We spent a few more nights in Kythira after the unexpected ‘big wind’ night: almost everyone hunkered down in the bay to let the big winds go by. The winds were mostly NE/NW (typical Meltemi) and we were protected from the north from the ocean waves/swells that will naturally build up from the wind.
Ocean waves can come from storms that are far away, or build up from the current wind. The constant big NE/NW winds had somehow made waves that were now bouncing back into our protected harbour. This started just around 6pm on our second last night. This makes sleeping a bit difficult…especially if the wind dies down your boat will want to go parallel to the swells and you will get rocked quickly side to side (gentle rocking is OK….too quick is not fun).
Anyway around midnight 2 boats decide that since they can’t sleep they are going to leave. (This stuff always happens in the middle of the night.) I hear a boat motor and the sound of anchor chain being raised….and it sounds like it is too close so I go up on deck. I see the first single handed guy on the nose of his boat watching his chain come in and his boat is slowly drifting towards Spruzzo. He is maybe 10 feet/3 metres away and slowly getting closer. He gets back to his cockpit and gets his motor going before he gets much closer, so no big deal. However, the second time I hear the same sounds the boat is only 5 feet/1.5 metres away when I get up, and is slowly drifting toward me. This is scary. Remember the ocean is giving us a nice roll every 5 seconds or so. I yell something and quickly remove my biggest bumper to use as a barrier between his boat and Spruzzo and when he is less than 1 metre away he begins to pull away and I hear a ‘Sorry!’ as he leaves.
A few days later we pull up anchor ourselves (without any drama) and start heading toward Crete. For some reason I have been very excited to see Crete, which is the largest Greek island. Victoria has mentioned that Crete, along with Sicily and Corsica have all had some form of vendetta (i.e. killing each other) which apparently has made them all tough and these islands had never been fully conquered. Crete’s other claim to fame is that it was the oldest advanced civilization in Europe with the Minoans. We head to the north-east tip of Crete (actually a small island right beside Crete) called Gramvousa which has a nice beach and is famous for a small shipwreck by the beach.
We started off with fairly flat seas and great 20 knots of wind and had a great sail for some hours, then we motor sailed for a bit and motored the last way. At least we didn’t motor the entire day. Sailors joke that MED stands for Motoring Every Day.
It still amazes me how rocky the Greek islands are. The islands above are bare rock sticking up out of the ocean! I can’t imagine approaching without modern charts. There are lots of places with shallows and rocks just under the surface. Without our modern technology (paper charts plus chart plotter plus iPhone maps) this would have been very scary.
Anyway we get to the anchorage, and there is a 50m super-yacht from Malta already there. We may have seen this boat before (the Med is a small world).
I’m always happy to be anchored near a multi-million dollar yacht! There is a reason all these expensive boats cruise in the Greek islands and it is because they are so beautiful! The water here is crystal clear….we can see 10m down to the bottom easily. Turns out to be a zero wind night and cool enough so we get a great sleep. It also turns out that since we arrived a bit late (after 6pm) we missed all the crowds. This is a major tourist spot! When we leave the next morning around 10am we see a giant ferry-sized boat carrying 100+people to go where we just left. Thank goodness we missed the crowd.
We are off to Chania which is a major port in Crete. Stay tuned.
Adventures on Spruzzo 