Simi Panormitis

You can see from the pictures above that there was absolutely no wind as we motored our way clockwise around the island of Simi on 17 April. The scenery is dramatic with peaks and tall cliffs in places dropping straight down onto isolated beaches. With no wind forecast for a couple of days we decided to make our way around to Panormitis, a bay on the southwestern side of the island which we had not visited before.

There is quite a narrow entrance to the bay and so it wasn’t until we were very close that we coud see into it. A ferry was tied up to the quay and up to our left was a traditional Greek windmill.

As we made our way through the entrance the anchorage to the left opened up and it looked beautiful. We could have tied onto the quay but we elected to go for the peace and quiet of the anchorage.

Across the bay from us was a monastery, the main feature of the bay.

The clocktower looked rather grand by day but even better as dusk fell and it was illuminated. Ashore there is small café and you can, apparently, get bread from the monastery. We didn’t need any more food on board and so focussed on some outstanding chores.

The first thing that we did was to recommission the watermaker which we were very pleased to see works perfectly. Perhaps because of the monastic influence over the bay, I turned my hand to cleaning the windows and starting to polish the stainless steel. The whole job takes about 3 days and I was somewhat reminded of the analogy of painting the Forth Road Bridge; once you have finished, you need to start again. However, the job is now started and BV does look all the better for it.

The bay was very peaceful and we were the only yacht in the bay. A strong meltemi is forecast to blow up later in the week and so we spent the evening poring over our charts and the pilot book working out a plan. We want to visit some new islands but also needed to find secure places to stay in whilst the meltemi blows through. Over the next couple of days we’ll see how the forecasts shape up but in the morning we planned to head west to Nísos Tílos.

Panormitis, Simi, Greece