We stayed in Astypalia for just over a week. It is a perfect spot to hang out. Eventually we needed to head to Ios, which is about a 50nm trip (say 9 hours) north-west. We wanted to wait for the best possible winds, but we needed to be in Ios by the 19th to meet with some friends. We left on the 12th at 7am, and we were able to sail more or less on a direct course to Ios. Eventually the winds changed and we had to motor for the last few hours…..but this was better than motoring the entire way.
Probably the most exciting part of the trip was having 2 high-speed ferries cross in front of us. They were both moving at 35 knots, which is about 40MPH, which is about 7 times faster than us. You literally see the boat far, far away to one side, and then 4 minutes later it has passed you. If I didn’t have AIS to tell me how close the boat was going to be I would never be able to judge…..it is just too fast. For the first boat AIS told me I was going to be 400m apart at the closest point, which I thought was too close, so I slowed us down to let them pass.
We anchored for a few days in a great bay at the south of Ios. This was a perfect spot again, Nice sandy bottom and perfectly clear water. The only issue was in a few days a weather system was coming in, and the winds were going to do a complete 360 degree rotation which is not great for anchoring. We needed to go to a bay called Milopotas just north of us which was deeper and would have better protection. Plus we had been there before and it is another amazing place…..very wide, room for dozens of boats and a sandy bottom for the anchor.
We went there and it was as amazing as we remembered. When you pick a place to anchor you want to be protected from both the wind and the waves. You want wind ideally not too strong and blowing away from the shore (if you have an anchor issue this is safer than being pushed onto the shore) and you want as little waves as possible…..you want calm water.
We got the expected winds….maybe 30 knots which is a lot but fine. We have been anchored in 50 knots winds which is much less fun. The weather system came through and we did the expected 360 degree rotation on the anchor over several hours. The anchor held fine (it actually didn’t fully rotate it was dug in so deep) but the thing that we didn’t expect was the very large swells coming into the bay. Last night we had 1m+ swells all night, sometimes much larger, and the boat was pitching 30 degrees side to side for a lot of the night. It was exactly like sailing through rough seas, except we were at anchor. Victoria was not very happy about it, but she is a trooper. To move around the boat you need to have 2 hands holding almost continually….one hand is not enough. Clearly this makes carrying anything very difficult. After hearing stuff crash around in the middle of the night I had to get up and secure the boat as if we were going for a big sail. To sleep you need to jam yourself into a corner and spread out so you won’t be rolled by the boat moving. If you can relax into the motion you can sleep…..but it takes some practice.
This morning we are down to smaller swells which are only annoying. Tomorrow they will be gone and we will be back to having a perfect anchorage…..but we have one more day to get through
I always tell people that we usually have ‘one adventure per month’ as payment for all the amazing stuff we see and do…..I think this qualifies.
Adventures on Spruzzo 