116 By the Dart • Postcard from Leonie Port Kayio anchorage Sarakiniko Bay (on the left), Elafonisos Island


Stormy weather was due so the next day we left pretty


Porto Kayio and headed off to the town of Yithion at the head of the Lakonikos gulf. We moored at the far end of the quay and the boats either side of us seemed to have been abandoned. The water and electric points at this end had been vandalised and were out of order and the port police were surprisingly officious, demanding our papers and passports and wanting to know where we had been and where we were going. Perhaps they feared more boats being abandoned. It is illegal in Greece for authorities to dispose of them. Later, a ferocious wind blew up so


Carl loosened the lines ashore and pulled in the anchor to move Leonie away from the quay. The abandoned looking boat on our right had no fenders out and was being bashed by the wind into the yacht on its right (which also looked abandoned and likewise didn’t have any fenders). When the storm passed we headed across the gulf to the little fishing village of Elaia where a kind fisherman directed us to the one and only space for visiting yachts on the end of the mole. Carl came to the rescue of one of the boys jumping off


the wall nearby. The lad hurt his back and couldn’t climb back up onto the quay, so he clung to the back of the dinghy as Carl rowed him ashore. In the evening we had a romantic meal to celebrate our 13th wedding anniversary at a taverna at the foot of the mole with a sunset view over the mountains. Strong winds were due again so we headed south to a more sheltered anchorage at Sarakiniko Bay on Elafonisos island. We had a great four-hour sail, reaching eight knots in the gusts, to the beautiful turquoise bay, fringed by two golden sandy beaches. We stayed a few days waiting for the wind to blow itself out before tackling the infamous Cape Maleas, a stark forbidding place which has a fearsome reputation for bad weather. Although it was a bit of a slog motoring against a gusting force three wind ,there were no issues


rounding this lonely headland. We waved


to the monks in the hermitage who watch out for the yachts below and soon enough we were on the other side, in the Agean Sea. Another, bigger storm was due so we spent a few days in the small marina near the beautiful Byzantine walled


N


The entrance to Ormos Navarinou


Lighthouse near Cape Matapan


Carl at Monemvasia


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