BLOG 6: Leros to Northern Coast of Greece – 19 Sep to 6 Oct 2018

We are now back in Greece, having left our boat, Island Drifter (ID), in LEROS in mid-July, following our circuit of the Sporades islands between April and July this year (2018 Blogs 1–5).

 

ID under canvas in boatyard being checked out in our absence by friend Maria

Indeed, we’ve been back since 19 September when we arrived at Leros airport, adjacent to our boatyard, in a small Olympic Airlines turbo-prop aircraft.  We are now in Alexandroupolis in the northeast corner of the Greek mainland.

 

View of the Aegean from our Olympic Airlines turbo-prop aircraft on the way to LEROS

 Before leaving LEROS back in July, we gave the boatyard a number of jobs to do on ID in our absence.  On our return, they had indeed done them (by no means guaranteed in Greece!).  Regrettably, yet again, glass fibre damage on the hull of ID, caused by a combination of bad weather and rough concrete quays featured at the top of their list of projects.

 

Typical fendering necessary to protect against the coarse pebbled walls of most ports – when moored alongside

We’d spent the summer in the UK based in our beach chalet in Calshot, where and from where we met up with family and friends.  Highlights included Helen’s 70th birthday party on the beach and our granddaughter Emmy staying with us twice on her own.

 

Helen’s 70th party on the beach

 

Emmy enjoying a wet summer’s day walk among the beach huts wearing Granny’s waterproof jacket!

LEROS

For the four days we lived in the boat on the hard, we concentrated on recommissioning ID – fortunately not, however, under the same pressure as we were this time last year when Marjorie Mullins joined us.   Then we recommissioned in two days so as not to eat into Marjorie’s holiday.  

The only new problem (and potential disaster!) we encountered on our return was when we discovered to our horror that the thermostat on the fridge was not working!  Fortunately we carried a spare thermostat and the island’s refrigeration engineer appeared quickly, confirmed our diagnosis, wired up our new thermostat and checked out the system as a whole.

Our plan this autumn is to explore the northern coast of the Greek mainland north of the Sporades.  Initially, however, we had to cope as our first priority with some seriously bad weather.  

 

Chart of Aegean Sea and Northern Greece

Once launched, we quickly motored the ten miles south to Agmar Marine’s quayside marina at Lakki, where we bent on the sails (too risky to have done so when on ‘stilts’ in the boatyard), completed recommissioning and for a couple of days enjoyed an element of relaxation before the arrival of the atrocious weather that was forecast.

 

Enjoying an outstanding traditional homemade moussaka at Panayotis and Marietta’s café-cum-deli in Lakki

Fortunately the northern quay of Agmar Marine’s marina at Lakki provides excellent protection from northerly gales – our reason for being there.  When the first gale came we sat it out in relatively little discomfort, moored Mediterranean style facing north, bows-to off the quay with two of the marina’s strong lazy lines at our stern.  

 

Lakki marina (to the left behind the ferry dock) looking north (photographed from a drone courtesy of Markos Spanos)

The marina is, however, untenable in a strong southerly gale. The reason, as soon as the northern gale had abated, for sailing rapidly back north to Partheni and anchored in a small well-protected bay adjacent to Agmar Marine’s boatyard.   There we put out 70m of chain to reduce the pull on our Rocna spade anchor and ensured that it dug in well and held in the thick mud of this bolthole.   

 

View of Matronas Bay, Partheni –  
courtesy of Sten and Rita on SY Shantaram

The source of our by-now serious concern was that unusually a Medicane (the Med equivalent of a hurricane) had formed south of the Peloponnese with winds of up to 70 mph at its centre.

After trashing MALTA, it turned east and passed back through the Peloponnese and part of the Greek mainland.  It was then forecast to blast its way northeast up the Aegean Sea.  Up to 24 hours from its predicted time of arrival in our area, its centre was still forecast to be heading for US!  Fortunately, at the last moment it veered further north up the central Aegean and we ended up on its eastern edge, in our bolthole, with winds of only a maximum of 30 knots.  Equally importantly, there was no fetch where we were anchored.

 

Medicane Zorba’s path up the Aegean (www.windy.com)

 Mike once – successfully! – had to run from a hurricane in the Atlantic but this was different since, although smaller, a Medicane is less predictable and therefore more difficult to run from.  

Our friends Rolf and Roz, whose boat R&R has now been repaired having been struck by lightning in May, got caught in the heart of the Medicane while moored in the harbour of Astros in the Peloponnese.  A neighbouring sailor actually got caught by a rogue wave that came over the harbour wall and washed him off the quay.  It took Rolf and five other men to pull him out of the harbour. 

 

Waves breaking over harbour wall at Astros from Rolf and Roz’s hotel where they had taken shelter -  photo courtesy of Roz Bowen

Once the Medicane passed north of us, we upped anchor and took advantage of the southerly winds and swell that it was still creating to help us sail north in its wake.  

 

Sailing reefed north behind a Medicane

OINOUSSA (off CHIOS)

We were able to do so for some 90 miles before pulling in at midnight to the small well-protected island harbour of Oinoussa off Chios since the wind had picked up and we were concerned about the thunderstorm that was ahead of us.  We moored alongside as nobody else was there.  (Normally one has to moor stern- or bows-to the quay.)

 

Moored alongside the quay in Oinoussa 
after a relatively quiet night

We waited until late afternoon next day for the risk of thunderstorms to abate before continuing our passage north in the southerly winds and swell that still prevailed.  Not a problem since it gave us a little leisure time to sort ourselves out, shop and stroll around the unique, smart attractive port and old town of Mandraki.

 

Mandraki town, Oinoussa viewed from the sea 

We ended up enjoying an excellent 130-mile overnight downwind sail north through the Eastern Sporades in a F5–4 to the island of Samothraki (our first target destination in northern Greece). 

