Amorgós Órmos Kalotaritissa

At 0930 on 11 August we finally left Páros. The anchor windlass worked perfectly when it came to raising the anchor and we initially headed southwest out of Paroikiá to go around the south side of Páros so that we could then head east.

Remmatonisi island to our left   

To save a few miles on our passage we decided the sea was settled enough to work our way through the reef-fringed channel between Andíparos and Páros. In the middle of the channel is the island of Remmatonisi. We went down the western side of this island through a narrow passage with about 3.5 metres of water in it at the shallowest point [Ed: quite an extensive ‘shallowest point’!]. The chart showed that if we had gone the other side of Remmatonisi we’d have probably have gone aground.

Andíparos town   

To our right was the town of Andíparos which seemed popular with yachts…

Our transit to keep us in the channel

… and behind us we kept our eye on our transit to keep us in the channel (pointy rocky island in line with the eastern side of the low-lying Magrines island). Navigating by transits made us feel like we were back home in Guernsey, just without the strong tides.

A further indication that Andíparos is popular was the collection of large motoryachts anchored some way offshore [Ed: but still in only about 5m of water] just south of the town.

We were aiming for the western end of Nísos Amorgós so our route took us past the ‘Small Cyclades’, the islands to the south of Naxos. We were able to sail most of the way but these wind was funnelled around the islands and the islands also caused some fairly extensive wind shadows. The log shows that we ran the engine 4 times here for 5 or 10 minute intervals to get out of these mini-doldrums.

Approaching the western end of Amorgós   

The whole passage was 42 miles, which brought us to the western tip of Amorgós. Tucked in behind a curled rock headland is a small anchorage, Órmos Kalotaritissa, which we intended to use as a night stop but it was very hard to see the entrance.

Getting closer, and with less than a mile to go, the entrance finally started to open up.

Órmos Kalotaritissa   

As we made our way in we could see tripper boats and lots of small boat moorings just off the beach. Sounding our way in carefully we eventually anchored in 3½ metres. The beach was clearly popular with lots of visitors sunning themselves but somehow the location didn’t quite live up to expectations for us. However, the water was clear and we had a good swim including spending some time cleaning off BV’s bottom. There was not a lot of cleaning to do but she had been static in Paroikiá for a while so we thought that we ought to run a sponge over her.

By sunset all of the beach visitors had gone and we were left on our own in the small bay enjoying the stars and a glass of Madeira.

Órmos Kalotaritissa, Greece