant we could buy desert from the bakery we get bread from every morning. They seem to specialise in meringues… This may take me a couple of days to eat, it is about 6 inches across….

Well first of all here is the picture of the horse drawn sleigh I promised. The bells clanking as they go past under our balcony are quite atmospheric, for the first hour, then the become mildly irritating, but nothing like as irritating as the various tracked vehicles that roar past on a regular basis. Car free does not mean engine free….

Today was a bit overcast, so we skied up above Avoriaz for a bit but the light was bad. When it is cloudy the light comes from all directions and you cannot see the contours so well, so we headed over to the next valley, called Les Lindarets which has a lot of trees in it. These create some shadows and allow you to see the contours. Years ago when we skied here (we are not sure when that was but must be 16 years at least) there was a small shed serving pancakes and few deck chairs at the bottom, now there are 3 restaurants, and what might be the original hut… The lifts have also been massively upgraded. In the afternoon the light had improved so we headed up to the French / Swiss border.

You can see down over the other side to several Swiss resorts.

You can just about see Les Crosets below us here. You’d think there would be some sort of formality at the border, but there is just a sign reminding you that you need the right kind of lift pass to get back up! We skied down to Les Crosets, and here is the picture to prove it… Obviously much more Swiss?….

We had to fly this year, due to a long, and frankly dull story, we missed out on the ski train. This means we paid a fortune to navigate stupidly busy airports either end of a stupidly busy flight….

Avoriaz is a car free resort, so the transfer dropped us at a reception area, where according to the brochure, we should be greeted and transferred by a traditional horsedrawn sleigh to our apartment. Of course the reality is a little more “French” than that, and involves a lot of people standing around with no clear indication as to how you actually get anywhere, After 30 minutes or so of not getting anywhere we had a 5 minute sleigh ride, actually pulled by a horse to be fair, to our apartment. It was getting dark and snowing so I am afraid you don’t get a picture of the horse… I’ll try and grab one later in the week.

Avoriaz is celebrating 50 years since it was created. It is a purpose built resort 500m above the “real” town of Morzine. We calculated that we first skied here 26 years ago. We were staying in Morzine, but we came up here to ski at least once. We came back the following year as well, so that means we must have been here when they were celebrating 25 years…. this is a little alarming…

Anyway, skis rented, breakfast and chocolate for eating on chairlifts bought, we retired to a restaurant called the “boule de neige”. Complete with old wooden skis nailed to the wall (the skis are older than the resort, let alone the restaurant)

I had one of the best Tartiflettes I have had… It looked this this, briefly before I eat it….

Now I must go and put my phone with my GPS tracking app, my GoPro helmet cam, the spare batteries, the WiFi remote for the gopro, my other camera all on charge. None of these things were imaginable when we first came here…. but then again, neither were blogs…..

Off to Avoriaz in just under 1 week.

Looks like we will have something to ski on!

We were woken by the sound of goats, which is something of a first for a sailing holiday. There are a whole herd of them living on the side of the hill that forms the eastern half of this bay. It seemed that they gathered with someone who I assume would be called a goatherd, for reasons we could not figure out, then after a while all tramped back onto the open hillside.

The best part about being at anchor or on a bouy is that you can have a swim before breakfast. With night time temperatures in the mid 20s the boat is pretty stuffy even with all the hatches open, so a quick dip before breakfast is definately a good idea. One downside of this time of year is the heat. We have had 30 to 40 degrees in the day and 20+ at  night. When we are sailing it is not so bad under the sunshade in the breeze, although as the boat rolls around so the shade moves! When we have arrived some places mid afternoon, in the sea is the only bearable place to be.

After the usual hassle of stowing the dinghy without dropping to outboard in the sea, we had a fast long run down to Kos, carrying a bit too much sail made the boat hard work to steer in the rolling swell but pushed us along at 8 knots, which is about as fast as a boat this size wants to go. We rounded the corner of Turkey to sail past Bodrum to find ourselves in the middle of a yacht race going the other way.

It is very ungentlemanly for a cruising yacht to get in the way of a race so we had to keep our eyes open and work out where they were all going and then thread our way through. We quickly took down one sail to halve our speed which made this a bit easier, but these guys were not hanging around.

Kos is quite a major base for charter yachts so the marina was pretty busy, we had to queue up to refuel, then radio the marina to find out where to moor up. Happy to tie up without incident and listen to heated arguments in at least 2 languages going on outside over the radio. We have only used 20 litres of diesel the entire week, which not much at all, the boat has at least a 200 litre tank. With such good wind we have only used the engine to get in and out of bays and ports, and occasionally to charge our batteries and chill the beer in the fridge. The boat is pretty self sufficient,  it carries 400 litres or more of fresh water, can store heat from the engine to  heat enough water for 4 showers effortlessly, and we have huge batteries to run our lights and navigation gear. In towns and Marinas we can sometime plug in to shore power, but we have not been able to do that for three nights, so the beer was only just cold…. The super yachts of course have generators, aircon and desalination plants, but they burn 20 litres of diesel in a couple of minutes…..

Anyway, that’s it for another year, once again, we had a great time, met some great people, and learned a lot about sailing, and this part of the Greek islands.

I’ll update the parial entry from Lipso so if you scroll back to that you can read the whole thing.

The Skipper.

I woke early and so went on deck to check that nothing had moved in the night,  just in time to see a fishing boat fishing between the area we were anchored in and the harbour mouth.  He laid his net in a perfect circle and then came back around to the beginning to collect the other end of the net and put it onto a winch. He then winched it in to close the circle of net and finally bring it aboard with a haul of small fry.

