Paros to Amorgos to Leros

Since we decided to pass on Santorini we could go East instead of South then East. We decided we would go to Amorgos, then Levitha on our way out of the Cyclades into the Dodacanese islands. We set off in nice strong winds for Amorgos and sailed the whole way. The next couple of passages are for covering ground. We’ve got a 50 mile day followed by a 40 mile day followed by two 35 mile days. Again we are mindful of weather as we know that on Tuesday the wind is supposed to howl at Force 7-8 or around 30-35 knots so we need some good shelter by then. We had our rough plan to ride out the bad weather in either Leros or Kos. We also discovered that there is a Gullet regatta in Bodrum Turkey the 23-30^th of October. Gullets are 70-150 foot traditional wood boats that take passengers à think of them as small cruise ships with 3 or 4 double berths that stop in most ports. Some take 50 passengers to islands, others only a few guests on week long cruises.

They actually look like a really good way to see the countryside from a yacht’s perspective without any of the hassle of dealing with your own boat or having to cook, clean, or find liquor stores as– they always seem to have case after case of booze on board.

 With our itinerary set we sailed into the south end of Amorgos and a very quiet harbour that had a number of fishing boats in it. We anchored out,  had dinner, played some cards and went to bed. No internet coverage – no emails, no Skype – we were vibrating …. What can we do?  

We got up early the next morning and hauled up the anchor and went to leave and were warned off of a fishing net – good thing to not run over that’s for sure. The wind was a beam reach, 20 knots with medium sized waves and we set off the 40 miles to Levitha – a small island between the Dodacanese and the Cyclades.

We were scorching along at about 8.5 knots for 4.5 hours and boom we were there by 1:30 in the afternoon. There are only two long term residents on the island and when we went in it looked pretty quiet. Through some miscommunication between Marina and I, I gybed the jib and the jib sheet (rope that you pull it in with) got caught under the dinghy. Marina went to free it and when it came loose it hit her in the mouth. She got a pretty big fat lip out of it. At the back of the boat I was unaware anything happened until she went downstairs and Jessie shot me “the look”. I had no idea there was something wrong but “the look” was a dead giveaway that something had happened – and Jessie thought it was my fault. A couple hours of icing and it was half the size, by the next day it was fine.

The conditions for sailing were perfect, the anchorage looked kind of boring, so we decided to press on to the island of Leros and the marina there. We thought we might as well take advantage of the great sailing conditions and that there was lots of daylight left. We arrived at Leros marina at around 5pm after sailing some 65 miles. It was the first marina we have been in with laid moorings since Athens so it was a quiet night – except for the souped-up scooters that ran up and down the main-drag all night. We ate on board and thought we’d do some shopping in the morning. Remember the Sunday everything in Greece is closed thing à it really applies to Leros – not even the bakery was open. We bugged out at noon after using power and internet for a day, then proceeded through a narrow gap to the island of Kos.