Santorini

Tris Klithies

We headed off at the crack of dawn to get a gentle northerly wind through the notorious straight between Paros and Naxos. It turned out to be a gentle Westerly but it would be churlish to complain. The wind gradually strengthened from the West (as expected) as we approached Ios and we had already decided to anchor in one of the deserted bays on its East coast. We headed for Thodotis which look great on Google Earth. Unfortunately, we didn't get around to looking at the charts till we were almost there only to find that the bottom is covered by disused submarine cables (otherwise known as anchor traps). So we headed down to Tris Klises which turned out to be much nicer than expected. Almost deserted, clear turquoise water and good holding. Had a nice relaxing evening and night before cracking on next day down to Santorini to meet Anne and Tony on Argosea.

Oia from the crater

We sailed through the crater on a gentle breeze. What a way to see this most spectacular of Greek Islands! Vlichada is the only safe mooring on the island and we knew serious winds were arriving the next day so we headed there nice and early to be sure of getting a good berth. We arrived to be greeted by a "marinero" who was a complete waste of space - knew nothing about how boats worked and kept pulling the wrong ropes and telling us to do things which were plainly impossible. We ended on a concrete wall with chop and winds grinding us on and were in serious danger of damage. I finally managed to get off the wall again with great difficulty (he wouldn't put the ropes where I wanted them to spring off - thank heavens for the trusty bow thruster and even more trusty L with a balloon fender. We re-moored on a hammer head which was much better. Argosea came in an hour later after a very long run from Crete and were rafted up outside a yacht about half their size - by the same "marinero".
All this didn't bode at all well for the next day when an easterly gale was expected which would blow big waves straight into the entrance and onto our boats. Luckily the manager was on and he arranged for us all to be moored inside on safe moorings and all was well in both the Easterly and an immediately following Westerly.

The house of the Ladies - Akrotiri

4500 year old house at Akrotiri - complete with plumbing

We hired a car for a day from Dimitri's for €30 and set off to see the sights. The most impressive was the ruins of Akrotiri which is a pre-eruption city buried by volcanic ash. L and I had been to Santorini before but this site was closed as the roof had collapsed and killed a tourist! The new building which completely encloses the huge site is itself pretty impressive. Much of it has only been partly excavated and typically, in this country, nobody had bothered to try and tell a story with signs and posters. Still we speculated a lot, read what little was available and earwigged on some guides shepherding Japanese tourists around and got a pretty good impression. Some of the houses wouldn't have been out of place in the posher parts of London - they were complete with rainwater guttering and plumbing. And all this 4500 years ago!

Oia - Santorini

We went on to Oia, a spectacular little white-washed and blue painted Cycladic village perched on the Northern tip of the crater. It's very touristy but beautiful for all that. We avoided one very expensive restaurant by the skin of our teeth and found another just down the lane with a better view, nicer stall and much cheaper. It certainly pays to shop around. After a leisurely drive up the east coast, we did some shopping (there is a Lidle) and then went back for a snooze before eating a good meal back at Dimitri's above the marina.




It looked like we were going to be trapped in Santorini by winds for several more days but fortunately a very short weather window opened up for us to rush back up to Tris Klithies on Ios again - this time with Argosea in tow. After another good night, we set of for Sikinos on our way to Milos -only to be hit by a horrible wind and swell on the nose. The cat was sick, lots of things fell on the floor and we eventually gave up and headed back to - guess where - Ios again, this time the town quay where we waited out the wind for a couple of days. I though it would be awful but turned out to be surprisingly nice. Good quality harbour, pretty little town with an even prettier (if touristy) Chora above it.