To Corinthos and Beyond

Getting diesel from the "Diesel Guy" on Poros

Our favourite coffee / breaky place on Poros

46 Flavours of Gelato on Poros!

We got up fairly late after our dinner out with Chelsea and then headed to shore for water and diesel fuel. We lit out for Korfos and, without much help from the wind, we made it to Korfos back anchored in close to the same spot we were in the week before. We sent the kids off to shore and then cleaned up the boat a bit, did some swimming and SUP’ing.

Anchorage at Korfos

We decided to eat dinner onboard. After nearly a month on the same gas bottle we needed to switch – and the second bottle was empty – yikes. A half cooked dinner, a couple of hungry kids and no gas. Ross and I  grabbed the gas cylinders and headed to town and, luck have it, we found 2 gas bottles and got back to the boat and finished dinner.

Goodbye Aegean Sea

The next morning Marina and I woke up at 6:30 and picked up anchor to head to the Corinth Canal. We arrived at the Canal at 09:30 and after a 5 minute stop where Marina dropped me off to pay my 267€, picked me up again and we were off through the canal.

 

 



Hello Gulf of Corinth

Our transit through the canal was solo with lots of pictures taken. We managed to be on the other side at around 10:15 so we put the hammer down and started powering north-east. We had two destinations in mind, either near Itea (50 miles) or the island of Trizonia (70 miles). We were making good way and also encountered several large pods of dolphins that stayed with us for a little while.

So excited to see dolphins!

Going under the Aktion Bridge

At around 4pm we decided to press on the other 20 miles so we continued on to Trizonia. There wasn’t a breath of wind until about 5 miles out of Trizonia, when we got 20 knots right on the nose. We just continued to power and we anchored beside a 45 foot catamaran instead of trying to go into the docks. We had powered for 10 hours straight … got to love that Yanmar.

Within an hour 4 other boats came in and anchored with us. There were a number of kids onboard the nearby boats and we tried to engage them on the SUP to no avail. We ate dinner onboard again. After dark we met some boys swimming back to the Catamaran from town with a watertight flashlight.

Trizonia Anchorage

We had a chat and invited them onboard for a glass of wine. We met three very nice young men, Theo, Elie (pronounced Eli) and Jean Baptise (JB), two brothers and a cousin from France. The oldest Theo has just graduated high-school. It turned out that both of us were heading to Messalogia the next day. We stayed up talking until 01:00 am about the sailing experiences we have had. They too take a month every summer and head out as a family. There just are not very many of us that do this so it is nice to meet up with fellow yacht-owning cruisers with kids roughly the same age as ours.

 

Marina and I got up a bit groggy the next morning after serving about 3 liters of wine to the crew and then we lifted anchor and headed to Messalongia at around 07:15. The good news about doing a 70 mile day from Korfos to Trizonia is that you get a 30 miler the next day. We were anchored at around noon, grabbed a quick lunch and walked to the beach area – about 2 miles down a road that also serves as a dike for the town.



The "Beach Club" in Messalongia

Ross and I did a small amount of jogging – about 5 minutes in the noon-day 38 degree heat, and then continued to walk to the Beach Resort at the entrance of Messalongia. As soon as we got there we saw our friends in their Catamaran “Eagle” arriving. I yelled to Theo – and got a friendly wave back. We were hoping that they would arrive at Messalongia so the kids could hang out again.

 



Dinner with our new friends from the catamaran Eagle

After we walked back from the beach, the kids and Marina went back to the boat and went to hang out with the kids on the Cat. Marina met Frederick and Delphine – and their two younger daughters Josephine and Adelade 13 and 8 respectively. I continued on a hunt for a cheap portable air conditioner and came up dry. I got back to the shore and Marina picked me up – then joined the kids pulling the SUP around behind Bonnie Blue. We decided to make plans for dinner that night and we went out as a crew – all eleven of us looking for a restaurant in Meganisi. You’d think it would be easy but, as it turns out, it was a Greek holiday and most of the people that work in Meganisi are from the mountains and they go home for the holiday – so the town was e-m-p-t-y. Anyway, Frederick managed to find a restaurant – it had a Coq on the top of it – and we had a great meal of appetizers and Greek food. We had a laugh at the menu that said "Rooster in Wine" which we gathered would be Coq au Vin.

 

We made it back as a group to the boat at 01:00am and then Jessie, Chelsea and the three boys Theo, Elie,, and JB went out to a local club … for an hour. At 05:00 Marina and I were considering going on a search party … just as a gaggle of tweens, teens, and a twenty-something showed up all happy and giggly from staying out at the club until it closed. Jess was particularly happy having closed her first nightclub down.

