Limnos

A great passage from Koufos to Limnos, left at 5am, anchored before 5pm. Saw a lot of fish smashing up the surface, and had striped dolphins visit again. One of them looked up to make sure we were watching, then went down and swam upside down to the surface and did three clear jumps upside down! We even got to turn the motor off for a while, we're getting to where we should be able to sail most of the time, the prevailing winds will be taking us homewards.

Koufos

At the bottom of the middle finger of Chalkidiki.....

We stopped to fish on the way into Koufos and decided to stay in the cove for the night. We had the bay to ourselves and Dimitris had a wonderful night on deck and swims from daybreak. I got quite excited when I found some abalone shells, but he assures me that they don't get bigger than the ones I found.... about one inch.

Portas Canal

Thessaloniki was great, many chandlers so I've fixed the toilets, kitchen pump and have parts for a few more jobs. Managed to find a gas shop (marina office lady rang her mum to ask!) and have decanted with a pretty dodgy hose, into our three bottles. The new Greek gas is wonderful, I don't know where the old gas came from, but everything works better now. The gas shop man was going mad trying to understand what I was doing with all the gas. I did try to explain what I was up to, but he was adamant that you can't turn the bottles upside down, and asked if I had a REALLY big stove! He laughed a lot.

Dimitris has a couple of days spare so has joined us to sail around Chalkidiki.

Viktor said our mast was 15 metres and the bridge 20. The book says bridge is 18 metres, but another yachtie was sure it was higher. We measured our mast many times (without going to the top) and I thought it might be 16.5. Dimitri said 17.8(and a few other numbers I suppose!). Clearly there was a small risk…..

Headed into the canal and noted the boatyard at the entrance so if we did have a disaster help was close at hand! It's a small canal, 2.5M depth and quite narrow. Headed very slowly to the bridge, as slow as I could take her, with Anne and Sabine screaming 'no, no, no' and Dimitri quietly saying 'I think it's ok'. There is a little flexible antenna atop the mast which went gently 'click click clack' as we eased under the first span…… The good think is, we now know much more accurately just how tall the mast is!!!!

Thessaloniki

Kalimera! Well, Thessaloniki was a success. Although it was an industrial city, everyone was so nice there, very smiley and happy to practice their english. We stayed at a fairly good + cheap marina, with electricity (!!!), water (!!!), and showers. There were two ladies working at the office, and a fat man who wasn't working. The first lady we met was really nice, and helped us find Dimitris, a good friend of Mum and Dad. So two days later, we were cleaning up the boat when dad spotted a herd of people coming towards us. It was, Dimitris, Mariana (wife), Katerina, (daughter), and Shivani (daughter). Their other girl Vassilia is in India, at a school. They came on the boat, and we sat there chatting. I hung out with Katerina and Shivani upstairs. Katerina's english is really good. What Shivani can say is (3 yrs. old)- Gimme five!+Happy birthday to you, happy… Ok. So, the idea came up that we could go and stay a night or two at their place. We agreed, and went in the car up to Serres. Katerina sat behind the seats with all the bags… =}

Serres was great, and I went out with Katerina and her friend for a walk around the town, and we got crepes for dinner.. chocolate crepes.. :D and of course, being greek, they paid for everything. It was SO embarrassing.

We slept in the small house, and it was a blissful sleep, on a comfy bed. Morning came, and we just sat around all day, attempting to call Stavros' wife again. Dimitris was convinced she is crazy, after he talked to her. "very aggressive, very aggressive…" decided to stay another night, went for another walk with parents and escaped with Katerina and Susana again, going to a fast food place this time. another awkward payed-for thing. said goodbyes to kids and in the morning, Dimitris drove us to the bus stop with instructions. We found our way back to the boat. home sweet home!

off to Salonika

Cheating Pigeon

A pile of pigeons flew over, but one landed on the bbq. It must be very clever, it knew we were moving it towards home. If only the owner could see how he was losing the race!! It stayed a few hours, ate some nice bread crumbs.

Nea Moudania

I'm feeling very comfortable here. Balkan number plates all around, and plenty of languages wandering past. Two guys are fishing next to us, one of them is talking loudly in Turkish on the phone. The other comes and starts chatting to us, eventually we settle on Turkish for me, and Greek for Anne. He is from Georgia, not sure how or why he lives here, could be from war, or maybe he has a Greek background. The next day Viktor turns up and takes us on a trip around the Kasandra peninsular, to an underground church we need to crawl through rock tunnel, an old watchtower, and a giros restaurant. He is back fishing next night with his "dog" Sisi. We played a few tunes on gajda, and Anne was asked if she was from Scotland.

Skopelos

Loutraki (Glossos)

Nothing special, but last night was in the very busy harbour of Skiathos, with at least 4 restaurants competing to have the loudest music. One of the live bands probably did some nice things, but the mix of the competing sounds was pretty awful, and was still going at 5am……

So tonight we have only one band, and they are quite nice. Violin, island style and just one band….

We are anchored next to the breakwater. Had a lovely snorkel, lots of small fish in the water. Caught some things that, in retrospect, we think might be protected, so you can't see the photo, and we won't get them again, but they were delicious!!

Next to the boat is a regular eruption of gas, carrying debris from the bottom up with it. I don't know if it's from decaying matter, or geo-thermal, but it's great fun. Stinks a bit. Anne is terrified that we may be volcanoed, Sabine thinks it's totally gross that I like the smell….

planning a 5am start to get across a pile of open water to Chalkidiki, hopefully Nea Moudhia, on our way to Salonika.

