Northern Greece Archives - Sailing SY Liberation

Diaporos to Ammouliani

September 1, 2017 Captains Log, Our Travels, Places to Stay

We had to leave Diaporos this morning (unfortunately!) as we are quickly running out of fuel and Ed has had enough of the wasps – we’ve given up the battle and just need to get out of here! After having spent some time laying still, it took a few hours to get the boat back into a movable state – stowing and securing everything away, taking down the Fin Delta and working out how to fold it up again and giving the boat a good clean inside. Ed also had to give the generator a service and oil change – as with all this usage we were well over the service period. He also changed the filters in the water …….

Diaporos Island – Halkidiki, Northern Greece

August 31, 2017 Captains Log, Our Travels, Places to Stay

Diaporos has been a lovely haven of peace and tranquility for most of the time – apart from hiding out from a storm one night, and the CONSTANT bombardment of speed boats (oh, and lets not forget the wasps!). The island is tucked up in the Halkidiki peninsula (“Three Fingers”) in Northern Greece and has the channel to the mainland is protected by the fact that each entrance is fairly enclosed so it creates a sort of “inland sea”. The area is beset with hazards – it’s extremely rocky and both the south and north entrances need to be navigated with care – not something to do at night! Our CMap/Jepperson charts gave leading lines, and following those gave safe …….

Koufos to Thessaloniki

July 27, 2017 Captains Log, Our Travels

Well it was just as usual – the wind turned around 02h00 and the anchor dragged – oh what a surprise! I’m getting used to the sleepless nights but to be honest getting pretty sick of them, and can’t wait to get our new Mantus anchor when we get to Thessaloniki. This time, we have planted the anchor on a sand patch among the weed, so of course when it rotated it has ended up in the weed. We didn’t have to re-anchor, as it did catch – at least enough, since we have only about 10 knots of wind. I spent the rest of the night fitfully sleeping, up and down checking what was happening. Actually, Wednesday turned out …….

Kyra Panagia to Koufos

July 24, 2017 Captains Log, Our Travels

All was well in the night – although the rafted boats did turn around and come very close to us, I shone our flashlight on them and decided that with no wind it would be OK …. Ed was out cold, so I took an executive decision. We had a good night sleep, for once with no rocking around! The crossing to the “three fingers” of the Thessaloniki peninsula is pretty much a straight line over the open sea for about 40 miles – a study of the pilot guides had shown that there are very few, if any, places to anchor and only a few small harbours. We had the feeling we won’t be spending much time in this …….