Blog 6: Eastern Sporades 9–27 Oct 2017

The morning after Marjorie Mullins left us in Lakki [Blog 5] we sailed north in an atypical strong southerly wind for 36 hours to Limnos – the most northerly of the Eastern Sporades.  Our aim in doing so was to be in the position subsequently to cruise back through the island group to Leros at our leisure with the prevailing northerly winds.

Route taken in the Eastern Sporades to date

The six major islands in the Eastern Sporades group stretch down the coast of northwest Turkey. Like the other Aegean islands they are the peaks of mountains that once stood on the plain of the Aegean.   Generally the islands are more fertile and greener than the adjacent Cyclades and Dodecanese.

Chart of Greek Islands Groups

The Eastern Sporades group only became part of Greece in 1912 after the Balkan Wars.  With the exception of Samos, the islands are off the main tourist track.  Hence they are less developed and thus provide a more authentic atmosphere than their international tourist-dominated neighbours.

LIMNOS

The island of Limnos is situated in the middle of the North Aegean. Strategically it was always seen to be a logical stepping-stone to Asia Minor; hence it has always been the subject of dispute between Greece and Turkey (who ruled the Eastern Sporades for some 500 years before 1912).  

Mirina

After our passage north from Leros, the latter 12 hours of which were in a Force 7, we made landfall at Mirina, Limnos’s port/capital (Blog 5).  Once through the port’s outer breakwater and behind an enormous rocky bluff to the immediate north of the port, we dropped anchor off the town’s southern beach in the shelter of the inner breakwater that protects the town’s quay. It proved a very pleasant and peaceful haven.

Island Drifter at anchor inside Mirina harbour

A Byzantine fortification, later reinforced by the Venetians and Genoese, sits on top of the bluff commanding the small peninsula that divides the bay of Mirina in two.  It was well worth the climb up to the castle. The view from the top was magnificent.  Entry is free for both visitors and the many deer and goats that graze there.

View of bluff and castle from ID 

while at anchor in Mirina harbour

A very large new quay has been built at the southern end of the bay to cater for ferries, freight ships and cruise liners.  The spacious old quay adjacent to the town has been renovated and is now allocated to visiting yachts.  Few yachts, however, actually visit the port. Many of those that do simply use it as a convenient port for clearing in and out of the Dardanelles.

Empty visitors’ quay

The town is attractive with traditional red-tile-roofed buildings that reach down to the beach-lined esplanades in both the north and south bays.

Town and north beach from the fort dividing the two bays

While off the main tourist route, the island is popular with mainland Greeks, many of whom have holiday homes in the town. It is pleasantly low key.  Sadly, however, for the locals the political situation in Turkey is such that cruise ships, for which the town’s shops and amenities appear to have been designed, have currently stopped calling in.

Plate of small fish for lunch on the quay

Moudros Bay

We actually came to Limnos with the principal objective of visiting Moudros Bay, one of the finest naval fleet anchorages in the Mediterranean.   It was from there that the Gallipoli Campaign was launched – the largest amphibious landing undertaken before ‘D’ Day.

Limnos island showing, in particular, Moudros Bay

By 1915, the trench war on the Western Front had reached a stalemate.  As First Sea Lord, Churchill proposed that the deadlock be broken by opening a Second Front in the Balkans with a view to ‘persuading’ Turkey to withdraw its support of Germany.

Chart showing proximity of Limnos to 

the Dardanelles and Gallipoli Peninsula

The Gallipoli Campaign was launched on 25 April 1915. The inherent difficulties, which were not completely understood, of an amphibious assault of that scale, the shortage of landing craft and strong Turkish fortifications and resistance all contributed to the failure of the Imperial and French forces to ‘break out’ further than one kilometre from their beach heads.  After 8 months of bitter trench warfare, it was decided to discontinue the Campaign and withdraw troops from Turkey.

Casualty numbers were horrific.  87,000 Turkish and 44,000 Imperial and French troops died.  Twice as many were injured on both sides.  There are 32 Commonwealth War Cemeteries in Gallipoli. 

