Órmos Milia

Some days just don’t work out as you would have expected. Our plan on 7 June was to leave the anchorage at órmos Kira Panayía and make a downwind passage, probably just under a bit of genoa, down the channel between Nísos Alonnisos and Nísos Peristeri eventually stopping at the pretty little cove of Steni Vala on the eastern side of Nísos Alonnisos. There is a rehabilitation centre for injured Mediterranean Monk Seals in Steni Vala, it was supposed to give reasonable shelter from northerly winds and it just looked like a really nice place to stop.

However, the plan changed when we turned the key to start the engine. BV has a large bank of batteries we normally work off and a completely separate battery used for starting the engine or generator. It’s a pretty standard setup on boats to do this so that you don’t risk the fridge and lighting running things down to the point that you can’t start your engine. Therefore, when we turned the start key, the engine should have sprung into life turned over by the fully charged dedicated engine-start battery; it did not! Alarms sounded from all of the systems warning us of low voltages; even the gas alarm complained. Nicky switched us to the domestic bank of batteries and in an instant the engine was running perfectly. We decided that we needed to change our destination to somewhere a little larger than Steni Vala so that we could hunt down a new engine-start battery.

Coastline looking southwest towards Patitíri

So, we headed off on the same planned route but with the new plan to stop at the capital of Nísos Alonnisos, the town of Patitíri, 5 miles further down the coast.

Once clear of órmos Kira Panayía we found the wind to be reasonably fresh and so we ambled along nicely under the genoa only; no need to rush with a passage of just 15 miles. In the narrow gap between Nísos Alonnisos and Nísos Peristeri the wind picked up quite strongly, as we had expected with the funnelling effect, so we rolled away some genoa and rushed on into the calmer seas of the passage between the 2 islands. However, even as the gap between the islands widened out, the wind stayed strong and, in fact, got up further. We passed Steni Vala and, using the binoculars, looked at the yachts moored to the quay, all bouncing around in the strong northeasterly wind. It was great for sailing but not great for that harbour and we were glad that we were no longer planning to stop there. Just south of Steni Vala is another small cove which our pilot book rates as having good protection from the meltemi. Like Steni Vala, however, the wind and the seas were blowing almost straight in and the one yacht at anchor there looked very uncomfortable.

As we raced south we studied each of the bays that we passed and Nicky started to look on the chart for suitable ‘diversion options’, just in case Patitíri should turn out not to be a suitable harbour.

Órmos Rousoumi

Just to the north of Patitíri are 2 inlets. One, Ormos Rousoumi, is a swimming bay in which yachts may anchor; the other, Votsi, has a small quay and a number of resident fishing boats. As we approached Patitíri we started to lose the shelter from Peristeri and the seas began to increase again. Looking at the waves crashing on the shore and the amount of movement in the masts of yachts sheltering in each of the inlets, it was clear that making an approach to either Ormos Rousoumi or Votsi would be verging on the foolhardy, so we turned our attention to the harbour itself.

Votsi

Here too, the sea was pounding on the shoreline so we held off a little to look more closely and to give the rapidly approaching ferry time and space to manoeuvre into its berth on the seawall. We watched with growing concern as the ferry beetled around the headland and carried out a handbrake turn to the right in preparation for dropping its anchor to drop back into its berth. To our relief, and doubtless even more so for the passengers on board, the handbrake turn was not the start of a mooring manoeuvre but the start of a ‘get out’ manoeuvre, and the ferry beetled back off from whence it had come.

Órmos Milia

Feeling vindicated in our concerns about the harbour entrance, we headed north to a fairly large bay, Órmos Milia, about a mile north that we had spotted when racing southwards. When we had passed there were 2 yachts sitting peacefully at anchor and, being a large bay, we reasoned that there would be space enough for us too. And so it turned out. We anchored close in under the cliffs and headland on the northeast side of the bay in about 6m of water over a good sandy bottom. There was almost no wind under the cliffs; better yet, very few gusts and, tucked in close to the headland, the swell hardly reached us too.

Órmos Milia

It was only the following morning that we realised that in all the excitement we hadn’t taken any pictures from our trip south, so all the photos in this blog entry were taken a day late, when the wind had subsided and we moved south to Patitíri harbour. We also found out subsequently that the wind off the west side of Skopelos on Monday 7 June was recorded as gusting to 44knots!

Órmos Milia, Greece