Our friends leaving on Eagle

The next morning Frederick came to see my new alternator setup as the Eagle has basically the same engine as Tara’s except that it isn’t turbocharged. The night before we had been discussing the most important aspect of cruising sailing – keeping the batteries charged. He like Marcel, has had some struggles with maintaining the charge of his batteries. I believe we have solved that problem with the big alternator and the regulator timed to fill the large battery bank we have on Tara and want to help others find the way as well.

After a coffee, we said our goodbyes – they’re heading first to Kefalonia, then Sicily the following day. We are heading into the Ionian – on our way to Corfu to pickup our friends Chris Read and the Price family.

 

The wind was up so we sailed downwind in 20 knots of breeze until we turned the corner and headed North. We had two choices, Vathy on Ithaka or Tranquil Bay on Lefkas.


Lighting candles for passed loved ones on Atakos,
now an annual tradition.

We had made some good time under sail, then we powered for a while, so we decided to make lunch around 4pm at Atokos where we lit a candle at the tiny church for our lost loved ones, then carried onto Tranquil Bay, near Nydri. Marina and I left the kids onboard and went to town returning with some more food and some plans for the next day.

One Last dinner out at Poros

Chelsea treated us to a great dinner at the Poseidon Restaurant in Poros. It’s run by a local guy that has a fish boat as well as the restaurant. Very well run place, very friendly staff with excellent food at good prices. How can you go wrong?

I had a lamb Kleftico – which is a baked lamb shank that is so tender that it falls off the bone. Jess had the Special Chicken Souvlaki, Chelsea tried a lamb/beef mince souvlaki, Ross had (surprise surprise) Spaghetti Bolognese, and then we had the classic Greek Salad, cheese balls, saganaki cheese, a liter of rose, a couple of Mythos and watermelon to top it off.

 After the kids departed for the Gelato store, Marina and I snacked on the watermelon and remaining bits of food on everyone’s plate. We even managed to leave a little left over to bring home and have for lunch. What a great evening! Thanks Chelsea


The quay at Poros...a favourite.

 

Out of Poros and the Arrival of Joost

Marcel had to go to Athens to drop of Stan and the boys and to pick up his son Joost. We first met Joost at Kremik (“My name is Joost – like toast but with a Yo”) and the kids have been great ever since. We have managed to connect with Joost each of the last 4 summers for a little while. The boys seem to start up where they left off, computer gaming, playing in the water, goofing around. Joost is also nice to Jessie which is a good thing as well. He has a kind heart.

Ross, Jess and Joost on the SUP

 

And sometimes...just too much technology!

And then Chelsea arrived. It was a somewhat close connection after her flight arrival in Athens to get to Piraeus (the ferry port) to catch the last ferry to Poros where we waited for her. She was taking the same route as Marina and Jess...taking a little longer to get to us with the 1 hour ferry ride to Poros but saving a lousy trip to Athens with Tara which is 30 miles straight upwind. We had agreed if she missed the ferry she would find an internet café and let us know. We didn't hear anything so we waited at the ferry dock on Poros.


Jess waiting for Chelsea



In came the 'Flying Cat 6" and off came the passengers...and off they came...and more came off...and then none. About 15 seconds later came Chelsea running off, she didn't realize this was the Poros stop! After a good laugh and lots of hugs we settled into dinner at the tavern right across from the ferry dock, all happy to be here!

She arrived safe and sound!

After another day in Poros where Marcel got his fridge repaired by the same guy that fixed ours, we headed off to Kithnos for a few days. Kithnos is 43 miles from Poros and we ended up powering for a couple, then we set the “whomper” … our mast-head spinnaker and sailed for an hour before we gave up and powered until we were about 10 miles away. Marcel started a half hour before us and continued to power while we were sailing in a dying wind – slowly extending his lead to about 2 miles. At around 10 miles off of Kithnos the wind started picking up so we hoisted our sails (technically we unrolled them) and started sailing. The wind shifted unfavourably at first, for a time we were pointing at Serifos, but as we got closer the Kithnos the wind lifted 70 degrees right into the bay we were aiming at.  We were retracing some steps that we had made a couple years ago on our year away. We had stayed in this bay that we call Hot-tub bay for three nights waiting out the Meltemi.

Matt and Ross taking a break on the bow

We made it into Hot-tub bay around 17:00, anchored and then hit the beach. There is an awesome sand beach there with a Kafe on the point that serves excellent food. We planned on staying at least two nights so we put our anchor in good and solid, let out half a mile of chain and started to have fun.

