The Tour of Greek Islands after EMYR

Getting to Paradise

We have 3 sources of information about the Greek Islands on board. First there is “Gods’s word,” also known as the Greek Waters Pilot Guide by Rod Heikell. He has apparently been to every bay and harbor in Greece and has maps on each harbor and writes the required details – where it is located, how to find it, problems to be avoided (big rocks, places where you will have trouble anchoring) and whether they have supplies, water and electricity there. Then he gives his opinion about visiting that harbor – is it worth it. Our next source of information is the LP – the Lonely Planet Guide for the Greek Islands. These guys cover most of the obscure islands as well as the ones all tourists visit and tell some interesting things about each place. We also have a book that relays different traveler’s experiences in Greece. That sets the flavor of the country and may be specific about which island they are writing about, but generally, it’s not too helpful on a day to day basis.

Right now we are anchored in Paradise Bay on Kalimnos, an island next to KOS. Heikell says it’s really not worth the stop, so that definitely keeps the traffic down. In fact, Heikell says to skip the entire island of Kalimnos because the neighbor island, KOS, is so touristy that you probably want to get a little distance from KOS to recover. LP doesn’t list Paradise Bay in their book as a place to visit either. In fact, we wouldn’t be here except a yachtie next to us last night in Lipso said it was one of his favorite places to visit. This bay has a population of about 6 people. Nicholas is the main man. He’s a teacher in the winter and in the summer runs a taverna in this bay. Because he motors out and helps each boat anchor and brings them a basket of figs and a map his daughter drew of the island, most feel obliged to go to his taverna for dinner. That’s how Nicholas makes his money during the summer. Goats chase each other along the steep cliffs around the bay, with their bells constantly clanging. There are also roosters that crow even in the afternoon. Then there’s one fisherman sitting on his boat off our port side. We weren’t clear whether he’s waiting for the calamari fishing tonight or not. Nicholas said it’s been too windy for the small Greek fishing boats to go out the last few nights. The docks are whitewashed and also have a Greek flag on them. The ends of the dock are painted with “Greek – blue” paint. That’s the color you see all over Greece on houses, churches and now on docks. There must be 30 or more goats in these hills. There is a German boat and a Dutch boat also anchored next to us. We did a “med mooring type of anchoring” then Nickolas took our long line and tied it on his dock to keep us from moving around. Steve has been interested in all the rock wall fences that you see all over these Greek Islands. Nickolas said these rock walls have been here for more than 100 years. He says it’s to keep the goats from eating the few trees that remain on the island. He says the goats can climb the trees. It’s true that goats drink salt water. We have watched them do this. Not so sure about goats eating or climbing trees.

So, getting back to how we ended up in Paradise Bay, our last website update had me enjoying happy hour in a taverna in Fethiye, Turkey, waiting for Brian and Gretchen to arrive. I got to know the local merchants almost on a first name basis so when they finally arrived, I was able to give them a proper tour of Fethiye. Brian got pretty excited about buying a Turkish rug so we went to “my friend’s” shop. Things were going well until Gretchen and Brian couldn’t decide on the right color for their living room so they ended up “rugless in Turkey” which is almost unheard of.

After checking out a great spice shop and a variety of other stores, we finally decided it was time to explore the Turkish coast. You need to arrive at the different bays early in the day because most of the good ones are occupied by the Turkish gullets (boats that tourists rent for a week complete with cook and crew.) These are beautiful boats with two masts but rarely do you see them with sails up. They just motor between the different bays, visiting a different one each night. We finally found a good place to anchor but had to do three tries before we felt the anchor was holding well enough for the night. Gretchen is a great swimmer so she checked out our anchor, reporting she couldn’t see it because it was lost in the weeds – hum…

Unfortunately, that night at midnight, the wind changed direction and we felt like the anchor was not holding and there was a risk of beaching the boat. Finally at about 1 am we decided it was time to leave for a safer place. It was a 6 hour sail to Marmaris, so we decided to head that direction, getting there just at dawn. Seems that the EMYR mentality of sailing all night was still in my blood.

