Night Adventure at Beautiful Kythira

The morning before we left Elafonisos I grabbed my mask and snorkel and went to check on the anchor. The winds had been very light overnight, and you could see in the sand the pattern the chain made as the boat moved around the anchor. The anchor was at an angle to the boat and the chain was in a ‘C’ pattern around the anchor. While I was watching the wind picked up and I watched the chain slowly be drawn away. For a second I thought I better get back to the boat just in case the anchor didn’t catch (!) but it was moving slowly and I was curious. This is what the anchor looks like:

The arm of the anchor is heavy and points down, and the fins (red in the picture) keep it from fully rolling on its side. It was very neat to see how the shape of the anchor caused it to immediately begin digging into the sand and immediately set.

I mention this for a reason.

We left that morning for Kythira which is an island south of the eastern Peloponnese and on the way to Crete. We motored most of the way, but the colour of the water and the beautiful scenery of Kythira made this my favorite passage so far.

The southern harbour of Kythira is really gorgeous. Not that many boats, great bottom for anchoring (nice sand) and very picturesque. The restaurants are not as good as Kalamata though 😉 We decided to stay here for a few days as we are nice and protected and there were some big N/E winds in the forecast for the next few days.

2:30 am I’m woken up by howling wind. The winds that were forecast around 20 knots for the next day (around 40 kph) are here early and they are 30 knots gusting 40. There are 2 boats that are a bit close to me now, one in front and one behind. It is surprising how much the boat veers around the anchor, around 90 degrees, and how fast. I would say the the nose of the boat was turning 6 or 7 degrees a second, and when it got to the end of the chain it would slow slightly (the anchor snubber stretching) and then stop. The force on the anchor must be incredible….the boat weights around 14 metric tons. This is what the anchor monitor looked like in the morning:

I’m up on deck looking around, and Victoria comes up to see what is going on. You can see someone on every boat around me up with a light checking their boat. There was a boat that was anchored close to the public docks (think the far off yelling was coming from there) and they ended up leaving the harbour (not fun to raise anchor in those conditions I expect). Eventually I convince V that we are OK and she goes back to bed, but I stayed up on deck. After I could tell that the anchor was going to hold I was comfortable enough to lie back and close my eyes. I know if the boat makes any unusual motion I will wake up and I will be right there to deal with it.

Morning comes and the winds are down to a much gentler 20 knots where they are right now. I lost a shoe, a big sponge and a kayak paddle to the wind (everything is going in the cockpit from now on if we expect any wind).

The interesting thing is that our location, protected from the N/E in the bay by the island may have actually made the N/E winds worse! The island is not that big, and if the winds are strong enough they may get compressed and accelerate down the slope on the other side of the island. (In flying we call this the mountain effect. You fly 500’+ over big hills/small mountains if there is a lot of wind perpendicular to the slope. If you get caught in a down-draft and are being pulled down faster than you can climb it is not fun ;-).

Anyway we survived another adventure! I knew we would have some big wind at anchor some day but I wasn’t expecting it last night.