Órmos Peristéra

[Ed: Champagne should be flowing on BV. Not only are there now entries for ancient Pergamon 1-4 from last month, but Reg is also working on finishing the blog entry for the Acropolis at Athens which is still outstanding from August last year. A fully up to date blog is in sight!]

Entering Órmos Peristéra

After 3 days in Patitíri harbour on Alonnisos, it was time to move on a bit, the operative words here being ‘a bit’. There was very little wind and we wanted to have a look at an inlet on the south of the island of Peristeri which we thought might have been a good bolthole a few days before when the wind had blown strongly from the northeast. So, late in the morning, after doing some food shopping and a check of emails, we set off. From inside the harbour the wind looked to be so feeble that we didn’t even bother taking off the sailcover; a move that we found justified as we motored the 5 miles over an almost glassy sea.

Órmos Peristéra is a relatively narrow and deep inlet and when we arrived there were already 3 other yachts at anchor in the bay, 2 free-anchored and one with a long line to the northern shore. To ensure that we kept clear of them all we elected to moor with a long line ashore too which worked very well, albeit we were temptingly close to the wafts of barbecue that came from the yacht alongside us!

Blue eyed cod (we think)

By mid-afternoon all the other yachts had upped and went so we had the inlet to ourselves, which was lovely. The water was beautifully clear and we had a wonderful snorkel over the eel-grass and along the rocky shoreline, enjoying the many various fish (and ubiquitous sea urchins). I filleted the fish I had caught the previous evening and we grilled it and ate it with a garlic and onion mash and a tomato and soy sauce. It was delicious and that’s definitely another Rick Stein recipe that we’ll use again.

We spent a couple more days at anchor in the bay, in bright sunshine and mostly light winds but with a few strong gusts. We spent a few hours catching up with the blog and a few more scubbing BV’s bottom (much to the delight of the local fish population which enjoyed feeding off the weed and slime scrapings!). Having checked the anchor again after cleaning the hull, we thought that the anchor might have slipped position. Given that we were in only 3m of water and with a large rock reasonably close behind us, we decided to re-anchor and free-swing in the bay. Shortly after doing so, a New Zealand Bavaria 46, owned by Mark and Donna, joined us and we had a very pleasant evening on board Diamond Girl discussing, amongst other things, their plans for sailing her to their home in New Zealand.

Several yachts came and went over our 3-day sojourn in the Órmos Peristéra. A number of them, like us, had trouble getting their anchors to set well first time around. Also, we saw that though our anchor appeared to be reasonable well dug in, it did not dig in as deeply as it has previously in, for example, sand. We wondered therefore if the bottom is actually rock covered by a relatively thin layer of mud, which would mean that it might not be a great place to sit out strong winds.

With BV clean and the backlog of bog entries ready to upload it was time to set sail again. It would’t be a long passage; probably just 15 miles to the harbour at Skópelos which is supposed to be very picturesque with lots of narrow lanes and over 100 small chapels. It is the capital of the island so we’ll also try to change a gas bottle (we failed at Patitíri ) and will restock the fridge with food.

Órmos Peristéra, Greece