Sailing to Límnos, Mirina

Leaving Skíros   

As planned we left Linaria harbour on Skíros at 1800 on Wednesday 11 May. After we had set up BV sailing NNE, Nicky produced dinner which we enjoyed together in the cockpit and then I took over the first watch. We had intended to run a 4 hours on, 4 hours off watch roster but the sailing was so easy going that I stayed up for about 5 hours and then handed over to Nicky. The sailing was easy because the wind wasn’t quite as much as forecast. There were a couple of ships which passed close by but for my watch it was just a gentle sail north over smooth seas with the wind on the beam. During Nicky’s watch the wind dropped off a couple of times and she kept us going by motor-sailing. By 5am the wind the wind was 7 knots or less and so we motored for the rest of the passage.

Approaching Mirina harbour on Límnos   

Límnos castle   

With both of us up we made our way into Mirina Harbour at just after 7am. In the hazy morning light it was difficult to pick out the details of the buildings in the harbour and even the large Genoese castle blended perfectly into the hilltop.

However, once inside the large harbour the area on the quay we intended to moor at came into view. It was busier than we had expected and there wasn’t an obvious place for us. There should have been loads of room but a couple of boats had moored alongside and the other 2 places had been criss-crossed with extra mooring lines.

In the main part of the harbour were 2 yachts at anchor and we decided that the easiest solution was to join them; if we needed to we could move onto the quay later in the day, when space opened up.

It had certainly been a stress-free 74 mile passage but not with the forecast steady 10-15 knots of wind on the beam; that would have made for a very fast passage. However, we’d achieved our immediate objective of getting to Límnos, which we had missed last year, and we had logged our first night hours this year too.

Límnos Mirina, Greece