Sími (Part 1)

We left Palon harbour on 9 September with a good 15 knot northwesterly wind to help us on our way. Nísos Nísiros slipped away behind us and we could see the edge of the volcano with the village of Eborios clinging to its rim just like Nikia we had visited the day before.

Sailing along the Turkish Datca peninsula

Our plan was to sail 35 miles east to Nísos Sími. The island is Greek but it sits just 5 miles away from Turkey. To its north, stretching out to the west, is the Datca peninsula which we sailed along getting our first proper look at Turkey. With the wind from the northwest the hills on the peninsula made the wind very variable and so our initial good progress at over 7 knots dropped off at times to zero as we passed through wind shadows. We tried to sail for as long as we could but inevitably had to motor the last stretch of the passage.

At the northern tip of Nísos Sími is the little island of Nímos and between the two is a narrow channel (Sténon Nimou). It’s a convenient shortcut saving us a few extra miles sailing around Nísos Nímos so we aimed for that.

The water through the passage was beautifully clear and just 4 metres deep so we could see the sandy bottom and patches of eel grass very clearly. The sand helped to give it a lovely turquoise colour.

Once through the gap we turned sharp right to make our way into the bay with Sími town at its head. The houses are built up the ridge behind the town so there was no difficulty working out where to go.

The town actually stretches into a small bay to the north and we knew that we could anchor here if there was no room for us on the main town quay. Passing this anchorage we could clearly see the different style of houses here. It would have been a very picturesque place to anchor.

However, we headed on into the main harbour which is quite narrow and hidden behind the headland with a large clocktower on the end of it. Once inside the harbour it was immediately clear why Sími is so popular.

The views were great but our priority was to see if there was room for us; we’d been told that to guarantee a space you have to arrive very early in the day and it was already well past 3pm. We manoeuvred around and spotted a likely gap on the southern quay. A sharp whistle and gesticulation at that gap from a harbour official on the north side confirmed that was where we should go. We wanted to moor stern-to the quay so that we would have the windlass easily available to haul up the anchor should it become tangled with someone-else’s anchor or chain. The space was, therefore, not ideal for us because the wind was blowing strongly from the head of the harbour, from our port side as we reversed into the gap. BV is a heavy boat and it takes time (and space) to build up enough speed in reverse for the rudder to gain steerageway. Meanwhile, the prop kicking the stern strongly to port when operating in astern and the effect of a relatively long keel help to conspire to make reversing an interesting and, at times, slightly unpredictable manoeuvre. A strong crosswind from the port side compounds everything and on our first attempt to reverse into the space BV spun like a top initially. Worse still, once the helm did start to respond there was not enough space in the narrow harbour to lay the anchor in the right place and get her lined up and into the mooring space. We had 4 goes at it before admitting defeat and rerigging BV so that we could go in forwards using the kedge anchor paid out from the stern. Throughout, of course, we were starting to make our potential neighbours very edgy; from their perspective it would have looked like we hadn’t a clue what we were doing.

Whilst we circled to set up the kedge anchor, more yachts arrived and it took a little ‘negotiation’ from Nicky to make it clear that they were not to steal our spot! Once set up we were able to drop the anchor over the stern and move slowly forwards into the gap, nicely under control, much to the relief of our neighbours.

We settled back to watch the fun of the gulets all arriving at about the same time, shouting and jostling for their allocated spaces on the quay. Happily, since we had squeezed into a BV-sized gap and both our neighbours were staying for the night, we knew that we were most likely secure for the evening so we took a stroll around the port.

The buildings in Sími are predominately very elegant neoclassical mansions. Sími generated its wealth from ship building and sponge diving and in 1895 Sími town was larger than Rhodes town. However, the local economy was shattered by Greek-Turkish wars and the advent of synthetic sponges.

Wandering along the quay we spotted the building where the surrender of the Dodecanese to the Allies at the end of World War 2 was signed.

Sími still promotes its fame for sponge diving although arguably Kalimnos is now the Greek centre. But, of course, that doesn’t seem to stop the tourist shops from selling Sími sponges as the best available.

Our mooring fun in Sími began again the following day when both our neighbours left and we gained, instead, on our port side 2 small motor boats, rafted against each other alongside the quay, with their outboard engines lifted out of the water. At about 1230 the wind, which had been non-existent, started to pick up and BV was blown ever-so slightly downwind on the stretch of her anchor warp. The 2 motorboats were protected from the wind by BV and so did not move and BV ended up leaning on one of the outboard engines and scratching her gelcoat. There was no space to move the motorboats a few feet forward and clear of us, so we had to find a new berth. Happily, there was still quite a lot of space elsewhere on the quay so within about half an hour we were settled in a new location and a little later lunch was ready in the cockpit. At that point a large, navy blue chartered Beneteau hove into view, clearly intent on squeezing into the gap between us and our neighbours to starboard. The gap was probably large enough for a yacht half the size of the Beneteau but, despite our trying very hard to dissuade him, the Beneteau’s driver was not to be put off. The yacht ended up jammed like a cork between us and our neighbours until, that is, they hauled in on their anchor and unseated ours so that we started to move forward towards the quay. We rapidly undid all our good work of an hour or so before, and motored out, hauling in our mooring lines and then starting work on the hard job of getting the kedge anchor rode in by hand. Part way through all this, the crew of the Beneteau realised that their anchor was not holding (as it was wrapped around our anchor rode) so they untied all their lines and motored out at some speed. There followed half an hour of great entertainment for the 200 or so spectators arrayed around the harbour. We got to the point where, by hand, we could no longer haul in our anchor rode and we knew that BV and the Beneteau were engaged in some galvanised steel entanglement. The crew of the Beneteau neither spoke good English nor knew what to do in the situation. The man at the helm seemed intent on trying to motor back and forth up and down the harbour at great speed in the hope that this would shake off the annoying British yacht that had taken a close interest in his yacht. The smiling lady on the foredeck, nominally in charge of the anchor windlass, spoke even less English than the helm but, happily, for short periods would follow our instructions to ‘raise the anchor, up, up’ but would then either stop or (worse) lower the anchor again, presumably at the behest of the helm. All this whilst the Beneteau was manoeuvring at the rush, I was doing my best to avoid BV being rammed and Nicky took in the anchor rode slack whenever an opportunity arose. And all the while more yachts piled into the harbour waiting to moor……….. Eventually, the mooring managers on the shore joined in with their whistles, trying to direct proceedings and a large yacht moored on the north shore tried to direct our attention to the fact that we were in danger of dragging the anchors of BV and the Beneteau over their nicely laid chain. Since we were being dragged backwards by said Beneteau at that point I’m not sure what he wanted us to do about it!

