Chania to Gramvousa – is today a religious holiday?

At Remezzo, our favourite breakfast place before departure. 

We were off like a herd of turtles out of Chania, finally leaving the dock around 11:00 and hoping to get to Nisos Elafanisos on the south coast of the Peloponnese. The day started early enough with us going to breakfast around 08:00. The girls were going to do some marketing (we were out of Rum!!!) and I needed to get some gasoline for the dinghy motor and to have my paperwork stamped at Port Police with my new crew-list. Our breakfast place was Remezzo and Marina particularly liked the waiter Kostas -- 25 year old Greek guy who was quite attentive -- though I think was in-fact more interested in Jess and Chloe truth be told.

After a great breakfast I set off looking for a gas station -- made much easier by the maps on my iPad ... that at that moment decided to go brain-dead so I rebooted it only to find it ask me for the SIM Pin ... argh -- I put the Pins for all the phones in my phone, which is back on the boat. So, undeterred, I went "old school" and picked a busy street and started walking until I found a Shell station about a km down the road. I then went back to Port Police and had a nice chat with the officer. She remembered our conversation about my Dad working for Canadair and helping build the water bombers that were fighting fires in Greece. I finished my paperwork and walked back to Tara. The girls were arriving back from groceries at the exact same time. How serendipitous. We asked the mega-yacht next door to let out their lines so we could back up and off we went.

We're planning to make it to Elafanisos, a magic place with sandy beaches and a number of good anchorages. We’re hoping the girls like the beaches and that we can spend a day or two just swimming and hanging out.  It is really nice here in the Peloponnese. The only downside is that the distances are quite large – like 70-100 miles which means a long day’s traveling between locations. We are doing the really big one today (~80 miles). We have two more 50 milers and then we’re back to the Northern Ionian and the 10 anchorages within 20 miles routine.

We diverted to Gramvousa at the tip of AK Spathi – the northern tip of Crete and headed to Gramvousa. It was a pretty easy decision really. Jess hit it when she said “I haven’t even been swimming yet” and our choices were 7 more hours or 1.5 hours to a nice anchorage.

We pulled into Gramvousa just as a tripper boat was coming in and he honked at us when we went right, then honked when we went left. I threw my hands up in a WTF gesture, did a button-hook and moved 200 meters to another small bay. He disgorged his 100 or so passengers and we had lunch and a swim. The water here is crystal clear, we're anchored in 6 meter deep water and you can see your anchor clear as a bell through the water from the surface.

Ninety minutes later the day-trippers were gone and we hopped in the dinghy and went to shore. There is a big Venetian fort at the top of the island that is about 200 meters high so we started on the switchback trail, climbed it and took in the view.

The Greek version of the Grouse Grind

Heading towards the trail up to the fort. 

The kids insisted on getting very close to the edge and successfully got me to freak out a couple of times. Ross in particular has a habit of getting very close to you and grabbing you, “saved your life” Hahahaha. Funny. I had visions of Jessie flinching, pulling away from him and tumbling 200 meters down to the water.

Ross, Chloe and Jessie listening for the splash of
the rock they just threw over. 

Ross!  Get away from the Edge!

After a few photo ops and some ooh-ing and aah-ing we started down the path back to the boat. Another cruising yacht decided to enter the bay and were in the process of anchoring as this very large ferry came barreling into the bay and started honking like mad at them. He ended up coming within about 30 feet of this 50 foot sailboat with a 300 foot ferry. The ferry was full of passengers on some sort of pilgrimage. He dropped an anchor, pulled up to shore, dropped his landing ramp and out they went, some climbing to the top, others to the beach to light fires. There were goats and rabbits on the island, I wonder whether any of them ended up being rotisseried?

We decided to move back to our original bay and watch them leave. It took them until around 00:30 to get everyone back to the boat. It took three sets of ‘Whistle blows” until the last stragglers arrived. At around 11:30 I took a light up on the deck and warned off a couple of guys in a small boat that seemed to be driving right at us at speed from the other direction. I would guess that seeing our single mast-head light was difficult when there was a background of a big ferry with all of its lights on. 

Our resident night-owl Ross stayed up and made sure the ferry didn’t run us down, which since I am writing this, it didn’t.

The Big Ferry that nearly ran over the poor guy in the charter boat in the foreground
and Tara in the background about to disgorge about 1,000 passengers ... YIKES