Anyway, after a few days in Marmaris, we left for Rhodes so I could fly to China to visit the different factories while they had their honeymoon visiting Greek Islands on Sugilite.

The plan was that I was to meet the boat in Rhodes in about 10 days. Steve was still back in San Diego with his mother who was nearing the end of life.

So, 10 days later I’m flying back into Rhodes from Athens. Steve had text messaged me to meet the boat in the “ferry harbor” in Rhodes. So, after flying half way around the world, when the taxi driver lets me off in the ferry harbor and as I start searching for Sugilite, Steve appears. Things were starting to look up! Brian and Gretchen left the next morning at 5 am for the next part of their honeymoon. As we walk around the harbor in Rhodes, we met up with Abracadabra, a Swedish boat from the EMYR Rally (she organized the daily exercise class!) It was fun to pick up where we “left off” in Israel.

We decided to spend the rest of the summer focusing on the Greek Islands to the north of where we keep our boat for the winter – the Dodecanese Islands. First stop was Simi to visit the bakery at the local monastery. It’s a great anchorage that has tour boats visiting once a day for only an hour or two. As we were leaving, we heard another boat calling our name! The French boat in our EMYR group had just arrived at that bay. We said hello and found out that we both would be sailing the Dodecanese Islands for the next few weeks!

Steve and Sandy Lindquist met up with us on the Greek Island of KOS. We headed for Leros, an island somewhat off the beaten path. We anchored off shore and took the dingy in. As we were landing, a man helped us tie off the dingy. Turns out he owned the taverna next to where we landed the dingy and he showed us his pail of fresh calamari that he had just caught. We said we would come to his taverna for dinner. Steve L. and Sandy checked out the beer at the other tavernas that afternoon while Steve B and I climbed up to the castle overlooking the town. It was a long ways up, but we finally navigated through a farmer’s yard to reach the church. When we got to the church, we met two older ladies in the chapel who were “in charge.” They invited us to come in and view the church. Seems they both used to live in Houston so had fairly good English. They told us there had been an explosion in NYC that day but it wasn’t terrorists. What a small world. It amazed me we were getting news about the US from 70 year old ladies tending a Greek church next to a castle on a small Greek island! It took us 2 days to find out about the explosion on the internet.

Next day we headed for Patmos, a wonderful town with an upper town called a Chora. We anchored in the marina there and checked out the monastery up in the Chora that is listed as a World Heritage Site. Another marvelous island!

Next we stopped at Arki, a very small island northeast of Patmos, then Agathonisi, an island half way to Samos. Our plan was to go to Samos, then take a tour over to Turkey and visit Ephesus, the famous Roman ruins. We had even been in contact with Stephanie and had plans to meet up with her as she was about 15 miles from Samos. Unfortunately, once we got within 5 miles of Samos, the temperature increase about 20 degrees and the humidity went up accordingly. Steve L. and Sandy decided it was time to head on to Croatia or perhaps the Ionian Islands. When they found all the next day flights were booked, they opted to leave yet that afternoon, so we rushed back to the boat to get them packed and on their way!

Steve and I were going to stay another day in Samos but it was just too hot so we left for other Greek Islands further from the Turkish coast.

The island of Lipos is definitely off the tourist route. The highlight of the island is to sit in a taverna and watch the people come and go on the ferries that visit once or twice a day. When we got situated in the city marina, we found there were 2 other boats from the EMYR Rally also there so they told us the final news about people we both knew. The wind was blowing a bit there so we ended up staying 3 days. Actually, the real reason we stayed was we had fabulous free internet connection so we could work on the boat. I was able to get many things finalized for the 2008 line with the different factories in China. We also set up our tickets to go visit both of our distributors in England and Austria before we leave Turkey. That will save us one trip back here in September or October.

So with a half day downwind sail from Lipos is how you now come to find us in Paradise Bay, with the goats, fishermen, Nicolas and his kids.