Tom Döhler
We both get itchy feet after being “on the hook” for a while. We definitely enjoyed hanging out in Paros, but it started to feel a bit like we were moving in, so we had to go. Today was the day: the winds looked good, and we should have a nice downwind sail from Paros to Amorgos, around 45 miles. We got up early and managed to leave the anchorage at 07:15. There was no wind yet, which served us well as we had to go through the shallow passage between Paros and Antiparos. We’d rather do that under engine anyway. Once through the passage, we found some wind and the sails went up. It felt so good to be finally moving again! We soon started heading east along the south coast of Paros, and with the wind on the beam we had both sails out and enjoyed a sporty sail across the Paros/Naxos channel. The seas were still relatively flat and Bini was effortlessly flying across the water making 7 knots. The wind always bends around the corners of the islands here and closer to Naxos we had to drop the main and sail under genoa alone. Dropping the main didn’t go as smoothly as we’d planned, we must be out of practise a bit!
We finally got the boat settled and sailing nicely downwind when we saw the no-wind-line in the water just in front of us. The islands do really weird things to the wind here, sometimes accelerating it, sometimes stopping it completely, and one never really knows what one is going to get. In this case, the wind dropped completely behind Naxos and we went from sailing with two reefs in the genoa to literally bobbing in the water within 10 seconds. Oh well, away went the sail and on went the engine. We motored south a bit, through the small cyclades and towards Amorgos. The sun was shining, the boat was gently rocking through the waves and I was just about to fall asleep when Camilla announced: “There is wind in front of us, let’s get the sails up!”. And before you know it we were sailing in a stiff breeze and about 2 meter waves towards Amorgos. It was a weird sail as we were expecting to sail downwind, but somehow the wind had turned and we were sailing close hauled across a sizeable sea.
We arrived in our anchorage in Amorgos to be greeted by the oh so familiar sound of gusts rolling off the hills. Great! The anchorage was somewhat tricky as the bottom comes up fast and the desired 10 meter depth contour was packed with boats. We found a nice spot, dug in the anchor and settled for the night, reflecting on what can only be described as “A day of sailing that had it all”.
