Míkonos in passing

Ruined buildings of Ancient Delos’ commercial harbour    

The regulations prohibit yachts us from staying at anchor overnight close to Ancient Delos so, having enjoyed our visit ashore, we had to move on. Raising the anchor after lunch in the cockpit and a quick dip in the sea to cool off, we elected to motor north around the island because it would allow us to see the ruins better. We went past the remains of the commercial harbour buildings and wondered if we should have walked around them as well as the main sites; perhaps one for next time.

Shallow water from what remains of the end of the ancient breakwater    

Despite the distracting views ashore we had to also keep more than one eye open on the navigation. The gap between the end of the ancient harbour breakwater and the island west of Delos is quite narrow so ,dodging the anchored yachts and the shallow bits, we picked our way through with not a lot of space under our keel.

One last look at ancient Delos

Working our way north and into wind we got one last good look at the ruins of ancient Delos before they were obscured and we turned east around the northern side of the island. From here we could sail but we were only going a few miles to the south side of Míkonos and so we went for the lazy option of just unrolling the genoa to get us there.

Órmos Ornos

On the southeastern corner of Míkonos the chart shows what looked to be a sheltered bay where we hoped to anchor for the night. When we got there it was clear that we weren’t the only ones with that idea: the bay was already very full.

We passed an armada of very large anchored yachts on our way into the bay and looked to find a space amongst the more conservatively sized ones closer in. It took us 4(!) attempts to set the anchor so that we were happy with it but the pilot book does warn that holding is patchy due to weed. We ended up with the anchor dug into a good sandy patch but were a bit closer to the rocky shore than we wanted to be. The wind was supposed to stay blowing from the north but inevitably at sunset it wasn’t, so we laid the kedge anchor to make sure that we didn’t swing. We tried a new technique of floating the kedge anchor from one of our large fenders and swimming it out to the place where we wanted drop it. After releasing the anchor from its float we could then pull in on the warp to hold BV in position. On the first attempt the anchor pulled straight across the sandy patch Nicky dropped it on but on the second attempt the system worked OK. It’s not something we expect to do often but it saved us from inflating the dinghy and taking an extra swim is not really a hardship when the water is so warm [Ed: says the guy who stayed on board!].

We were pleased that we had been able to see ancient Delos to add to our collection of significant archaeological sites for this year. With that done we were had intended to relax for a few days to allow us to see a little of Míkonos and some nice island anchorages before moving on towards Bodrum where we will meet my son and his girlfriend early in September. However, the weather forecast was becoming a bit of a concern, with the meltemi set to blow strongly from the weekend, possibly for long enough to keep us in port for about 5 days.  We had a re-think and decided to leave the delights of exploring Míkonos to next year’s agenda.

Leaving Órmos Ornos – even busier than when we arrived

The forecast wind for Wednesday 19 August was too good to miss for moving east before the meltemi picked up, so in the morning we left Órmos Ornos at 0730 with a plan to move on about 60 miles. Yachts had arrived after us and so the inner part of the bay was tightly packed with anchored yachts.

The outer part of the bay was busier too

The outer part of the bay was a little busier too and we surmised that the airport on Míkonos made the bay a good location to link up owners and passengers with these superyachts.

Turning out of Órmos Ornos it quickly became apparent that what we had thought was a large collection of superyachts was nothing of the sort. The next bay east was crammed full of them...

... and the bay beyond that too. There must have been billions of pounds of luxury yachts all within a few kilometers of us. All very nice, but they were all at anchor and we were racing east with spray flying having a fantastic sail in the brisk northerly wind. We were aiming to get as far as the island of Pátmos to put us in a better position for meeting our pick-up deadline for Alex and Lucy but also to allow us time to explore some of the Dodecanese islands on the way.

Míkonos, Greece