Kíthnos Órmos Áy Ioannis

Dawn at Andíparos   

Tuesday 30 August was to be a day of little or no wind. That was certainly the case when we got up in the morning; there was barely a ripple on the water in our anchorage at Andíparos.

Anchor below our stern (L) and our chain on the seabed (R)   

The still water meant that we could see the bottom incredibly clearly. Our anchor chain resting on the bottom and snaking off to the anchor at the bow, whilst at the stern we could see a large Admiralty pattern anchor secured to the seabed. There should have been about a metre of clearance between the upper fluke of that anchor and the bottom of our keel but it didn’t look it. To save heartbeats, we decided not to think too deeply about it; there had been no bump!

Creeping out of Andíparos   

The shallow water extends to the east of Andíparos and up through the Paros/Andíparos Channel passage, so we crept out of the harbour carefully.

Not much water below us! [Ed: but lots of sponges!]   

Making our way towards the passage transit line, the depth gauge assured us there was enough water but seeing the bottom so close that it seemed we should be able to reach down and touch it does focus you on navigating carefully. Murky water makes for blissful ignorance.

Approaching Órmos Áy Ioannis on Kíthnos   

The windless theme continued pretty much all of the way to Kíthnos. Typically, the only workable wind to sail arrived as we approached our anchorage on the eastern side of the island. It was, however, very short lived and light. Just motoring did have the benefit of allowing me to sit at the chart table for most of the 39 mile passage and work on some of the backlog of entries for the blog.

Sir James Dyson’s ‘Nahlin’   

As we made our way into Áy Ioannis we noticed that Sir James Dyson, of vacuum cleaner fame, had beaten us to it. His rather splendid 87 metre yacht ‘Nahlin’ was already anchored in the bay.

We tucked ourselves into a small bay and had it to ourselves. There were a couple of motorboats in the other bay and later a couple of yachts turned up and anchored there too.

But we felt that we’d got the prime position with the best shelter. We’d made good time getting to Kíthnos so in the afternoon we took the opportunity to do a few admin chores, a bit of swimming and then some lazing with a book and a beer. Very civilised!

[Ed: note the day keelboat on the deck of Nahlin (look for the small mast behind the RIB in the davits on the port side)    

In the evening the light turned golden which made ‘Nahlin’ stand out beautifully and after dark we found that the sky was ablaze with stars. With so little cultural lighting and no moon we could see far more stars than normal. It was a lovely anchorage and far enough north that we should have a good passage in the morning into the Saronic Gulf.

Órmos Áy Ioannis, Greece