POSTCARD FROM LEONIE
leaving the kids and two other adults having fun on the ship. Their gaiety soon turned to panic when the boat began to drag its anchor – pretty daunting in a fairly crowded bay but easily resolved if you know how to turn on the engine. Unfortunately, these guys didn’t and were screaming for the skipper to come back and help. He, however, was out of sight and earshot which caused the shouts of the six on board to become more and more frantic. Leonie was the furthest yacht away from the wayward ship but Carl was the only person to respond to the crew’s desperate calls. I have never seen him row so fast. When he was halfway there the skipper appeared on the beach, saw what was happening and motored over to his stricken family at top speed. Meanwhile, Carl shouted over to the kids to put more chain out in the hope the anchor would bite, which they did. Once on board, the skipper
flicked on the engine, hauled up the anchor and raced over to the mainland where they could lash up to a pontoon and relax, safe in the knowledge the boat was not going to drift off in the dead of night. We stayed in the bay for a few nights and then headed over to Port Leone on Nisos Kalamos. Port Leone is a big sheltered cove below an aban- doned village which was destroyed by an earthquake in the 1950s. The Italians are renowned in these
waters for holidaying in August and for being boisterous and flash. What should turn up in Port Leonie on July 30 but a shiny metallic gold yacht crewed by four ‘mature’ men in tight speedos. Needless to say, the yacht was flying the Italian flag, the first we had seen all summer. That night a storm raged beyond the mountain, over towards Meganisi and Lefkas. We were cosy and shel- tered in Port Leone, the only sign of the gale was sheet lightning illuminat- ing the sky continuously for an hour. The next day a katabatic wind*
blowing from the direction of last night’s storm gusted over
Leonie at secluded anchorage at Kastos
the mountain and around the bay pushing us nearer to the shore than was comfortable, so we decided to let out more stern line and pull in a bit of the anchor chain to move us further out. Before we could do this an
Italian couple performed a comedy of errors while attempting to go stern-to next to us, resulting in them dragging their anchor at right angles to ours and the yacht the other side of us, while being blown off shore. We feared they would yank our anchor up too and could only slowly inch Leonie forward away from the rocks behind because the Italian yacht was in the way and we wanted to make sure our anchor was ok. All this took ages and the Italian couple were oblivious to everything but their own mess. Eventually they left and we made safe.
Kalamos harbour was the next
stop, just a short hop around the corner. The port was super busy with yacht charters but we managed to find a space for Leonie. In the hills above the pretty port and village we enjoyed our first long walk since injuring our feet in a motorbike accident three weeks earlier. We decided to sail over to Astakos on the mainland to draw out some cash, as there is no ATM on Kalamos, and we were down to our last pen- nies. As we charged into Astakos Bay in a Force 4, Carl got an earful for instigating a gybe without telling me. He bought me a cowbell in town for our 10th wedding anniversary (tin) to make up for it….There were no charter yachts here, Astakos is
earmarked by the Greeks for holiday- ing. When a local fishing boat came in I joined the townsfolk who were buying the catch. The man nodded as I asked for four mackerel but got carried away and put eight in the bag. He looked up when he realised he had overfilled it and I repeated that I only wanted four. He smiled, shrugged and said “Have eight for the same price – three euros.” After refuelling and showering at
Astakos, we continued around the mainland to the extremely sheltered and remote anchorage in the huge bay of Petelas, where we joined 15 yachts and a fishing trawler taking shelter from a Force 7 gale raging outside. The next day the anchorage was like a millpond. On the island of Kastos we found
a sublime anchorage and had it all to ourselves. We spent a few days there and then headed to Kioni harbour on Ithaca. Greece is an amazing place to cruise – the scenery is beautiful, the people are friendly and the ports are often free to visit as they prefer you to spend your money in town to support the local businesses. The majority of the shops and restaurants don’t take cards and ATMs on many islands are non-existent so carrying cash is essential. We ended our summer in a gem of a port at Vathi on Meganisi. Not too busy with tourists when we visited, the pretty town has a thriving, friendly local community. We were sad to say goodbye but can’t wait to return next spring and continue with part two of our adventures on Leonie.•
* Editor’s note - a wind that carries high density air from a higher elevation down a slope under the force of gravity, sometimes at elevated speeds.
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