 

Tara at anchor on Kythnos

Ross and Joost goofing around.

Tomskii had to move on the next morning to pickup more passengers in Santorini. They decided to press on to Naxos – another 55 miles then take the ferry from there to Thira (Santorini) rather than risk the boat in a dodgy anchorage.

The Black Boat Size Competition at Kythnos...the small
one came in first, then the next size up, then the biggest one.
Then the power boat...do they know each other??

After dark Marcel and Lena rowed over and said their goodbyes over a couple of beers and some wine. We talked about a 7am coffee on Tomskii. I got up at 5:30 and they were there – I was startled by Chelsea being awake on deck along with Jess sleeping. It was too early so I went back to bed and got up at 07:00 but unfortunately Tomskii and crew had left – however (Marina’s favourite part of the story) not before I got in the dinghy and nearly stepped on someone else’s boat and got their dog barking at me. The boat that took their place had the same colour bimini, dodger and sails but it turned out to be a Beneteau 50 – just like ours – and I remember thinking on my way over, “I don’t remember Tomskii looking as much like Tara as it does this morning … hmmm” and as I got within 20 feet of the boat that had two people enjoying a coffee in the cockpit, I waved and slowly headed back to Tara.

Sunset on Kythnos

Later that morning Marina was SUPping and the kids took after her in the dinghy. Ross tried to jump onto the SUP from the moving dinghy to knock his mom into the water and in the process, got tomahawked in the head by the SUP paddle. They came back to the boat a few minutes later and Ross had blood streaming down his face. It took some doing but we got it staunched and he’s been cooped up with a headache and unable to swim until it scabs over a bit. We might take him in for stiches back at Poros.

NOT HAPPY!

Needless to say the departure of our friends and Ross having a gash in his head put a bit of a damper on staying in Kithnos. We thought after two nights we might spend a 3^rd however Windfinder put the fear of the 35knot Meltemi in us and we decided to bug out the next morning.

Playing on the beach at Kythnos

Marina and I awoke and we prepared the boat getting ready for the open ocean swells. The wind was in the high-teens/low 20’s and as we exited Hot-tub Bay the waves were a couple of meters high. We started sailing immediately and put our nose towards Poros – some 43 miles away at 270 degrees.

 

Our return sail to Poros turned into a very enjoyable 45 mile down-hill ride with the jib, main, then spinnaker, then back to the jib. We sailed all but a half mile, with speeds in the 7’s and 8’s for most of it. We wind softened after passing the island of Georgios so we hoisted the spinnaker and covered another 20 miles or so until the wind picked up to 12knots true – and we were doing as high as 9.6knots boatspeed. Our safety zone is if we are over 8 knots of boatspeed for 15 minutes we shorten sail, so we switched back to white sails and only lost a knot of boatspeed. It was a bit less exciting but alas, it was much more comfortable.

Jess found a friend

 

Up Close and Personal

Most cruising sailors don’t get close to another boat except at the dock – and as we learned in Poros this can be quite close – as in bash you around if you aren’t there fending off. We decided to go to Aigina – Stan says that it is home to the world’s best pistachio nuts and he needed a few kilos of them.

The Skipper

We tried to anchor in a small bay but it was just too crowded. We then powered behind Tomskii and since Tara is faster I closed the distance between the boats to about 25 centimeters. You could see the eyes of the crew of Tomskii get a little wide while I kept closing up closer and closer.

 

We then decided to stop and have a swim. The wind was blowing maybe 5 knots and so I pulled out part of the jib and sailed ‘racing’ close to Tomskii, cutting within a foot or two of their transom as we crossed or heading up past their bow a foot or two away.

Nose to tail....

My guess is that racing boats of 50 feet don’t get as close as we do in Martin 242’s, but it is fun every once in a while to give it a try.

Two Engineers and an IT guy tackle an Intermittent Windlass

Stan and Marcel are oilmen – engineers first for Shell, now line executives. Stan is off for a four year assignment in Singapore where he oversees 15Billion of turnover. Marcel is in between assignments having finished running the oil company in New Zealand he’s eyeing an opportunity in Ethiopia. Me, I’m just an IT guy from Vancouver.

A boat in the Med without a windlass can’t really go anywhere. Unlike my brother-in-law Mike who would prefer to hand haul the anchor up and eschews such comforts as a windlass, a 50 foot boat without an operating windlass is nearly impossible to retrieve the anchor.



Marcel supervising, Matt and Stan working on the windlass.

