Tom Döhler
The morning started with a fresh westerly breeze, which meant we were sitting on a lee shore. For our readers who are less nautically inclined, “sitting on a lee shore” basically means that the boat is pretty close to the beach, and the wind is blowing the boat further into the direction of the dreaded land mass.
Prudent sailors as we are, we decided to pick up anchor and go into an anchorage a bit further south, just off a beach of Kato Koufenisi which is the small, almost uninhabited island south of “Big Koufenisi”. As we motored through the channel we saw a trimaran anchored off the north side of the island, and they looked very comfortable. It wasn’t a designated anchorage though so we skipped past and continued. Coming around the corner we saw a big motor yacht struggling to get their anchor in, as the gusts off the hills were whipping the water around. Nooo thank you. So we went back up north and decided to be brave and anchor along where the trimaran was. The depths and the holding were good, the water was the most superb blue and turquoise and we were almost the only boat there. Heaven!
Throughout the day the wind started to build, and even though we were pretty protected where we were, a little swell had started to roll in which made the boat roll a bit. Always the optimizers, we picked up the hook and re-anchored a little further north, the idea being that we’d be further away from the headland and would get less swell. The only problem was that now we were closer to the headland on the north side, and swell was piling in from both sides so we were sitting right in the middle. Bini was getting smacked by waves on both sides, so we went back to our old spot and settled in for the night.
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