Chania to Agios Nikolaos

If you read my previous post you know that I was having trouble with the engine overheating…..and I tried 3 different fixes that didn’t work. The engine issue turned out to be a faulty coolant cap. Looks like the coolant just kept getting lower because the cap wasn’t letting the overflow coolant back into the engine, and eventually there wasn’t enough to keep the engine cool. I’m amazed at how well it worked until it didn’t, and next time I will check the entire cooling system and not just fix the first thing I find.

Before we left Chania, we had a typical Med boating experience. We were having dinner right in front of the boat with friends from Toronto. I saw a boat coming in to dock. There was a crosswind but lots of room to maneuver but I got up from out dinner and walked over to the dock to grab a line which I know would be helpful because of the wind. It was a European flagged boat, and it looked owned (not chartered) so I wasn’t concerned. It looked like an older couple and a younger couple on the boat.

The boat backs in OK, and the older lady goes to throw me a rope on the downwind side….I say no wait and motion to the younger guy on the windward side (you want to stop the boat moving with the wind..windward is the side getting the wind) I yell at him to throw me the line and he looks at me confused with the line in his hand. I go over to the older lady but by now the boat is being blown by the wind and is very close to our boat.

It is hard to describe the next 5 minutes but they were pandemonium. The docking boat had not dropped anchor to hold his nose, so his entire boat was drifting into our boat. I jumped up on our boat and was trying to push the new boat off, the older lady was moving around with a fender to keep us apart, a young marine guy asked permission to come on my boat and was helping push. Everyone was yelling at the poor old guy driving the other boat. I think his bow thruster stopped working (probably overloaded from too much use) and he didn’t know what to do. Victoria had jumped on board by now and all of us were pushing and using fenders to protect Spruzzo.

Eventually the other boat was secured. Spruzzo was a bit scuffed on the side from fenders but I never heard contact between the boats.

The sad thing is the other captain never said a word. The older lady apologized. He should have paid for our dinner. I would have.

ANYWAY the next day we sailed to a very nice spot called Anallipsi Beach.

We use Navily to find anchorages, which is a must-have app in the Med, and the comments mentioned that there were some rocks in front of the church. As we came in there were a bunch of boats already there, and I thought about anchoring to the west of them, so after entering the harbour in the middle I start to go towards the shore keeping a close eye on my depth gage, probably going 2 or 3 knots. Victoria always goes on the bow to check the depth and look for sand which is best for the anchor.

Victoria yells ‘rocks’! which I interpret to mean there are rocks on the bottom. About 5 seconds later a charter boat zooms past me on my right and yells ‘there is a reef there!’. YIKES! I put the boat into reverse, and I see the depth go from 10m down to 1.5m in a few seconds. The draft of Spruzzo is 2.01m. We manage to stop the boat and start moving in reverse back into the centre of the bay. I go right in the centre and drop anchor in a nice conservative 15m of water.

The anchorage turns out to be a destination for lots of day charters from Crete (probably Herkalion which is just across) and we get up to 11 boats anchored very close together but well away from us since I’m a fair distance from shore. We also get Greek fishing boats which seem to have 1 or 2 Greek guys and they would sometimes spend the night on mooring balls they have left for themselves. We usually had the entire bay to ourselves from about 7pm to 10am the next morning. It was beautiful….and since there was no moon it was pitch black. I wish I had a proper telescope on a gimble to look at the night sky.

After 3 nights here we left for Agios Nikolaos marina. We were very excited to visit because this is the marina where we will be spending the winter. We had 2m+ swells on the way and the winds were 25-35 knots most of the way so it was good sailing and Victoria did very well in not getting seasick. We wanted to be in a marina because the famous Meltemi was going to be visiting for a few days and we wanted to be secure.

I was up 5 times during the night. Twice to fix flapping lines (makes it hard to sleep plus annoying for other people) and 3 times because my dock lines were screeching as they were stretched through eyelets on the way to their cleats. I have pieces of rubber hose that I use to stop the screeching but because it was so windy they kept coming loose until at the end I used zip ties to hold them. I’m not sure what the wind speed was but it must have been 30+ knots.

Good news is we love Agios Nikolaos. The marina staff are super friendly, the town is very close, the showers and washrooms are seconds away and wonderful (you get your own private little sink/shower/washroom cubicle) and we met a very nice German couple on an Amel beside us who have been staying here for 7 years! Also the restaurants are good and inexpensive and the view is amazing. We have mountains all around!

I think it is going to be a bit windier here than in Sicily so I’m going to have to add to my mooring equipment. Everyone here uses springs on their mooring lines so I will get a bunch when we end up here for the winter.

Wait for our next big adventure leaving Agios Nikolaos and how imprecise Mediterranean wind and wave forecasts are!