7 August 2013, Water, wind and dolphins

We woke up before the alarm was set to ring, 7:15. We had decided the evening before that if the wind had dropped we would try to go to Andikiron, a litte town also on the north coast of the Corinth Gulf some 15-20 nm eastwards. The sailing guide promised that there would be a quay equipped with both electricity and water, and we were beginning to feel desperate about that. So how was the wind?

It was almost dead calm, so off we go – but first breakfast. The day before, Tuesday, Itea had a bank holiday and no shops were open. So we were short of food. We went into town hoping to find a café open at this early hour. We were lucky and got some kind of pastry with Philadelphia cheese inside, a cup of coffee and a glass of juice at the café close to the bus station. I must say that I have some difficulty in eating these very fat pastries, almost like a Danish, early in the morning. But nothing else was on offer.

With more or less only mineral water as provision, we untied the moorings and sailed away southwards by engine. A gentle northerly breeze made small waves, otherwise very calm. 10nm later we would turn east and if the breeze had increased a bit the idea was to hoist the sails.

The wind increased indeed. Just when we turned eastwards the wind started to haul, and the meter displayed the usual 10-12 m/s. Increasing. 5 minutes later the wind was 16-19 m/s easterly. Right in the nose again. Not fun.

More fun was that to our surprise we discovered a group of dolphins heading along us at high speed through the waves some 200 m away from us. We were not fast enough, banging against the wind at 2-3 knots, to come very close to them, but we managed to get some decent photo`s.

We arrived around 2 pm at Andikiron and found that the only possibility to moor to the only small quay available was to drop the anchor and go backwards with the aft first towards the quay. Not that easy in such strong winds, but we managed to do it without incidents. It felt really nice and safe when all lines were in place. And we got what we were looking for, the little town quay had both water and electricity facilities installed. This is the first time we`ve had these facilities for a week!

As all small Greek towns by the sea, this one also had a row of tavernas at the water front with great views towards the mountains on the other side of the bay. The town does not seem to have much else to offer for tourists, and we hardly found anyone else but us. Only three other guest boats arrived after us, and the restaurant guests were almost solely greeks. This we even noticed by the prices, which were significantly lower.