We tied off the anchor so it wouldn’t slip and proceeded to do problem determination. First we checked the switch, all OK. When the switch was thrown we could hear the solenoid clicking off. The circuit breaker was OK. We pulled the cover off the winch to check the motor and the connections were clean and all good.  The electrical connections on the winch have two positive and one negative. One positive connection turns the winch one way, the other causes the electric motor to go the opposite way.

When we tested it both positive connections showed voltage in both up and down directions. This is usually caused by worn brushes. Off came the windlass, off came the motor, and out came the brushes. We cleaned them (sanded them flat again) and then we reinstalled the windlass motor – problem solved. We also cleaned and greased all the moving parts including the clutch and the manual retrieval mechanism. Stan delighted in testing it – man was it smooth and powerful.
 

I went back to Tara and tore my winch down later that same day. I hadn’t serviced it yet this year and so I disassembled it and greased all the connections. I reckoned that if we did it for Marcel, Tara’s winch might get jealous and act up too.

The only thing left to do is purchase a few of these brushes and then install them on Tara to ensure the same intermittent windlass doesn’t happen to us.

Sunset on Poros

 

Friends Depart, Friends Arrive

After our tearful goodbye with the Chernoffs we got a message from my buddy Marcel that they were coming through the Corinth Canal and were headed to Athens to pick up some friends. We waited for them in Poros (a recurring theme you will find over the next couple of weeks) and they came in from Athens arriving in the harbour right around dinner time from Athens. Marcel, Lena and Lena’s son Anton were aboard plus a university chum of Marcel’s named Stan and his 14 year old son Max and Max’s friend Dirk (pronounced Dear-ick). Jess and Ross were keen to meet the boys, but were disappointed in the end because they kept mostly to themselves – plus they made the same mistake Ross has in the past thinking that Jess was 18 years old. 

Dirk, Max, Jess and Ross

Went for a hike on Dhokos - family "farm" in the background.

Goats on the trail

 

Matt at the top of Dhokos

Tara at anchor at Dhokos, wayyyy down there!

 

 



Someone's "Front Door" on Hydra



We walked the 25 minute walk from Mandraki Haroubour to
the town of Hydra for sups...Dirk, Max and Anton decided to
stay until 5:30 am and check out the night clubs
...Dirk and Max (Jessie's age) paid dearly the next day.

 

Anyway, we retraced many of our steps with the Lensveldts and went back to Dhokos and Hydra. Unfortunately when we went back to Mandraki we tied two long lines ashore but on the opposite side of the bay than when we were with the Chernoffs. Unlike the previous time, where the boat was snug as a bug in a rug, this time it was quite tenuous.



Tara is the left white boat...Tomskii the one on the right.
 Both in trouble the next morning!

We woke up several times during the night and by 07:00 we were only a few meters from shore with a wind blowing us more or less onto the rocks. We ended up dropping the stern lines completely and booting the engine while pulling in the anchor. We reset the anchor in the middle of the bay (25 meters deep) and then sent Marina and Ross to retrieve the lines. I suffered a bit of a mental block when I had Ross jump off the back of the boat earlier to unhook a line from around a rock. I was paranoid about getting it caught in the prop. He argued but in the end he jumped in and cleared it so we could put it in the dinghy. Thanks Ross.

Marcel had a tougher time of it. His anchor windlass was intermittent and was decided this was a good time to go on the blink. He had 40 meters of chain out plus his secondary anchor and he was nearly pinned against a salt-water swimming pool (plastic floats around arranged in a square of ocean is what passes for a pool on Hydra) that had a big chain anchor. To keep from swinging he was tied to the shore as well. I went over to help armed with my volt meter … thinking we should fix the windlass before pulling up the anchor, but first things first, we needed to get him out of danger. I managed to teach him something about his windlass in that he didn’t know how to crank it up manually. I started pulling in the anchor chain 1 link at a time and we cinched up the second anchor at the same time. Once we had the boat half way past the swimming pool’s anchor chain Marcel dropped the stern line and gunned the engine. We squirted out like a watermelon seed shot between your thumb and index finger. At that moment in time we also found that the windlass started working again – so we pulled up the main anchor. I then rigged the spare anchor rope around the windlass but alas, it had decided to quit again.

Jess on the bow...

We decided it was time to shop, power and water up so back to Poros. We also wanted to check out and fix Marcel’s anchor windlass. We sailed back to Poros on a beautiful beat to windward, legging out at 6 to 7 knots and basically enjoyed the ride back towards civilization.

Ross at the helm

Matt (and Marina) enjoying a beachside bevy in Russian Bay,
just outside Poros town.