Wednesday 23 September 2015

Wednesday 23 September 2015 – Samos

There was no rain last night.  This morning the sun is shining and the winds seem light.  Our next door neighbour, an English couple, said their weather forecast was for more southerly winds with a rather big sea of up to a metre.  But Richard does not see that on his forecast.  We have been here three days and pretty much exhausted the place.  So we decide to move on.

It is agreed that the winds will continue to be southerly and there might be the odd shower of rain.  So we need to find somewhere sheltered from the south, again not easy to do as the prevailing wind is from the north and most harbours face south because of that.  But R does identify an anchorage on a very small island called Agathonisi.  So we will head towards that.  It is about 20 miles away, which isn’t too bad.

We finally fill up on water.  It cost us 1 euro!  The cost of mooring here is 6 euros a night and the electricity is also 6 euros.  We were also charged 4 euros for the help we received coming into the harbour.  All in all it is ridiculously cheap.  But it doesn’t pay to help arriving boats with their lines, which yachties do everywhere else.  Someone did this yesterday and the locals complained to the police that he was taking their living away from them and the last we saw was the poor man being driven away by the police – we don’t know if he spent a night in the cells for his act of kindness.

I buy a bit more food to keep us going for another two days as we are planning on anchoring in a fairly remote place.  We get away after 10:30, but it doesn’t matter.  We have no trouble taking up the anchor other than the fact that when it comes up it is so full of muddy sand and weed that I have to play with it dragging in the water for a least 5 minutes to clean it off.  Anyway we were well dug in!

The day progresses better than expected.  The wind is from the south or southwest at force 2 to 3 and we can put up the sails, but the winds are so light that we spend most of the time motor sailing.  We do sail for about an hour over lunch with the genoa poled out, but when we are down to doing less than 3 knots, we give up and put the engine back on.  As we approach our destination, we see what look like some white horses which normally only appear when the wind gets up to force 4 and Richard wonders if there are dolphins and looks again and there are 6 to 8 dolphins jumping across the bay.  It is rather a disappointment not to have them come closer, but they are always lovely to see.

We get to Agathonisi at about 3pm, but we are unimpressed with this alleged anchorage.  Most of it is too deep to anchor in and does not seem very protected from the wind.  When we find a couple of places where it is sheltered and not too deep, they do not look like there is sand on the bottom.  The whole area is very rocky and we are worried about the holding.  Finally it is not very attractive.  There is no one here, other than a rather shabby moored fishing boat.  On the land there are a couple of dilapidated structures and a digger!  There is evidence of immigrants having been here in the form of a few life jackets strewn on the rocky shores.  So we decide we do not want to stay here and continue on to Samos (where Pythagoras lived).

We will get to Samos fairly late (nearly 6pm is anticipated) so we decide to make for the marina.  It will be dull, but comfortable, and closest.  On the way the weather starts to close in.  There have been cumulous clouds around all afternoon, but as we approach Samos, it is clear they have turned into storm clouds.  We can see several places on the island where it is raining quite hard.  So we are prepared to get wet.  I get so cold at one point with there being no sun and a nice force 4 that I put on my waterproof jacket!  We are fairly lucky with the rain.  We get a very light fall from one cloud, but the sun soon comes out and there is the most spectacular rainbow.  It is a full arc right across the sea and the colours are very bright.  We have great fun watching it for some time.  A little later a second rainbow appears above the first one.  We have never seen this before and do not understand how it could happen.

By the time we get to Samos, the rain and the rainbows have gone and the sun is shining.  We are shown into a berth, where we get in very well.  After us three motorboats (all crewed by Turks) make a real mess of coming in.  So for a change we feel somewhat superior!


We have a drink in the marina café and then dinner on board.  We are not sure what we should do tomorrow.  The local village is a bit of a walk away.  We could walk there, or take the boat and moor in the harbour.  But our original plan was to go around to the north of the island to the main town, Vathi.  We shall think about it then.

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