Blog 4: Rhodes to Leros

We are now back at our beach chalet in Calshot for the summer, having decommissioned and left Island Drifter in Agmar Marine’s boatyard in Partheni in the Greek island of Leros (some 40 miles north of Kos).

Island Drifter being lifted out at Agmar Marine’s boatyard in Partheni, Leros

This Blog covers our cruise from Rhodes to Leros, i.e. most of the southern Dodecanese Islands off the Turkish coast. 

Chart of route from Rhodes to Leros

RHODES

After an enjoyable few days at anchor in Lindos Bay, on the east coast of Rhodes, we had yet another swim in the crystal-clear water before raising our anchor and departing at 7 p.m. once the northwest winds had backed slightly.

Lindos Bay, Rhodes

Final swim before leaving Lindos Bay

Initially we sailed the 25 miles up the east coast of Rhodes on a broad reach to the small anchorage behind Mandraki harbour breakwater in Rhodes town in order to await the forecast drop in wind by the morning.  

 

Sailing northeast at dusk along the east coast of Rhodes

At 6 a.m. we were woken by a tug hooting at us and requiring us to move in order to give a very large cruise ship more room to manoeuvre into the adjacent commercial harbour.  Since we had no desire whatsoever to be used as a fender, we moved immediately!  Thereafter, as the wind had dropped, we left and headed north past Rhodes town and beaches and around the north end of the island, which can be a nasty wind acceleration zone in stronger conditions.  

 

View from the north of Rhodes town and harbours

SYMI

We were fortunate that we were at least able to motor sail directly to Symi against a strong headwind. On the way, we passed half a dozen excellent anchorages at the head of long fjords on the east coast of the island.  

Symi is tucked well into the Turkish mainland, being only some three miles from it.  It is very barren and rocky. The island’s historic lack of water has traditionally been its most pressing problem, albeit, in retrospect, its saving grace since as a consequence it was never able to develop a large, tourist-based hotel industry. 

Symi Town

The town’s Neo-Classical mansions that surround the harbour are said to have changed very little since the nineteenth century, due at least partly to an historic preservation order in 1970 and some judicious refurbishment. Painted in warm shades of ochre, powder blue, rose and cream, the mansions climb up the steep slopes around the harbour to create an amphitheatre of fine architecture. 

 

Pastel-coloured Neo Classical Mansions surrounding Symi harbour

The harbour has become a popular location for visiting boats ranging from superyachts to cruisers like ours.  The seabed in the harbour has good holding but one does have to let out plenty of rode when dropping one’s anchor because the harbour shelves steeply in the middle to a depth of 20 metres. 

 

South quay of Symi harbour where we moored

The town is the only one on the island.  It lives well off income from day trippers, visiting yachts and some longer-term visitors.  The former are shipped in daily by ferry, fed at one of the many excellent albeit pricey tavernas and then shipped out again, leaving the mornings and evenings to local residents and overnight visitors who benefit from the town’s tourist infrastructure. 

It has to be said, however, that apart from establishing one’s position on the quay, gazing in rapture at a most pleasing vista from the cockpit and attending to one’s mooring lines when tripper boat skippers come charging in or out, there isn’t much more to do in the town or island, apart from taking a stroll and deciding where to have one’s next drink or even supper – unless of course one has a super (motor) yacht, in which case that is the time to bring out the silver, flowers and flunkeys to demonstrate one’s financial superiority. 

TILOS

We gave Tilos, the island immediately south of Nisyros, a miss, since although it would have been a very pleasant sail on a beam reach, it was in the wrong direction (!) – given our requirement to keep heading north.

In addition, its only claim to fame appears to be the fact that it has a museum containing ten bones of a 4ft-tall European pygmy elephant.  Not something we felt a burning desire to see!

NISYROS

Nisyros, the semi-active volcanic island 20 miles to the south of Kos, was always going to be our next logical stop since it offered us the opportunity to motor sail there directly on a close reach after initially taking a shortcut through the Nimos Channel north of Symi to avoid circumnavigating the island of Nimos itself.  The water in the channel dropped from 100 metres to one metre below our keel within a distance of only ten metres.  Fortunately, the weather was benign, there were no waves and we transited without difficulty.

 

Sailing over the shallows in Nimos Channel

As in Symi, the water supply in Nisyros has always been inadequate to enable the development of larger hotels. The islanders have capitalised on this fact by developing small private hotels, apartments and facilities suitable for a manageable number of more discerning visitors.  The many restaurants in Mandraki, the ‘capital’, however, are primarily designed to fleece day tourists at lunchtime after they have been shuttled around the island in coaches and visited the volcano. They are then fed and shipped back to Kos on the daily 3.30 p.m. ferry.

