Must needs leave!

We've been sitting at Syros for over a week now. Syros is a beautiful example of Cyclades towns at their best. It's the capital of the Cyclades, and shows its pride by being clad all over in white travetine marble.

Marble streets of Syros

Syros had really appealed to us, even putting on a tall ships show, and a public opera.

Tall ships in town

Another beautiful tall ship

However, the port is large and very very rolly. We were anchored off the town pier, with 2 stern lines and 2 spring lines to the dock. With a large swell which consistently rolled in day after day, the boat was crashing in that peculiar 5 pointed rhythm that people living at anchor know only too well. Boom crash crash, jerk... wait an unspecified interval.... Boom crash jerk crash jerk. You get the idea.

The Boom Crash Opera set-up

We needed to leave, but the meltemi had really set in, winds were 40 knots plus just outside the port breakwater. After 5 days of patiently waiting for a weather window which did not come, we decided that 'Must needs leave', we just had to move along.

So, heart in mouth, we set off for Mykonos. We left very early to try and catch the reduced meltemi winds. An old greek salt told us that the meltemi follows the sun, blowing harder as the sun waxes, and fading (slightly) as the sun wanes.

Rising sun hovering on the horizon 

A slightly stressed Megan at dawn.

This sail proved to be pretty okay. Winds were a consistent 25 knots, gusting to 30. We managed Pavlov just fine, and arrived in Mykonos 7 hours later. Then our fun began. The 'new port' in Mykonos is a concrete wasteland, completely unfinished. With the wind gusting to 40 knots in the port, we managed to pin Pavlov onto a lee pier! Ouch, some small gouges to our newly repaired Pavvie!

With much manual labour, lots of warping lines and 'interesting thinking', we managed to turn the boat 90 degrees so that we were stern to the pier, not completely pinned to it. Just as we got settled, a newly arrived boat also pinned themselves where we'd just vacated. In their attempts to extricate themselves, they put their anchor through Pavlov's hide. Ouch 2!  We settled for an on the spot redemption of 200 Euro's (none of us wanted to face insurance nightmares again).

We recuperated for a day in Mykonos, but really wanted to leave. We were again in a very uncomfortable anchorage, not really able to sleep with the crashing and banging. Mykonos is 'The Byron Bay of Greece', its a young person's party town. Not our idea of fun.

So, Must needs leave... struck again. We warped out of Mykonos and headed for Ikaria. Now the fun really began. We had stepped into the jaws of the Meltemi monster. We were managing quite well on the 55 nautical mile sail. The winds were hitting 40 knots and a lot of green water was coming over the bows. I was becoming hypothermic, so we managed to strip off our wet clothes and put on full wet weather gear, while I never let go of the wheel. (I should explain, that Otto, our autopilot, has deceased. Or at least, deceases periodically with rebirth to occur at an unnamed future time interval). The seas were very lumpy and confused, about 3-4 metres. I needed to hand-steer continually to keep the boat on course, and prevent us from taking too much water on board.

So we were managing just fine, until the last 12 miles. By this time, we were in the lee of Ikaria, a high mountainous island. I'd assumed that the lee of this island would provide shelter from the meltemi. Wrong!, the wind screamed in gust up to 50 knots off the land. We finally couldn't sail and needed to motor into this wind. The seas were steep and really confused. The bows kept being blown off course by the wind. We were making about half a knot. It took us 3 hours to go 5 miles. It was just on dusk that we pulled into another Boom Crash Opera mooring in the very small harbour of Kirikos on Ikaria. 

Megan was really fearing for her life on this sail. We thought we'd lose the bimini, the wind was getting under it and the framing started to fail. The wind was strong enough to drive spray from the sea, it was very difficult to see because of this salt spray. It was a very hard slog, continually trying to keep the bows on course, creeping painfully to our place of refuge. Some cruisers on shore were watching our painfully slow progress, and were on hand to help us dock. Much appreciated as we were bone weary and salt infused by this time.

One day of recover, and we departed again, en route to Samos. This time, we only had 30 knots gusting to 35 under the cliffs of Fournia. After 50 knot winds, these now feel like a gentle zephyr. So here we are, anchored out in the harbour of Pitagoria. The meltemi has started its siren wail again, but our anchor is dug deep. We are cosy within Pavlov and there is no Boom Crash opera dock to set up its 5 beat counterpoint. Turkey is 1 mile away. We made it out of the meltemi zone. Hurray for us!