Port Leone

Váthi

We left Spartakhori relatively early on Thursday 14^th August as we wanted to look into a number of the fjord-like inlets on the north coast of Meganisi on our way down to Port Leone on Kalamos. Váthi is the ‘capital’ of Meganisi and is described as an attractive small town which is ‘seemingly half asleep in summer’. We took a short detour around the harbour and agreed that it looked like a lovely place to come back to in the future. Our pilot book says that there are good walks inland through the olive groves from here, which Nicky reckons makes it a much better bet for a morning run than Spartakhori where we had just completed a steep hillclimb!

Ormos Abilike

From Váthi we went a mile or so to Ormos Abilike where we anchored for a swim. We took the opportunity to do a quick scrub around the hull as well and, though it was hardly fouled at all, we were rewarded by shoals of fish visiting us to eat the small particles of weed that we removed. Once more it was like swimming in an aquarium. Coincidentally, we moored right next to Lauren, the French solo-sailor whom we had met when we first arrived in Port Zákinthos (yacht shown on the right of the picture above). Unfortunately, we only recognised her yacht when we were leaving and did not see Lauren on board at all.

We left Ormos Abilike shortly after lunch, and, once the wind got up had a pleasant sail down to the southern tip of Kalamos and part way up its eastern shore to Port Leone. We arrived expecting to find only a couple of other yachts in the bay but there were about 10 already there (and the best part of a flotilla clearly soon to arrive), mostly arrayed out around the sides, bows towards the deep centre of the bay and stern line(s) to the shore.

In the centre of the entrance, gleaming in the afternoon sun, was Athos, a beautiful 201ft long Van der Hoek yacht that we had first seen in Cowes in 2012 and which is my ultimate ‘money-no-object’ dream yacht.

Port Leone is a lovely place.  It’s well protected from the prevailing wind and ashore there is a deserted village, abandoned after the 1953 earthquake destroyed its water supply.

The church, however, is still in weekly use and its freshly painted exterior is in sharp contrast to the derelict houses and mill with ruined donkey wheel. We had a short explore ashore, but didn’t go too far – it almost felt as if we were trespassing.

The peace and quiet of the absolute calm the following morning was broken by what we initially thought was a badly tuned outboard motor. Further investigation showed it to be Athos’ answer to the helicopters we had seen on so many motor yachts in off Sicily – a water-launched microlight.

It certainly was a fantastic morning for a flight and, as we watched it land, I was reminded that I had seen a microlight when we had been running at Spartakhori. I wondered whether the pilot was Athos’ owner, recce-ing for a suitable evening anchorage and, if so, whether they had decided on Kastos as their next stop as we had.

Port Leone