Mandraki

Daily ferry services arrive in Mandraki harbour on the northwest tip of the island. Unfortunately the harbour is filled by such boats during the day and is therefore unsuitable for visiting cruisers other than as a port of refuge at night.  

 

Mandraki ferry harbour

The town itself, however, is very attractive.  Arranged around the small bay and centred on a public orchard, it has warrens of brightly painted houses – courtesy we understand of a local islander made good who owns the Vitex Paint Company and who appears to partially subsidise local property owners.

 

Mandraki sea front

Most visitors come to the island to see the semi-active calderas in the centre of Nisyros. These are overlooked by the two inland villages, Nikia and Emborios.  When entering the crater it becomes even hotter than the 40°C outside temperature.   There is a diabolical smell hanging over the crater. The sight of this moonscape with sulphurous vents and hissing noises reinforces its hell-like aspect. One feels, or at least imagines, that there is something ‘going on’ under the crust on which one is allowed to walk in the crater.  Were it in the UK, Health and Safety wouldn’t let one get anywhere near the crater, let alone stand on a 15-cm-thick crust, less than a metre from a hissing fumarole!

 

Caldera in Nisyros overlooked by Nikia village

Pali

We therefore moored in Pali, the only other harbour on Nisyros. It is situated on the northeast corner of the island, 5 miles from Mandraki.  There was only 0.2 metres under our keel at the entrance, hence it can only take ‘normal’ cruising boats and does not cater for ferries, commercial shipping or superyachts.  In addition, there are currently no buses running from Mandraki and therefore very few day visitors.  The small village lives very happily off cruisers and longer-stay guests.

 

Pali harbour viewed from the road above

There are a few attractive tavernas along the southern edge of the harbour, adjacent to the quay.  On arrival, in 40°C, we simply berthed, jumped ship and walked 15 metres to Afrodite, the nearest taverna, where we had cold beers and mezes for lunch.

 

Island Drifter seen from Afrodite Taverna

We hired a scooter from Mike and Marilyn Zahariadis of Eagle’s Nest Rentals in order to tour the island. (We hadn’t ridden on a scooter for over 40 years.)  Mike returned to Pali some years ago after 30 years in the States where he had met Marilyn in New York. They were very helpful to us in relation to information on the islands.  

 

On our 125cc scooter

Mike and Marilyn Zahariadis of Eagle’s Nest Rentals

Not surprisingly, we also got to know Nikos and Tsampika Zarakis and their daughters Xrisanthi and Afrodite who run the Afrodite Taverna.   They were splendid hosts whose company we enjoyed. 

 

Family Zarakis at Afrodite Taverna, Pali

Our Norwegian neighbour Svein, who had worked for years in digital broadcasting, was able to get Sky Sports on his laptop using cloaking software and link it to play through the big screen TV in Afrodite.  There we watched the Lions’ Second Test against the All Blacks. Mike produced a gallon of Bloody Mary which we served to the British supporters while the taverna provided breakfast. On this occasion, there wasn’t a Kiwi in sight. Pity really.

 

Mike testing the gallon of Bloody Mary which he made for the British Lions’ rugby fans

The game we watched on the morning on Saturday 1 July was everything we could have hoped for, in that it was a good match and the Lions actually beat the All Blacks 24–21. No doubt the Bloody Marys helped turn the occasion into a celebration party that continued well into the afternoon. 

 

Celebrating ‘our’ victory over the All Blacks

While in Pali, we celebrated Mike’s birthday on 2 July at lunchtime in Afrodite Taverna with Svein and Karen Børstad of Escapade and Glenn and Gwen Ward of Pardela.  Lunch lasted from 2 until 10 p.m.!  The length of our stay became a talking point in the village. Suffice to say, it was a memorable occasion – in so far as the attendees can remember!

 

Celebrating Mike’s birthday in Afrodite Taverna

Rolf Budd and Roz Bowen joined us during the week.  They had sailed the 55 miles down from Lakki harbour in Leros in a F6. It took them only 8 hours.  We were impressed.  We’d first met them 3 years previously on our way back to Lagos in the Algarve from the Canaries.  At the time they were becalmed, couldn’t use their engine and had no electrical power.  We loaned them one of our batteries together with a chart. They were then therefore able to restart their engine, charge their batteries and eventually make their way to Lagos in Portugal where we celebrated their safe arrival.

