Sailing to Thessaloníki

Leaving Néa Skioni   

We left Néa Skioni at 10 am on Thursday 9 June for the 52-mile passage to Thessaloníki. The forecast was for light winds in the morning building during the afternoon and that’s exactly what we got.

Ák Posidhion   

The sandy spit of Ák Posidhion behind us   

Pitta pizzas   

For the first 3 hours, however, it was a motor sail west which took us past the Ák Posidhion headland. The headland has a ½nm-long sandy spit off it. It’s a very shallow spit too: even most of the way to its end, the water is still under 2m deep. The wind was trying but it didn’t really get going enough to sail until after lunch. So, to keep busy whilst we were motoring, I worked on a creative lunch of pitta pizzas [Ed: and jolly tasty they were too!].

By 1300-ish the wind had finally built enough to be able to sail, so we switched off the engine and poled the genoa opposite the main. As per the forecast the wind built steadily through the afternoon and we had a good fun downwind ride up the Thermïakos Gulf – not really what you expect (south-easterly winds) in the Aegean at this time of year, even up here.

Mount Olympus almost entirely hidden by clouds   

As we sailed up the gulf we had hoped that we would get a good view of Mount Olympus out to the west. Unfortunately, the mountain was pretty much entirely hidden by a layer of cloud – clearly the gods were partying hard and wanted some privacy. At the top of the gulf is a narrow neck of water joining the Thermïakos Gulf to the Kolpos Thessaloníkis. A traffic separation scheme (TSS) runs through it taking up most of the available searoom.

Windsurfers and kitesurfers off Ák Tourla and Ák Megálo Émvolon   

As we sped along past the headlands at this narrowest section, Ák Tourla and Ák Megálo Émvolon, keeping in the narrow area of deep water between the TSS and the shallows inshore, we watched kite surfers and wind surfers racing up and down. We had to gybe here, just where the wind was at its strongest and the space at its busiest. [Ed: Why can’t the windsurfers stay in the real shallows where we can’t go?] So we rolled up the genoa, got the pole away and then gybed the mainsail before unrolling the genoa again.

Ship anchorage off Thessaloníki on our port side   

Once on our new course we could clearly see all the shipping anchored off Thessaloníki. The city is a busy port and with that number and size of ships operating in and out of the Thermic Gulf there’s a good reason for the TSS!

Aretsou Marina ahead   

The gybe was the start of our final leg to Thessaloníki marina. Heading up to the northeast we were on a beam reach and, like the windsurfers, we raced along, in our case at between 8 and 8½ knots, sometimes even faster as we surfed on a wave. It was a great finale to a good sailing passage.

Thessaloníki Aretsou Marina   

We arrived outside the marina at about 1900, expecting from the entry in our pilot book that there would still be staff on site. However, there was no response to our radio calls so we moored up in one of the many empty spaces. The following morning we discovered that the marina personnel are only in work from 0900 to 1630, so it was no wonder that we had had no response. We moved to an alternative berth (one that didn’t belong to anyone) and started planning our assault on the tourist sites of Thessaloníki.

Thessaloníki, Greece