We are hoping to head for Seriphos today. But first we are going to walk up and visit the port police and see what they have for a weather forecast. We have decided against Santorini, we may head for Paros in a couple of days after visiting Siphnos and may take the ferry down to Santorini and rent a room for a night there. Otherwise, it will be a reason to return in the future. From there we will probably come back and head for Mykonos before turning back northwards.
The Port Police said it would be a Beaufort force 5 today, perhaps picking up to 6 in the late afternoon. Beaufort 6 is the cutoff for sailing under the contract…not that we’d want to at that point. It is so strange to use the Beaufort scale here, it seems so less precise than what we are used to. But we are discovering that the weather is so variable, even from minute to minute, that it is probably the best all around manner of describing the potential conditions.
We’ve decided that we can handle it and so we are off to Seriphos as of 1100 this morning. The seas are a bit rough, but after the other day, it seems pleasant. We now know what we, and the boat, can handle. She may be called the Pink Elephant, but she is a lady, she is no floundering pachyderm.
Again, we note that the GPS bears little resemblance to our actual location so we use it as a rough guideline, the positioning appears to be somewhat consistently off track and so we adjust and use our given senses to help interpret everything.
Just out of the harbour we note that our electronics have gone dead, perfect timing of course. Kirk tears the boat apart following wires and we eventually follows the problem to the helm electronics. Kirk opens it all up, and wonder of wonders, a little duct tape comes to the rescue (we brought it along of course…never leave home without the stuff). Fixed and good as new again. We round the corner of Kythnos and hit some heavy seas. Finally we come to our senses and realize that we are so busy thinking like power boaters that if we would just raise the sails and cut the motor, it would actually be a smoother ride. It works like a charm. We get a good sail in for awhile until we round the corner of Seriphos when the wind dies on us. We are now in the company of a 51 foot Ocean Star who has also lost wind. We both lower the sails and begin to motor. The wind picks up in a new direction and we are motoring into a 12 m/s headwind that whipped the seas up quite nicely. We are both coming close to burying the bows and we beat our way around the coast for the next hour or two. Finally we see the turn into Ormos Livadhi and take the seas on the beam until we enter the harbour.
It’s a large harbour and the quay is quite full. It is now just after 1600 hrs and we are concerned about finding space. The Ocean Star is circling and seemingly undecided about where to dock so we hang back until they make up their mind. We decide on the outermost stern tie between a Bavaria 44 and a heritage British trawler. The owners of the trawler point at the spot and untie a line to make it easier for us. At last, friendly people, helpful people! They are flying a Norwegian flag and once we dock, we discover that they are retired and on a two and a half year voyage. Their vessel is the Laelia and it was built in 1958, with Canadian wood, they pointed this out to us because they saw our Canadian flag. An absolutely lovely couple.
We thought the place was full, but at least a half a dozen more boats showed up and managed to squeeze in. We would love to know how many nationalities are represented here. Canadian (us, the token Canadians in the Islands), Norwegian, British, Israeli, Dutch, American, German, Greek, French, Hungarian…and a whole host of other flags that we can’t identify.
Seriphos is gorgeous, thanx for the suggestion Glenn, you were right!. The Hora (Main town) of Seriphos sits high on the hill above us and the hills are in and out of the clouds. This island apparently sports a greater amount of water than many of the others, despite seeming dry and barren. The humidity is much higher than we have felt in days and as we look at the deck on the boat, it appears as if we have just been through a rain shower because so much water has settled out of the air onto the boat.
We found a single internet computer in town and are hoping that this link will work. Internet is scarce in the islands, the updates are much more infrequent than even we thought they would be, such is the life in the Islands!
Well that failed utterly. The young woman was positively panic stricken that I wanted to unplug her internet. We reassured her that it wouldn’t destroy anything and gave it a shot. Didn’t work, not sure why. So far we have only managed to get one out of three internet connections to function. This is not as simple as I thought it would be….but is anything ever really?
We will see what tomorrow brings.
