Koukounaries

We left Skíros at 0640hrs on 11 July. The wind was 11 knots from the NNE; perfect for comfortably heading west. The forecast showed that the wind would decrease and back to the west later in the day and we had something approaching 60 miles to cover, hence the early start. Our intention was to try to get to one of the anchorages on the south of Skíathos which would put us in a good place to comfortably make Volos to pick up Charlotte and Sophie in a few days time. We were expecting to have to motor the last bit of the passage but in the end the wind dropped for just an hour in the late morning. As a thunderstorm built over Skópelos and headed away behind us it got quite brisk. During the passage we had every sail plan from all white sails flying and eased for light winds to 2 reefs in the main and a half reefed genoa [Ed: and we had all those sailplans flying several times too – it was a busy passage!]. As we passed to the south of the gap between Skópelos and Skíathos the wind was funnelled and it looked like we would have a slow beat back to the north to get to our planned destination. Fortunately for us, however, the wind veered and our course took up a gentle curve to the nothwest which pleasingly led directly to Koukounaries bay where we wanted to anchor for the night.

Approaching Koukounaries

All in all it was a really good sail but quite busy with all of the changes to the sail plan and lots and lots of tweaking to try to get the best speed. We recorded 58 miles through the water on our passage and completed that in a shade under 10 hours

Koukounaries is a large bay with apparently some of the best sandy beaches of the Aegean. We anchored off the western-most beach to keep clear of the water ski boats. It was a good place to swim with lots of fish and we were joined by several other sailing yachts and a small French motoryacht.

The ‘big’ neighbours

The Frenchman would probably be very upset with me for calling his motor yacht small, however, his probably only cost the price if a large mansion whereas our larger neighbours probably cost the price of a small town!

We only stayed one night at Koukounaries but it served us very well. It was beautifully still in the morning for swimming and we weren’t even bothered by the evening beach music; once the beach had cleared of most of the sunbathers and the staff started clearing up, the DJ switched to a series of Pink Floyd tracks which took us both back to our earlier years. Very mellow.

Koukounaries, Greece