 

Meeting up with Rolf and Roz after 3 years

Unfortunately for us, Svein had to leave to catch a flight from Kos to attend his brother’s 60th birthday, but by then he had shown us how to use strong cloaking software, although we couldn’t play it through the TV. We therefore watched the Third and final Test on a large iPad in the cockpit of Glenn and Gwen’s yacht Pardela together with Rolf and Roz.  It was a most exciting game and a great occasion which ended in a 15-all draw. 

 

The Lions’ and All Blacks’ captains jointly lift the Series Cup

One of the attractions of the village, as far as we were concerned, is that it has very nice little beach with a beach bar and no outside day trippers. Since it was particularly hot at the time, we felt the need to swim three times a day to cool down. 

 

Pali beach seen through beach bar

On the evening before our planned departure, there was a wedding in one of the island’s monasteries. The bride (a doctor in Athens) left for the ceremony from her grandmother’s house in Pali.  We lingered on the quay together with villagers to watch her leave.

 

Bride leaving her grandmother’s house for the evening ceremony in one of Nisyros’s monasteries

Helen being instructed by Tsampika in Afrodite Taverna on how to make stuffed vine leaves for the wedding reception

Fortunately, as forecast, during the night the wind dropped and backed. Once we'd extricated our anchor chain from our French neighbour's (who had dropped his anchor over ours), we were able to motor sail north past the island of Yiali, around the western end of Kos, past the bare, rocky and sparsely populated island of Pserimos and up the east coast of Kalymnos to the excellent anchorage at Palionisos.

YIALI

The island of Yiali, which we passed just north of Nisyros, is being mined for pumice and perlite under licence granted by Nisyros Council to the company Lava Limited. Ground pumice is a mild abrasive used in many household products, such as for example toothpaste, and is therefore much in demand. Hence the laid-back attitude of the by-now affluent Nisyrians who benefit from the royalties. Recently they voted overwhelmingly in a referendum (that’s referenda for you) not to let their own island’s volcanic properties be used as a source of power and income.   

Nisos Yiali is mined for pumice and perlite

KOS

We had originally intended to stop in Kos, the second largest and most populated island in the Dodecanese. On the positive side its marina appeared to be relatively secure and safe (although we subsequently discovered it is very expensive), it has a good international airport and is the home of the cos lettuce!  Apart from that we couldn’t think of anything about Kos that we wanted to see or be a part of. 

Rod Heikell’s quote summarises our own views on Kos better than we can express them ourselves:

  

'Large areas of the island, in fact anywhere there is anything vaguely resembling a beach, have been turned into some of the tackiest resorts in Greece, replete with a heaving mass of beer-swilling tourists who thankfully rarely leave the reinforced concrete barracks, pubs and clubs they have come for.'

KALYMNOS

Pothia

Kalymnos is a long, high, craggy lump of rock that appears to grow out of the sea like some prehistoric monster.  It was once the centre of the sponge fishing industry in Greece, with a sponge fleet numbering hundreds of boats. Some of the grand villas in Pothia, the capital on the south coast, bear witness to the considerable wealth accumulated by local merchants at that time. 

The decline of the sponge industry in the twentieth century and then its demise following a devastating disease led to many islanders emigrating in large numbers to Australia and America. With few natural resources, the island’s main source of income, even today, is in remittances from those that emigrated.  Its tourist industry is still in its infancy.

 

Sponges, once a major source of income in Kalymnos; these days those for sale are all imported

Vathi

We were tempted to pull into Vathi harbour on the southwest coast of Kalymnos. Rod Heikell describes it as having been ‘a little gem of a place with abundant water which existed on a bit of fishing and had many citrus orchards leading down to the sea’.  This sounded good until we read on: ‘…now tripper boats bring in herds of people, most of the land in the valley is up for sale and villas are sprouting up everywhere’.   We therefore decided to give Vathi a miss!

Palionisos

There are several good anchorages around the island.  On the recommendation of Rolf and Roz, we pulled into Palionisos. It is well protected from the elements, being at the end of a small fjord with steep cliffs to either side. 

 

Palionisos anchorage at dusk, seen from local taverna

Free mooring buoys have been laid at the head of the bay by the two quality tavernas there. Apart from these, there is absolutely nothing else in the area. Certainly no shops. Hence we were ‘forced’ to eat in the taverna!  The anchorage is by any standards a stunningly picturesque location.

 

Countryside, shore and tavernas at Palionisos – seen from Island Drifter

We were joined the next day by Glenn and Gwen Ward on Pardela, who had made their way there from Pali at a more leisurely pace via a couple of overnight anchorages.   Needless to say, following their noon arrival, we all convened at Kalidonis Taverna where we had enjoyed goat and lamb for supper the previous night.

