Kiparíssi Chapel Cove

We left Ieraka at 1050 on Friday 15 July in a flat calm, so we left the sail cover on and motored the 13 miles north towards the large bay at Kiparíssi. The hot, still weather had an interesting effect on the AIS signals. Amazingly we picked up AIS signals from ships up to 150 miles away; the screen was covered in ships out as far as the north coast of Crete. Whilst the new aerial is definitely much more sensitive than the last one, and we now normally pick up ships out to 60 miles, the 150 mile range must have been due to some sort of climatic ducting of the VHF signals.

Approaching Kiparíssi   

Kiparíssi is a large bay with a colourful amphitheatre-like backdrop of high cliffs. We planned to spend a night here waiting for better wind to sail east towards Naxos. There are a few options for mooring or anchoring in the bay…

Chapel Cove   

… but the one that most appealed to us was a remote quay on the southern side of the bay, an area called Chapel Cove in our pilot book.

There was a small RIB on the quay and a couple of hikers swimming when we arrived but they moved off and soon we had the place to ourselves. The snorkelling was excellent with lots of fish, including some bright orange ones we haven’t seen before.

In the afternoon the weather continued to be hot and hazy with very little wind. Fans and the wind scoop kept the temperature in the saloon down to 30 degrees Celsius so we busied ourselves down in the shade catching up on admin and every now and then emerged for a cooling swim.

A few more hikers and a couple of small boats briefly visited the quay in the late afternoon but by the cool early evening we were completely on our own again. We’d rustled up a plan for a big barbeque and so spent a lovely evening sipping Samos wine whilst turning meat over hot coals; fabulous!

Kiparíssi  Chapel Cove, Greece