Sat 25 May to Mon 27 May – A few days in Vathy

We spent a few days holed up in Vathy waiting out some gnarly S/E winds that were on the forecast, but didn’t end up materialising. Even though weather forecasting has become much better, with models such as ECMWF forecasting on grids as small as 8 kilometers, taking local phenomena caused by weird geography is still something that doesn’t seem to work. Oh well, I’m sure AI and big data are going to solve this problem soon enough. Until then, it’s a game of reading forecasts and hoping for the best. We used the calm weather of Saturday to fly the drone. We bought a Mavic DJI Air drone and this little piece of kit is just stunning. It literally fits into the palm of your hand, can fly super fast and high up, and takes amazing pictures. We’re still learning how to fly it properly so getting out and flying is still a bit nerve wracking. This time we managed to launch it and catch it on the boat though, so we’re making progress! 

While Vathy itself is a bit lacklustre the nature around it quite beautiful. We took advantage of being tucked away nicely and went to explore the area. There’s a stunning set of hills, interrupted by steep valleys with tiny beaches, turquoise water and no people, absolutely fantastic! 

The next day (Sunday) we were joined by our boat buddies on Polaris and Right Meow. It’s always nice to have friendly boats around when waiting out some weather as it can get a bit dull hanging out on the boat waiting for the wind to pick up, and then hoping for it to go away as quickly as possible. It started getting quite cozy in the anchorage in the afternoon as more boats piled in to sit out the weather.

Monday morning was a bit of a rude awakening, as it always tends to be! We woke up at around 5’ish with the rain, a sizeable wind blowing through the rig, and to make a sweet morning perfect it was all coming from the wrong direction. Now unexpected wind shifts in anchorages are always a bit tricky. You never know who set their anchor properly and who didn’t, how much chain people have out and so on. A quick look up on deck revealed that we were sitting fine and the boats around us were keeping a safe distance. A few meters down the bay however we saw a boat moving surprisingly quickly without anyone on deck. Also the direction of their travel was rather peculiar. Do boats go on rocks? 

It was clear that their anchor had broken out and the boat was on its way to ground itself on the rocks. The crew must have still been battling off the booze from the night before as they were pretty much the only boat with no one on deck. Their neighbour was happily sitting in the cockpit watching the show, instead of actually trying to do something. We jumped in our follies and scrambled to put the engine on the dinghy to go over and wake them up, but luckily as we were ready to go they’d been woken up. I’m sure it was by the scraping sounds on the hull and their rather swift departure seemed to confirm my theory.

As mentioned earlier the strong winds didn’t materialise so we used the opportunity to walk to  another lovely bay at the north end of Vathy, and spend a fantastic evening with our boat friends on Right Meow. This is also when I learned that sailing and a hangover are not necessarily the best friends, but that’s a story for another time.