So after dinner we had a stroll around town. They are properly milking the Mamma Mia! connection here.

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