 

Chart of Northern Greece

SAMOTHRAKI

This lush little island sits alone in the Northern Aegean, halfway between the mainland port of Alexandroupolis and the island of Limnos, the most northern island of the Eastern Sporades group (which we had explored on our last two cruises).

Until relatively recently, Samothraki has not had a secure harbour and for this reason alone it has historically remained a solitary island ‘shrouded in mystery’. Thanks to the EU, it now has an excellent fishing harbour and ferry port in Kamariotissa on the northwest corner of the island.   Even today, however, it is still too remote for most tourists.  In consequence its ‘season’ is relatively short – late July to August – so when we arrived in October it felt pretty deserted, but nevertheless provided a good base for exploration.

 

Moored on the quay in the relatively new port of Kamariotissa, Samothraki

There were no other visiting boats in the harbour when we arrived, although a Greek yacht chartered by a group of Bulgarians came in that evening.  They proceeded to barbecue on the quay the many fish that they had caught that day on passage from the Greek mainland. We, however, had excellent souvlaki and chips from a chuck wagon (Kantina) that by chance was parked only 10 metres away from where we moored.

 

Island Drifter seen through the seating area beside the Kantina where we purchased souvlaki and chips

Samothraki has one of the most dramatic profiles of all the Greek islands, second only to Santorini.  Its dark mass of granite rises abruptly from the sea, culminating in the lofty peak of Mt Fengari – at 1611m the highest mountain in the Aegean islands.   From there Homer recounts that Poseidon, God of the Sea, watched the Trojan Wars unfold.  

 

Samothraki viewed from ID as we approached the island

The island boasts one of the most important archaeological sites in Greece:  the ancient Thracian Sanctuary of the Great Gods.  The ruins of the ancient temple city lie on a rocky ridge among wild olive trees and machis.  For hundreds of years in antiquity pilgrims visited SAMOTHRAKI to become initiated into the rites of the religion.  

 

Ruins of the Ancient Temple of 
The Sanctuary of the Great Gods

It is said that when open the large on-site museum provides a good explanatory introduction on the site and religion. Regrettably the museum has been ‘temporarily’ closed for the last four years – for ‘refurbishment’.  Maybe the 3.1million Euro EU grant for the site was not enough to cover the costs incurred!

 

Museum at The Sanctuary of the Great God

The religion appears to have revolved around the ancient Thracian fertility figure ‘the Great Earth Mother’ – rather than the male gods who dominated classical Greece.  The Great Mother’s consorts, Castor and Pollux, were the patrons of seafarers; hence many people were attracted to become initiates of the religion.  

The museum houses those finds that were not spirited away by early explorers. Of these, the best known, ‘The Winged Victory of Samothraki’, was removed by the French in 1863 and now stands in the Louvre in Paris.   A modern metal sculpture of the ‘Victory’ stands on the quayside in Kamariotissa.  

 

Modern depiction of the Winged Victory of Samothraki

Above the site in a hollow is Samothraki, the principal village (the Chora) and capital of the island.  The attractive location of Thracian-style stone houses, some whitewashed, is dominated by a Genoan fort of which little survives other than its gates.  The village is very steep, so much so that our hired 50cc scooter couldn’t make it to the top of Chora.

 

Part of the Chora overlooking the sea and 
dominated by the ruins of a Genoan fort

By now we’d come to appreciate that the strong prevailing northerly winds of the Aegean blow with considerably less force in the north than in the south.  This is because the northerly wind, the Meltemi, is created as a consequence of a pressure gradient between the relatively stable high-pressure areas of the Balkans and the low-pressure areas of Cyprus.  Seas to the north Aegean escape the full force of a Meltemi since they lie marginally north of the front.

 

Met forecast showing weather front created in the Black Sea (top right) developing and moving southwest through the central Aegean – www.passageweather.com

ALEXANDROUPOLIS

While sailing close hauled into a NE 4–5 on our 6-hour passage from Samothraki to Alexandroupolis, there was little fetch and in consequence it was a fast and pleasant sail into the wind.   Not always the case! 

 

Helen ‘enjoying’ a sail into wind 
on our 49th wedding anniversary!

Alexandroupolis is named after King Alexander (born 1893) and not, as one might possibly have thought, Alexander the Great.  It is served by an international airport, motorways, railways and a large modern commercial and ferry port. Given its location and facilities, it is the centre for cross-border activity between Greece, Turkey and the Balkans.

 

ID moored on the quay at Alexandroupolis

It is a modern, attractive bustling city with a cosmopolitan atmosphere.  The city’s wealth is reflected in its shops, restaurants, bars and general ambience.

 

 Lunch at a seafront cafe-cum-ouzeri: mussels; octopus salad; fish with rice, and a platter of braised pork, cheese,aubergine dip and creamed feta

The city’s Ethnological Museum, which we came specifically to see, while relatively small, is said to be one of the finest in Greece. It is only 500m north of the port, in a small 1894 stone Neo-Classical building – an exhibit in itself. 

 

Listed building housing the
Ethnological Museum of Thrace

The museum features the history of the multi-cultural Thracian region in eastern Greece, of which the city was historically part of until it was partitioned in the 1920s between Greece, Turkey and Bulgaria.  Not surprisingly, just as the climate of the area is Balkan, rather than Mediterranean (i.e. cooler and less windy), so the people are of more Balkan origin.   The excellently presented exhibits, video footage, photographs and bi-lingual display boards bring to life what it was probably like before Partition.

 

Greek Thracian costumes

We now plan to travel west (hopefully with the prevailing wind) along the northern coast before eventually heading back south to Leros where we have flights to the UK booked for 20 November. We'll spend the winter in the UK before making our way back to Greece in early March 2019 – just before Brexit.