Symi is the most south easterly of our intented travels in this area, and with the prevailing winds from the north and north west, a windless day was the opportunity to motor out of Symi, and not fight head winds. We could have sat in Symi for weeks waiting for a favourable southerly. So dead calm as we motored 33miles west, close to the Dacha (Turkish) peninsula, back to the island of Nisyros and the lovely Paloi harbour.
When we arrived, Stavros, the unofficial harbour master warned us that we might have to leave as they were due to start dredging the harbour entrance any day now, although he warned us that being Greece ‘any day now’ could mean anything. We also discovered that a festival was taking place on Monday night, so our planned 2 night stop turned into 3 nights.
On Monday afternoon Stavros found us on the beach and said we had to move to the other side of the harbour as the dredger was arriving later and needed the north wall to tie up against. So move we did, and yes a tug towing a platform with a huge crane did eventually arrive about an hour before sunset, and immediately started excavating the narrow channel. The spoil however was simply dumped in a shallower part of the harbour entrance, probably 10 feet from where it was taken.
Meanwhile at dusk, we went and enjoyed Paloi’s Holy Apostles festival. Starting with a free meal for everyone, rice, potatoes and huge lumps of succulent beef, served from 3 enormous cauldrons with salad and bread, more than enough to feed our estimate of over 300 people, old and young, from both the village and afar. In fact we sat with 5 Germans enjoying sailing stories, one of whom had spent 21 years building his own steel cruising boat.
After the meal we needed a quiet drink and literally bumped into another couple of Germans, Manfred and Marita we’d briefly met at the Boatclub in Chalkoutsi a year earlier. (Manfred videoed our launch back in Apr 25). By now the music and traditional Greek dancing was well underway with Ann and Marita couldn’t resist joining in! They (Ann an Marita) eventually stopped at about 2am, although the dancing and music went on for another 2 hours.
There was going to be a window to leave the harbour at around 8am before the dredging restarted, however we were still comatose. When we did eventually poke our heads up at about 0930, we saw that the dredger hadn’t yet moved, (we guess they’d been enjoying the festival also!) so checking with Stavros we rapidly made our escape north again.
When we arrived, Stavros, the unofficial harbour master warned us that we might have to leave as they were due to start dredging the harbour entrance any day now, although he warned us that being Greece ‘any day now’ could mean anything. We also discovered that a festival was taking place on Monday night, so our planned 2 night stop turned into 3 nights.
On Monday afternoon Stavros found us on the beach and said we had to move to the other side of the harbour as the dredger was arriving later and needed the north wall to tie up against. So move we did, and yes a tug towing a platform with a huge crane did eventually arrive about an hour before sunset, and immediately started excavating the narrow channel. The spoil however was simply dumped in a shallower part of the harbour entrance, probably 10 feet from where it was taken.
Meanwhile at dusk, we went and enjoyed Paloi’s Holy Apostles festival. Starting with a free meal for everyone, rice, potatoes and huge lumps of succulent beef, served from 3 enormous cauldrons with salad and bread, more than enough to feed our estimate of over 300 people, old and young, from both the village and afar. In fact we sat with 5 Germans enjoying sailing stories, one of whom had spent 21 years building his own steel cruising boat.
After the meal we needed a quiet drink and literally bumped into another couple of Germans, Manfred and Marita we’d briefly met at the Boatclub in Chalkoutsi a year earlier. (Manfred videoed our launch back in Apr 25). By now the music and traditional Greek dancing was well underway with Ann and Marita couldn’t resist joining in! They (Ann an Marita) eventually stopped at about 2am, although the dancing and music went on for another 2 hours.
There was going to be a window to leave the harbour at around 8am before the dredging restarted, however we were still comatose. When we did eventually poke our heads up at about 0930, we saw that the dredger hadn’t yet moved, (we guess they’d been enjoying the festival also!) so checking with Stavros we rapidly made our escape north again.