Anchored near us were two Gulets. We have seen a lot of these wide, twin masted traditional design of Turkish boats. They range from multi million pound yachts with staff to tourist boats playing loud music as they take tourists to different bays. These two clearly had professional crews as they had moored in a very tricky place effortlessly.

After a quick dip in the bay before breakfast, and a trip in the dinghy to the bakery for some bread for lunch, we sailed south again to meet up with the rest of the flotilla in a bay on the East side of Kalimnos island. It looks almost like a fjord with steep hills all around.

There is room for maybe a dozen boats in here maybe, with two tavernas and a beach bar at the end. There were a few locals on the beach, we had dinner in the taverna that owns the mooring bouys we are all using for the night. The deal is you get an easy safe mooring in exchange for your custom. It doesn’t look much

But the food was really good.

After a noisy night in Lipso today was a free sailing day. Basically the flotilla breaks up for a day and we head off wherever we want to go. We are as far north as we are going so now the rest of the week is easier sailing downwind back to our start point. We stopped for a swin in a tiny bay, similar to a few others, it has a few moorings bouys, a beach and one Taverna. The water really is this blue. Another boat nearby radioed they had seen dolphins but we could not spot them.

We chose a place for the night with a good write up in the pilot book called Pandeli, back on Leros Island, but we are going down the east side having gone up the west side yesterday. It is a tiny fishing town.

Behind it you can see the castle above Alinda, which is actually the next bay North. Alinda was the focus of the battle of Leros during the second world war. The harbour was chock full of local fishing boats so we anchored in the bay. The pilot guide mentions this as a quiet place, but word has clearly got out. There must be 25 yachts in here and it took us some time to find a safe anchorage. Below we can be seen here looking rather scruffy with all our swimming gear out to dry, but the sky is rather less scruffy.

We got the dinghy out and headed for a Taverna on the beach. The first night we were kept awake by parties and fireworks. The next night there was a wedding party driving around blowing car horns… then in Lakki we had endless mopeds hurtling  up and down the quay…. here we have just the slap of water as the boat swings on it’s anchor in a gentle breeze.

Time to stop blogging and enjoy the peace.

Firstly, here is the promised picture of Art Deco Lakki. Totally different to anywhere else around.

Today we sailed to Lipso. Much more the small town we are used to.

This Meltemi wind is interesting, the direction is constant but the strength varies day to day. This far North in th group of Islands there is not much land to get in the way, so we found ourselves sailing in wind building from20 knots up to 27 knots. You get an idea of how quick the boat goes from this video.

http://youtu.be/owciK_iU-mE

Loads of fun tying up in the harbour here. And the wind is whistling around us still. The problem is that it is a cross wind, which means that as you reverse into a spot on the quayside the boat goes sideways faster than it goes backwards. The other problem is that in such a small space we can get crosed anchor chains, as everything ends up a bit diagonal, if you put your anchor chain over someone else’s, and then lift your anchor to have a second try (pretty common) you risk lifting their anchor as well, casting them adrift. We went to swim on the beach and there was a bit of a commotion going on, someone’s yacht had was adrift and apparently it was somone else’s fault, and somebody was taking somone to get in in someone else’s yachts tender to get it back before something bad happened to somebody. Or something like that.

This town is notable for having the only 24 hour bakery that sells Ice Cream (presumably also 24 hours) I have ever come across. Ice cream seriously needed after all that fun.

For dinner we headed up into the town, which is a confused tangle of streets, via the harbour supermarket to get bread and bottled water for the morning.

A great days sailing up the west coast of Kalimnos.
We left early, and with no time pressure we had time to stop for a swim today at a place called Emborious. We approached it up a channel between Kalimnos itself  and some outer Islands. In theory the wind in this part of the world at this time of year is very predictable. It is called the Meltimi.

However, the wind is deflected by the hundreds of small islands and so every new headland is an adventure to know which way it will be blowing and how strong it will be.
Anyway here we are lying at anchor in Emborious where we had a great swim.

And finally to Lakki. Like most places around here it’s history is dominated by the events of the early part of the last century. As the largest natural port in Greece it was chosen as an Italian naval base when they occupied the place, and this entire town was built in art deco style in the 1930s. There are memorials here to lives lost on two ships sunk during the second world war. As we had so much fun sailing we didn’t get in until 7pm so I don’t have any pictures of the town.

In the marina with us are a right mixture of boats. Next door but one is a multi million pound ketch with 3 staff to keep it clean aand serve the owners drinks.

And 100m away a large superyacht called the Ledra has just turned up with a big party going on as far as I can see… it is a available for charter if you have some money to burn.

http://www.yachtcharterfleet.com/luxury-charter-yacht-23679/ledra.htm

First days sailing. About 20 mile North West to Kalimnos.

Great winds, up to 24 knots to push the boat along at about 7 knots close hauled. We had planned to stop at a bay on the way, but it was pretty choppy annd would have been tricky to get in, and anyway we were having too much fun so we sailed on.

These Islands have been part of Turkey and Italy in the 100 years but have always considered themselves Greek, They like to make the point clearly.

Anyway the wind died for a bit, then came back up for a final hours sailing. Although the wind is very reliable here, the islands effect it in a big way.

We sailed into Pothia which is the big town on the island.

And here we are all moored up on the town key. We are sailing with 6 other yachts and we are all eating together this evening in the  restaurant behind us.