The 1200 who died of their wounds or disease in the field hospitals in Limnos are buried in the three War Cemeteries around Moudros bay. These are green oases in an otherwise dry and barren landscape.

Principal Commonwealth War Cemetery at Moudros

While the British and French ‘establishments’ considered the whole Campaign to be a humiliating defeat that they’d rather forget, for the Australians and New Zealanders the Campaign has great significance. Both countries have established 25 April as Anzac Remembrance Day. 

Anzac War Memorial in Moudros Port

Today Moudros is a quiet and pleasant place – totally at odds with the happenings of a century ago.  The well-protected harbour in which we moored reflects the general peaceful atmosphere of the place. 

Overview of Moudros port and town 

with part of the bay in the background

LESVOS

Lesvos (a.k.a., in true Greek style, Lesbos, Mytilini and Mitilini) is the third largest island in the Aegean – after Crete and Evia.  It is said to be grander, greener and more fertile than the other islands in the Eastern Sporades. Historically its olive plantations, ouzo distilleries, animal husbandry and fishing industry have supported the islanders – or at least those still remaining.
 

The island’s heritage is largely literary and artistic.  It is the birth place of the ancient bards Sappho, Aesop and Arion and, more recently, the primitive artist Theophilos [Hatzimihail)] and Nobel Laureate poet Odysseas Elytis.

Sappho, Lesvos’s most famous poetess, gave the word Lesbian to the world.  Today, several locations on the island embrace that culture with enthusiasm.  

Hotel Lesbion in Mytilini town

Kalloni Bay

Since it was a 14-hour passage (at best) for us from Limnos to Lesvos, we decided to leave the former at night, rather than arrive in Lesvos in the dark, particularly since entry at night into the Gulf of Kalloni, our planned landfall, was not recommended – for good reason. 

Chart plotter showing entrance, 

anchorage and start of the Gulf

The anchorage was said to afford the best shelter in the Gulf against the Meltemi and to have excellent holding in alluvial mud.  Good thing too since it blew very hard all night as forecast – okay for the wind generator, not so for our nerves.

Anchorage at Apothekes from Island Drifter

While a number of fishermen clearly inhabit the hamlet’s older houses along the water’s edge, a range of low-level holiday apartments seem to have spread up the small hill behind them. The majority were shut up, but then it is now very much the end of season.

Overview of Apothekes fishing hamlet as we left

Plomari

On arrival at Plomari on the south coast of the island we were met by Britta and Frantz who own a holiday apartment in the town. We’d first met them in Århus in 2012 when cruising in Denmark, having been introduced to them by Shelagh Forbes, a childhood friend of Helen.

Britta and Frantz on the quay soon after our arrival

Apart from the local fishermen who come in to unload their catch, we had the Visitors’ Quay entirely to ourselves.  

Island Drifter in solitary splendour on the Visitors’ Quay at Plomari

Plomari is the second largest town on Lesvos.  It is however significantly smaller than Mytilini, the capital.  There are only 2,000 inhabitants who live all year round in the town.  (Twenty years ago there were 15,000.)  The area is particularly popular with Scandinavian visitors. We joined a group of them on their weekly hike into the hills.

Hiking through the olive groves

Behind Plomari the hillsides are blanketed with olive groves.  No other Greek island is so dominated by olive production.  There are 11 million olive trees, some of them over 500 years old.

Plomari at foot of olive-tree-covered hillside

Plomari is also famous throughout Greece for its ouzo. We visited the Isidoros Arvanitis ouzo distillery and enjoyed a most interesting tour of the very modern plant.

Isidoros Arvanitis Ouzo distillery

On our last day we were invited as guests of Britta and Frantz to join a group of their friends and acquaintances on a visit to an organic, family-run olive plantation and mill in the hills above Plomari.  To get there we had a very bumpy trip in the back of the owners’ pick-up trucks!

Travelling by pick-up trucks to the 

Eirini olive plantation owned by the Kalamboka family

Once there, we all enjoyed a very interesting tour of their olive groves and mill.  We were particularly fascinated and impressed by their organic farming methods, the fact that it had taken 12 years to get formal organic accreditation and that, would you believe it, all their olives are hand picked and sorted by just ten skilled workers!!! It came as no surprise to find that they have won many medals in international competitions, including Best Olive Oil in the World in 2015.