 

Glenn and Gwen Ward arriving in Palionisos in Pardela

Helen is currently copy editing Glenn’s first novel The Right Bus. In her opinion it is a very well-written and interesting story, calling on his knowledge of geology, sailing and Scotland.  The help Helen has given to date has been solely in relation to the correct presentation of the typescript for submission to an agent.

That evening Glenn and Gwen joined us for a sundowner, since we planned to leave at first light and go our separate ways.

LEROS

We left Palionisos at dawn in order to avoid the strong head winds forecast for the afternoon.  After slipping our lines we quietly left the anchorage on our way out of the bay, before turning north up the east coast of Kalymnos towards Leros. 

Leros lies close to the north of Kalymnos.  In antiquity the two islands were referred to as one – the Kalydnian islands.   Now they are separated by a shallow narrow channel which can quickly become very rough in bad weather.

 

Approaching the narrow Kalydnian Channel between Kalymnos and Leros

The island has many unfortunate associations going back to Spartan times. More recently, during the reign of the Colonels after WW2, there was a notorious prison for dissidents at Partheni (where we eventually left Island Drifter on the hard for the summer) and the mental hospitals on the island were the cause of much furore in the 1990s when Channel 4 and the British tabloids exposed the appalling conditions in which patients were reported to exist.

Regardless of the above, Rod Heikell, for good reasons, describes Leros as ‘quite simply his favourite cruising island in the Dodecanese with its two excellent harbours and a number of good anchorages’.  

Lakki Town

We stopped briefly in the large well-protected harbour of Lakki on the west coast of Leros.  It contains two marinas, one boatyard, a free anchorage and is the main ferry port on the island.

 

Island Drifter alongside quay at Lakki

In the 1930s, when the island was under Italian rule, Mussolini chose this large well-protected harbour as the main base for the Italian navy in the Dodecanese and built a new town on the shore at the head of the bay. 

 

Lakki harbour and anchorage

Lakki’s architectural style is Art Deco. The town was modelled to produce ‘clean rounded buildings with the minimum of decoration’.  There are wide boulevards, a superb market and shopping arcade.  It is very attractive.

 

One of the many Italian-built Art Deco buildings in Lakki town

Partheni Boatyard

We needed to shop in Lakki because there are no facilities close to Partheni boatyard, our next and final port of call. Once we’d completed provisioning, we left and made our way north up to Partheni Bay where we moored to one of the boatyard’s waiting buoys for three days, during which time we partially decommissioned the boat ready for lift out. 

 

Island Drifter on waiting buoy outside Partheni boatyard

We stayed and worked on the buoy since it was cooler and more pleasant than the boatyard where there was significantly less breeze.  By definition, therefore, the boatyard with its surrounding scrub appears to be well  protected from the elements.

Agmar Marine’s 30-year-old boatyard also appears to have good security, engineering and support facilities, an excellent chandlery, showers, loos and washing machines.

 

Agmar Marine’s security gate and fencing

We simply lifted out and had 48 hours on the hard living on board while we did those tasks that can’t be done in the water. During that time we were encouraged to find that our original positive views on the boatyard appeared to be fully justified.  A relief, really, since by then we had no alternative but to stay.

 

Aerial photo of Agmar Marine, courtesy of management

While well off the beaten track, the boatyard is adjacent to the airport. We’ll return to Leros by plane in mid-September (when flight prices are lower) for a further two months.  This time, since flights from Rhodes to the UK were only 50€, we took an overnight ferry from Leros and a flight from Rhodes to Gatwick. 

Olympic aeroplane taking off at Leros airport beside the boatyard

We’ve been away from the UK for nearly 5 months, have covered 2500 miles in Island Drifter and have visited 35 locations during that time.  We had a great sail from Portugal to Greece before cruising Crete and the Dodecanese islands adjacent to Turkey.   Each location had something different to offer.  The people are laid-back and generally welcoming, illegal immigration seems to have been stopped and there is no evidence of any undue concern regarding the country’s financial problems. 

The only downside of cruising in the islands, as far as we were concerned, is that the tourist industry appears to have completely overwhelmed and spoilt many locations.  Even so, many others remain delightfully unspoilt.

Postscript

The day after we got back to the UK, we were woken up by a friend advising us that there had been an earthquake of 6.8 on the Richter Scale between Kos (some 40 miles south of where we’d left the boat) and Bodrum in Turkey.  The quake has caused considerable damage and injuries, although fortunately the death toll was low.  Not surprisingly, we were concerned about Island Drifter and rang the boatyard to ask if they’d been affected.  They advised that there were no problems although a few books had fallen off the shelf!