With strong north westerlies forecast, we decided to move on to Kastos and the shelter offered in its easterly bays. En route we had a great sail, reaching speeds of 7 knots, taking us across from Meganisi, round the top of Kalamos to a sheltered bay a couple of miles from the northern tip of Kastos with goats roaming the beach and cliffs and just two or three other boats anchored.
The first night was fine, but during the afternoon of the second day, despite being in the shelter of the north westerlies, we started getting onshore gusts. So much so, that as dusk approached, these quite severe gusts caused us to start dragging our anchor. So as it was getting dark we had the pleasure of resetting our anchor! The gusts were something we had not noticeably experienced before, as they seemed to be at sea level only, the anemometer at the top of the mast typically showed 3 or 4 knots, yet at boat level they were probably blowing at 20-30 knots. With the anchor set and another hour or two later, calm was restored!
We also shared the bay with a super yacht, this time a real sailing boat, the Nirvana Formentera, 53m long with a draft of 10m! She was in deeper water than us!
The next morning we headed back round the top for a space in Kalamos Harbour, where under the direction of George, the taverna owner, and with about 50m of anchor chain out (nearly all) we tied up with stern lines on the wall. The ropes are tied around some very rough and jagged concrete bollards. Wish we had some old hose pipe we could protect them with.
Mira single-handed skipper, her ex-tom-cat, Cleo and her non-sailor guests pulled up alongside. The cat had leapt across and landed on the quay before they’d tied any lines ashore! He established himself as the alpha male by immediately winning in a fight with the local Tom. I’ve never come across a cat like it – he was chasing and scratching people as they walked past! He came on our boat, jumped on the bimini and whacked Paul on the head! But the bottle of water spray soon stopped him. He took a liking to our new wooden seats, showing his appreciation by having a scratch. Spray gun and chairs covered in an old dress seems to have done the trick.
Kalamos is a popular stop for charters and flotillas, and come Thursday night fall, over 60 boats were tied up/rafted in the small harbour. So a couple of nights here, eating at George’s the first night and then at Voskopoula beach taverna over the hill the second night.
Despite not having a long enough nmea 2000 cable to connect the AIS box to the plotter, I configured the box and discovered that it works without a plotter connection and we now appear on the Marine Traffic Web site, so we are now visible to the world, although we’ll only be transmitting when necessary.
Being the weekend and charter boat change over, Friday night saw only about a dozen boats in the harbour giving us the opportunity to to tie up on the other side of the harbour and fill up with free water (must get a longer hose as had to borrow an extension from Mike and Kay on Cinnabar) before heading back to Nidri, via a lunchtime swim in Port Athini on Meganisi.
