The bay at Ormos Stafylos was pretty bouncy – and we were woken up being bombarded with wasps. As usual, we had left the cabin doors open for ventilation and the cabin was full of wasps! No idea where they came from or why they picked us, but since Ed is allergic to wasp stings, we were a bit concerned. We very quickly had a cup of coffee and managed to get all the wasps out of the cabin and closed the doors before pulling up the anchor and getting underway just after 09h00.
We were planning to head for the island of Peristera, taking in the coast of Alonnisos on the way. We cruised on engine along the remainder of the south Skopelos coast then crossed to Alonnisos where we came across our friends in “Mistral” coming in the other direction. We were just about to hoist our sails and point towards Peristera – and we exchanged photos over Facebook although we were at a big distance from each other!
We sailed over to Peristera, tacking upwind all the way – although there wasn’t much wind to speak of and at times we had trouble to keep the boat going. Ed went on deck and checked out the sails as it isn’t often calm enough upwind for him to do that! An hour and several tacks later we dropped the sails and approached the first of the Peristera bays, Ormos Xero. Again, it is all very pretty – but Xero wasn’t shallow enough with enough space to anchor and we would have to take a line to the shore. We are trying to avoid doing this at the moment until we get the anchor changed as it’s even worse coming loose when you have lines tied to the stern as well!
We checked out the next one – Ormos Peristera. This is an amazing bay and an oasis of calm! All you can hear are the cicadas in the trees and the water is crystal clear and flat and there is no wind. This probably explains why there were so many boats in there already!!! Again, we could have stayed there next to other boats by taking a line to the shore but we were really not comfortable doing this – although I had hoped Ed would be happy there as it was so calm … but not to be.
The last bay was also not feasible – there was only space for two boats and they were already occupied by a big motor cruiser and a gullet … so staying at Peristera is not going to happen! We headed back to Alonnisos where there are several bays along the coast and dropped anchor in Ormos Tzortzi where there were big patches of sand and already a few yachts. I was pretty grumpy as I was tired from the rocking of the previous night and disappointed that we hadn’t managed to stop at Peristera – I had hoped to get a calm bay and a swim, but it didn’t look like that was going to happen. The anchor winch was obviously responding to my mood – as it jammed with a great big knot of chain in the locker, before the anchor had set properly – so I had to untie it all, pull the chain back in and start again. It was fine the second time and we set nicely in a big patch of sand – all will be well as long as the wind doesn’t turn 🙂
We DID get that swim …. although the bay had horrendous swells coming in from passing boats and we were rolling around all over the place until later in the evening. If it wasn’t for all the passing boats, this bay would be lovely – but it seems like this is a characteristic of all the bays around here! We’ve got a few wasps again – but they seem to be put off by the mosquito coil – so hopefully we’ll get a good nights sleep.
Tomorrow we are planning to head up to the island of Kira Panagia which is in the national park protected area and about 3 hours sailing away.