Saturday 19 September 2015

Saturday 19 September 2015 – Patmos

We got up fairly early and managed to leave our anchorage before 9am.  The weather seems to be on the turn.  Although it is still hot and there is little wind, for the first time we have seen some clouds. 

But as I have said, there is little wind and what there is again is on the nose.  So it is another day of motoring.  The sea is glassy for most of the journey.  We have decided to go north to Patmos because it is supposed to be an interesting island and being north means we can travel with the prevailing winds back to Leros in 10 days time or so.

However, the weather forecast has something new in store for us.  It says that by Monday evening, the wind will strengthen and go around to the south east for two days!  This is going to cause us headaches because the majority of the harbours around here open to the south because the wind rarely comes from that direction.  That means it will be difficult to find a harbour that will give good protection in a southerly wind.  We are on our way to Skala in Patmos, which the pilot book says is “untenable in a south-easterly wind”, whatever that may mean.

But we carry on and arrive in Patmos at lunchtime.  There is plenty of room on the quay and we put our anchor down and reverse into a nice large space between two larger sailing boats.  We do not take up electricity (which we don’t need and which involves paying a deposit for an electronic key and having to wait for the harbour office to open when we want to leave to reclaim our deposit) and the water situation is a disappointment.  There appear to be taps on the electricity towers, but there is no water.  If we want water we have to call up a water tanker.  We don’t want to do that just to wash the boat, even though it really needs that.  So we just pay the 6 Euro mooring fee and call it a day.

To cool off we shower on board and then have a walk around the town.  The bit where we are moored isn’t very interesting, but if you walk just a few hundred yards up to the town it is very sweet.  We manage to do some food shopping so that we have plenty of provisions on board in case we have to hole up in some remote anchorage after Monday.

We have been scouring the pilot book to find a place which will be safe in this south-easterly wind.  It is also forecast to rain on Monday and Tuesday overnight!  Richard thinks he has found somewhere, but it is small and we hope we will be able to find a berth.  But we will worry about that on Monday. After all, the weather forecast could change.

In the meantime we are sussing out how to get to the Chora to see the sights.  This is the island where St John had his revelations and wrote the book of Revelations.  So there are a lot of churches to go to and the cave where St John heard from God about the Apocalypse.  OK, so what’s a nice Jewish girl like me fussing about some Christian saint.  Well, it’s all part of the culture I guess.

This evening we had dinner in town and walked around finding the bus station where we will catch the bus to the Chora. 


The two sailing boats either side of us left this afternoon and now we are flanked by two giant stink boats.  There is also a swell and the boat is rocking a bit.  But I have no doubt we will sleep well.

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