Pirgadhíkia

Flat calm   

Our pilot book suggested that the village of Pirgadhíkia is worth the effort of getting right up to the top of the Singitikós Gulf. It was actually very close to us and so we thought that we’d take a look. We left Nisís Dhrenia at 11am on 29 May in warm but overcast weather but with not a breath of wind. Motoring along, the short 12 mile passage should have been uneventful but, as the log ticked over, we had cause to celebrate; we had sailed BV 20,000 miles since we bought her in February 2007. A good cause for a celebratory midday beer.

Pirgadhíkia   

Thessaloníki is, after Athens, Greece’s second city. As it is only 40 miles away the area that we are currently exploring is where the people of Thessaloníki escape to for holidays and weekend seaside fun. As Pirgadhíkia came into view we saw that it has a lot of apartments and villas overlooking the small port, presumably to service this need.

Also, the small beach area and surrounds were crammed with cafés and tavernas, all busy with locals enjoying a Sunday out.

Looking at the port we could see several concrete pontoons and there initially seemed to be lots of space but our preferred location on the inside was a criss-cross of pick-up lines for small boats. If we went inside we’d most likely pick up a rope around our propeller so we chose to go on the outside. On closer inspection there was really only one pontoon with proper shore access so we tied up there. The others had been in the pontoon equivalent of a conker match; the corners were very bashed and the interconnecting bridges had broken off. Clearly the port had suffered some significant storms over the winter months.

BV was moored up by 1300 and so we switched our efforts to producing one of our favourite salads for lunch. With crispy fresh croutons, anchovies and a rich dressing to accompany the eggs and lettuce it worked perfectly with a glass of white wine.

Nicky had taken some sun and moon sights using the bubble horizon when we were at Nisís Dhrenia and had found it quite difficult to get a steady reading. She’d tried using the bubble horizon attached to the sextant because the islands had obscured the real horizon. Her afternoon challenge was to complete the calculations which are done in a slightly different way to those taken with a sextant in the standard configuration. This produced a very furrowed brow as her calculations put us about 44 miles away from Nisís Dhrenia. The sextant came out again and she took some more sights with the bubble horizon attached to see if she could get a closer fix. She did but it was still not great so I think there will be a little internet research to check that the corrections have been applied correctly.

I spent a couple of hours in a café uploading the blog entries which went as far back as our time on Thásos.

Pirgadhíkia by night   

Pirgadhíkia looked very pleasant by night but we resisted the temptation to eat ashore because we still had lots of food on board which we didn’t want to waste. Dinner in the cockpit preceded a fierce backgammon match. Nicky had knocked me off the backgammon champion’s pedestal whilst we were at Nisís Dhrenia and sadly my efforts here did nothing to change her run of success.

Monday morning ashore the tavernas were very quiet but the mini market and bakery were open which was more what we needed. As a bonus we found out that the mini market also stocks gas bottles so we managed to exchange our empty one, which was a very unexpected success.

Pirgadhíkia had been a pleasant and useful stop for us. Whilst undoubtedly it would be much livelier a little later in the year it had provided exactly what we needed and BV was victualled and ready to move on to some more island anchorages on the western side of the gulf.

Pirgadhíkia, Greece