Skiathos

We knew we wouldn't like it....

Had a good trip here, a couple of hours of slight head wind or glassy calm, but current with us so doing over 5 knots, then a nice breeze gave us 6 knots, then we tacked up to the harbour, or rather, Ellida and I did while girls said 'why don't you start the motor' in whiney voices.....

Markopoulos family

Meet Lukas… he is prone to enthusiasm, and was announcing the size of his ice-cream in extremely loud english as I walked by to our boat. This led to some conversation, invitations and a couple of lovely days with a wonderful family.

Here is Eleni, not so loud, but she taught us a fabulous song;

tinky winky

dipstick,

loo roll and poo

toilet tubbies,

toilet tubbies,

say wee wee (flush flush)

too hot to stay in the air

lot's of jumps and dives

I did win one game.....but lost more and better

George has an excellent plan. His job involves marketing the very metals our boat is built from, so to test their effectiveness he's coming across the atlantic. Anne, Sabine, Sarah, Eleni and Lukas can fly over and wait in the Bahamas or somewhere. It's not the only plan but it's another great one!

Meeting old friends...

Diana, Vangelis with kids, Louisa and Ilias came down from their village for a day on the boat. We last saw them 17 years ago so very exciting to see the kids and so nice to slot back in as if it had been yesterday. Ilias wants to get a boat now, Vangelis, a real mountain man, drove most of the way home. Dolphins turned up to cap it off. They brought some delicious produce of their garden, which made us rather homesick, especially the homemade Pilion tsiporo! We'll try and make it last the whole journey! The Pilion is extremely beautiful, steep pine clad mountains dropping to the water.

Atalantis

Hello! Sabine here. Well. I can now officially say that we discovered Atlantis. Except there is a lack of natives running around with huge masks and crystal necklaces, and it isn't underwater. But it does have beach volleyball and soccer, and a good mini-market with a nice man who gave us little icecreams before we left. :) So we are just starting to realise that Greece has modernised too, even though it is still beautiful. Mum and Dad are remembering good ol times in Greece, and our rally of catching up with old friends has just about started. Tomorrow we should be seeing Diana, Vangelis, and the (3?) kids, at 'Volos'. I'm looking forwards to being on land. :)

note: All photos are chosen by mum and dad, so please excuse the disgusting ones of me!! :D

Milina and the Tsiporo

Finally out of the Evia channel, had a pretty good day with a little wind on our nose, but could motor at reasonable speed and current was with us most of the time. We arrived exhausted and seeing nowhere to drop the anchor, just picked up a vacant mooring. Everyone we asked said 'no problem, if the owner comes you can just move. A nice introduction to a very relaxed area.

Next morning I wandered along the shore and seeing a sign "tsiporo for sale" got chatting with the vendor. It was a restaurant next to a 'Sunsail' marina, but she assured me we could park the boat in the free berth, so we did, and spent 4 extremely relaxing days there. She did mention in passing that her mothers cooking was fantastic, so we did the right thing and ate in the restaurant twice. It was great, and Sabine is pleased to finally be eating out. We had planned to go up to Volos, but I managed to fix most of the things that worried us without buying parts.

Heading North, Evvia passage

We decided to head north to visit friends, so past Pireus and Athens and out to the Agean Sea. We visited our first island in the Cyclades by accident. Rob was downstairs writing an email to a friend saying we were going past her place- was she there? Meanwhile upstairs Anne was following two yachts to Kea!

We've had a lot of strong winds on the nose so we aborted our attempt to travel north via the east coast of Evvia and went up the inside passage instead, it takes longer but is more sheltered. We anchored one night at an uninhabited island and snorkelled around the boat. Rob caught another fish that spiked him so he let it go… eventually.

The Captain looks grumpy a lot, he's either motoring over lumps of water or fiddling with sails and courses. Last night we passed under two bridges. The second one gets opened up once a day at slack tide. (Can be a 7 knot current there, Archimides drowned in it!) All the yachts gather together at a designated time by port authorities and are told when to go through - in the dark at 11:20pm! People out for the night at the tavernas, line along the banks and wave and call out as the boats pass through.

Corinthian Canal

What a hoot! I did tell them what the wind would be but didn't explain in detail what that actually meant….. Forecast is the same for a few days so no point in waiting. I did put the main up with one reef in it, but the rivets that held it to the boom were too tired, so we ended up with the whole main. 25 knots and 1.5m seas, it was a fun run! Sabine has obviously got a good mix of our genes as she was not at all scared of waves and wind, but was worried a submarine might come up from under us!

Sailed most of the day at 7 or 8 knots and we witnessed 9.9 as we surfed down the best wave of the day! The canal is famous for being the most expensive for it's distance in the world. Greek business…. They know we will come. 200 euro for 3 miles.

Delphi- Apollo's Temple

We behaved like tourists and went up to Delphi on the early bus. First attempt failed as the alarm clock was still in Italy but here we have time, so we went the next day.

The bus passed miles and miles of olive plantations, then contoured high up along the mountain side, the view opening up to a sea of silver-green in the valley. How can they possibly pick that many olives? It was only 8am as we walked over the Delphi site, the early light superb over the backdrop of scraggy peaks and ancient architecture. People once flocked from all corners of civilisation to seek advice from the god and oracle Apollo and they took in a bit of light entertainment at the amphitheatre and stadium.