Eventually, we managed to persuade the Beneteau  to slow right down (though we never got him forward to see the tangle) and the lady to raise their anchor to the surface using the windlass and, lo and behold, there was an amazing tangle of our anchors and someone else’s chain! Five minutes work with rope later and we were free of the Beneteau and we slipped away quietly to sort ourselves out and to leave them untangling themselves from the other anchor chain.

It took a while to sort out all our lines, kedge anchor rode and fenders but we eventually got back into our berth and breathed a sigh of relief. By this stage the Beneteau had made another attempt at mooring a little further down the quay, alongside the Australian yacht that had been on our starboard side when we had moved because we were being blown onto the motorboats. Again, whilst manoeuvring to moor, the Beneteau dragged its anchor across several chains, including that of the Australians and consequently, their anchor gave up its grip on the seabed and the yacht started to move in towards the quay. By this stage the blue Beneteau was part way out of the berth and moving at some speed and now hopelessly entangled with the Australian’s mooring tackle. There was an awful lot of high energy action on behalf of both the yachts, lots of shoreside support from surrounding yachts’ crews (including us) helping to keep the Australian yacht off the quay and, as the Australians managed to let go their lines and move off into the harbour, some very expensive noises. However, we did not have time to stop and watch as yet another person decided that the Rizla-wide gap between BV and our starboard hand neighbour would provide the perfect berth for his yacht, and proceeded to force a passage in – straight across our anchor chain and then, to compound the issue, leaning hard on BV and dragging our anchor out again! By this time we were getting more than a little frustrated. Nicky held onto the bow whilst I tried the old ‘wind in on the anchor rode and see if the anchor digs in again’ trick, but it didn’t work so we made our way back out of our berth again. We hauled in on the anchor rode and got all but the last 10m in. At this point the anchor stuck fast and nothing we could do would shift it (bizzare really when you consider that we left our berth because the anchor wasn’t holding)! We considered our options and decided that since our anchor now didn’t seem to be going anywhere we would just return to a mooring and see what happened. However, by now the berth we had vacated was a part of the ongoing chaos of about 4 yachts ‘attached’ to the Beneteau so we wondered where we should moor. Happily, the crews of a Brit catamaran and a Canadian monohull beckoned us into a (relatively small) space between their yachts. It’s not a gap that we would ordinarily have gone for as we needed to force a passage slightly but since we had been invited we went for it. The position of the berth meant that we laid our anchor rode across that of the Canadian yacht but the crew was quite sanguine about it and we agreed to leave at the same time the next day so that we could sort out the crossed warps at a convenient time for both crews.

It was 4pm by the time we actually got to sit down for lunch and it took a further 30mins before the chaos started by the large, blue Beneteau was all finally sorted out. We got away lightly with a couple of small gelcoat scratches. The Australian yacht incurred a lot of damage at the Beneteau’s hands including a bent stemhead fitting and keel damage from his high speed manoeuvres whilst attached to their anchor chain, gouges on the transom from hitting the quay and some properly dinked gelcoat where the Beneteau had rammed her. The big, blue Beneteau was sent packing by the Port Police; as some wag said: ‘the Greek authorities here love to have a good excuse to tell Turkish mariners to get out of the harbour’!

There was almost a carnival atmosphere on the quay as the crews from all of the yachts which had been ‘hooked up’ by the Turkish Beneteau compared notes on the details of their drama. At which point a large ferry came into port and moored stern to with barely any space at his bow; very impressive. Just as well he hadn’t arrived half an hour earlier when that part of the harbour was full of waltzing yachts attached to each other by their anchors and chains.

After the ferry had left a cruise ship came in and the quays and shops were suddenly very busy. It certainly is a popular place!

The following day, knowing that our anchor was fouled on something, probably the Canadian’s anchor, we rigged BV so that when we were clear of our berth we could quickly and easily re-run the kedge anchor rode so that it came in over the bow and onto the windlass, rather than over the stern and onto one of the cockpit winches. This allowed us to apply more power to the anchor rode and meant that we would be more likely to get our anchor and whatever was fouling it to the surface, whilst keeping the chain clear of our gelcoat. This worked really well and we managed to get our anchor to the surface and with it someone-else’s very expensive, stainless steel anchor (not the Canadian’s). It didn’t take us long to untangle the mess and then reposition the anchor clear of the Canadian’s rode.

After our neat departure from Sími on 11 September we sailed just a few miles down the coast to a beautiful sandy bay to anchor and go for a swim.

Sími