Summer 2015

Blogs relating to the summer sailing season of 2015

Having had to cut short our last trip to Kalamos island because of our unwelcome guest we went to try again, this time with the aim to visit the main village. A windless day meant a motor across flat seas to the distinctively hump backed island. We didn’t want to go into […]

Kalamos and Mitika

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We’d been put off from visiting Spartochori by stories of how busy it got there, but when we finally decided to go it was anything but. We arrived about midday and chose to go to the quay at the southern end (by Taverna Spilia), rather than the one off to […]

Spartochori

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Ratty, Roland, Ben, Basil. Whichever cosy name we gave our furry stowaway it didn’t make the rat any less unwelcome. We were very lax when we tied our lines ashore at Port Leone on Kalamos. Not once did it cross our minds to put anything on the lines to stop a […]

Rats!

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After the watermaker repairs it was time to head further afield so we headed down to Port Leone on the southern end of Kalamos Island as we both wanted to see the abandoned village there. The village (also known as Kefali) was abandoned after the large earthquake in 1953 which […]

Port Leone

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We had to head back to Nidri to get some parts to try and fix the leak on our watermaker. Purity and volume were good but we had a bit of weepage out of the ends of the membrane housings. One of the retaining bands around the housings had split […]

We Are Sailing

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A short hop from Ormo Varko around the corner brought us to Palairos, also on the mainland. Approaching the small harbour at Palairos we could see the beach to the south with a couple of boats anchored to the north. It looked like there were a few bars lining the […]

Palairos

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We spent the last week anchored in Bungalow Bay (the eastern end of Ormo Varko). We had a bit of boat work to do – sticking on Crazy Horse’s name stickers to our new dinghy, fixing reverse on the outboard, commissioning the watermaker and tracking down a leak on it; […]

Another Week Goes By

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and we can now make some to drink! When we bought Emerald in America back in 2004, we got a bit over excited in the chandleries there as at the time the dollar to £ was almost 2 to 1. We ended up cramming Emerald with lots of goodies including […]

Water, Water Everywhere

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We’ve not had much luck with the dinghies we’ve owned. First off was the one that came with Emerald, a 3.1m Quicksilver inflatable with wooden floor. It weighed about 3 million tonnes making it a pain to haul up on beaches or onto the davits. After our 3 month trip […]

Crazy Horse and Pony Tales

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Doing something for the first time in Emerald can make us a little nervous, particularly if it involves close quarters manoeuvring. So today we set off for our first ‘tying to a tree’ Med mooring adventure with just a little trepidation nibbling away at us. There are three large bays […]

Tied to a tree on Meganisi

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When we bought Emerald her deck and coachroof had previously been painted using Awlgrip paint. It weathered well but in the last few years had begun to look worn, scratched and faded. We have made a few epoxy repairs to the deck which had to be painted to protect the […]

Painted Lady

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1st June A couple of weeks in Vlicho Bay and it was time for a change of scenery. We decided to head over to Ormo Varko on the mainland, 6nm northeast of Nydri. A light easterly was blowing and we managed to sail all the way; as we passed the small […]

Fire and Tunes in Bungalow Bay

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