Myrta explaining some of the techniques 

used in organic olive farming

The gleaming Italian machinery used for 

the extraction of the first pressing of oil

Thereafter we enjoyed Myrta’s superb lunch of spit-roasted lamb, vegetables and accompaniments cooked in a pizza-style brick oven together with a range of salads. Ouzo and wine flowed freely!  

Lamb turning on the spit

The session continued until early evening when we bounced back in the dark down to Plomari in the family’s pick-up trucks.  A thoroughly enjoyable and informative day.

Twenty-six sitting down for lunch 

at the communal dining table

Mytilini

Next morning Jan, a thwarted Danish sailor, who owns his own boat in Denmark and has a holiday house in Plomari, joined us for the 25-mile passage to Mytilini town.  It was a very pleasant trip with flat sea, blue sky, and in a temperature of 25°C.   It was a pity, however, that there was no wind and we had to motor-sail!

Jan at the wheel

En route, what we particularly noticed was how the coastal landscape changed, when we turned north up the east coast, from olive groves to pine forest.

Holiday accommodation backed 

by pine forest on the east coast

Mytilini town has a very large harbour with both outer and inner breakwaters.  At 22€ a night, as compared with 6€ on the town quay, we gave the recently completed marina in the outer harbour a miss.   However, by marina standards it is good value and it certainly looked to us as if it would be a safe place to leave a yacht for a period of time.

Mytilini Marina and harbour viewed from the south 

(aerial photograph courtesy of marina management)

The inner harbour, where we stayed, provides good all-round shelter and excellent holding – at least as far as we were concerned with a Danforth stern anchor. (Conversely, since the mud is supposed to be soft, plough anchors can drag through it and not hold.)

Island Drifter anchor-moored on Mytilini visitors’ quay

There are said to be three refugee camps somewhere on the island where they are housed, fed and allowed to come and go – but not work in the local economy.  A case of ‘out of sight, out of mind’?  The refugees’ strategy appears to be to take it in turns to come into the town, demonstrate, sleep rough and generally remind people of their continuing existence.

Refugees in square on quayside 40m from the boat

There is a British Border Force cutter, HMC Valiant, here in the harbour, which has been provided by the UK Government to assist the local Coast Guard in the ‘management’ of the refugees.  Fourteen armed Royal Marines are included in the crew. 

HMC Valiant on secondment to assist 

in refugee management

The town and quayside hum with activity. In the old town the narrow winding streets are lined with market stalls and craft shops, which give it the atmosphere of a Turkish bazaar.  While noisy and scruffy, it has a certain charm to it.  The truth is, we quite like city ports (at least now and again).

Fish stall in the bazaar behind the waterfront

Mytilini town is the commercial heart of the island: coasters, caïques, ferries and large fishing boats clutter parts of the harbour.  On the waterfront and scattered around the town itself are baronial houses dating from the prosperous mercantile era of the harbour. 

Baronial houses behind Island Drifter on quay

Each of the Eastern Sporades and Dodecanese Islands are close to the Turkish mainland.  They clearly don’t want to be caught out again as they were in Cyprus when the island was divided.  As a consequence they ensure that there is a very obvious military presence on each island.   To that end, on Sundays they appear to have parades combined with flag raising and lowering ceremonies.

Flag-lowering ceremony at sunset

The principal reason we visited Mytilini town is that the airport is close by and flights to the UK via Athens were reasonably priced. For security and safety reasons Mike stayed with the boat in the port.  Helen, however, was able to return to London for a couple of days to see Will in his latest part in the play In the Event of Moone [sic] Disaster at ‘Theatre503’ in Battersea, which was getting good reviews in the national press.

Will and Alicya Eyo as Neil and Julie Moone: 

In the Event of Moone Disaster

(photograph courtesy of Theatre503, Battersea)

Once Helen got back to Mytilini, we had a quick sort out of the boat before heading south towards Chios.