Néa Marmarás

We left Porto Koufo at 1400 on Saturday 4 June – a late start to give the light wind time to build. That proved to be a good move as we once we were outside the entrance to the bay we were able to switch off the engine and sail for  most of the short passage up the coast to Néa Marmarás. On the way we passed many lovely looking, sandy beaches but all were open to the day’s southwestly wind.

Though there has probably been a settlement at Néa Marmarás since before Byzantine times, the name is relatively recent. During the 1922/23 population exchanges the Greeks from Marmaris in Turkey were relocated here and renamed the village after their former home. The town has grown somewhat since those times and is now quite large, straggling up and over the hill behind the harbour.

The early settlers’ harbour would have been quite small, and entirely open to winds from the south. In recent years a wavebreaker pontoon has been installed to protect vessels from the full force of southerly weather. However, it has obviously taken a battering and bits of it are scattered around the entrance to the harbour.

We worked our way around the ‘end’ of the wavebreaker and found ourselves a berth on the outer of the 2 pontoons on the west side of the harbour. Although the wavebreaker pontoon is now effectively only half its designed length, it still provides a surprising amount of shelter to vessels on the pontoons [Ed: though it blew no more than 15 knots whilst we were there].

The town itself is an attractive and busy resort. Definitely a resort but the shops are smart, many of the houses and tavernas are swathed in bougainvillea and other flowering plants and the harbour has a variety of different aspects. Though the season was not in full swing when we visited, there is clearly a thriving tourist industry – to judge by the number of fur shops and the Cyrillic script on the taverna signs, much of it aimed at Russians.

In fact, there is quite an eastern European flavour about the visitors in this area. We were moored alongside a Romanian yacht and a couple of berths down from a Hungarian registered boat and have seen many more similarly flagged vessels around the Khalkidhiki than we have further south. We chatted to the owner of the Romanian yacht. He’s running a sea school from the boat and teaches the theoretical courses at home during the winter. But bookings are not high at the moment, which mirrors the economic difficulties over much of Europe. However, he said that he is hopeful that he’s getting in at the beginning of any Romanian yachting boom; we can only wish him well with his venture.

Néa Marmarás by night   

Néa Marmarás, Greece