It seems we are plagued with weather issues this year! We had planned to make the crossing back to the Sporades directly from Sikia, but the forecast was showing yet another storm on the way in so we needed to find better shelter. We had spent the day in Sikia doing maintenance on the generator which needed a repair to the water pump so after the 2nd night in Sikia, we decided to duck around the corner to the protection of Koufos again.
The waves were rolling from the beam making for an uncomfortable rounding of the headland of Sithonia and certainly all the bays in the area were untenable. The last time we had chosen to anchor in a small quiet bay close to Koufos, but this time we decided to head for the main harbour – given that the season was drawing to a close, we expected more space to be available now. This was indeed the case, although there were still a lot of boats and not as much space as we would have liked!
We had heard a lot of comments about the bay in Koufos which is why we had avoided it the first time – lots of foul on the seabed being entangled with anchors and chains. We didn’t have any of this problem at all – but the water itself was not very clean and was hosting a large shoal of jellyfish at the time! No swimming during our stay then. The water is pretty deep in most of the bay – and due to the confined space, we weren’t able to put out as much scope as we would have liked. But beggars can’t be choosers – so we so did the best we could.
The storm came in as forecast but the maximum we saw as 20 knots in the bay and although it kept up the 20 knots for two days, it was calm and comfortable so a good place to hide out. Just waiting for that weather window again!