We left Naoussa on 11-9-09 (?) and sailed down to Amorgos. Amorgos is south of Paros and the wind was from the W-NW so we had a good run down there. We soon arrived in Amorgos Town and stayed there for 1 night. But in the morning we got a forecast from some people that we had just met saying that the wind would come from the N and NW. The bay of Amorgos Town is exposed to that wind so we decided to move on to Levitha, another island close to the Dodecanese.

So we set out. But, we had gotten a forecast of Force 6 (22-27 kts.) and were going to take things carefully. So we untied and stared to motor out of the bay. Well, we soon figured out that that was a bad idea. We had come into somewhere around Force 7 (28-33 kts.) winds and HUGE waves. The waves were the bad part. We had probably 8 foot waves on our beam.

But, for some reason, we thought that the wind would let off eventually once we got around this one point. So we fought on. However, it soon came apparent that we would have to turn back. So we turned around and headed in to harbor. There was only a slight problem; we had lost our dinghy! 

Soon, we spotted it. It was about a 5 minute boat ride in the storm. So we pulled out the boat hook and made about 10 passes at the dinghy before we finally caught it, in the process bending our boat hook (luckily we had a spare, but the spare didn't extend properly). Since both of the D-rings for towing had pulled out (that's how we lost it), we tied it up by the other bow line, the one for sitting at anchor. Off we went again but we hadn't gotten far before my mom noticed that our dinghy was gone again (the knot that we had used to tie it up with had come undone)!  So we took off into the storm again to find our dinghy a second time.

This time it was only a minute or so before our dinghy was sighted. So, 3 foot boat hook at the ready, we made a few swipes at it. The first time we missed. But on the second try we got it. Luckily the dinghy never came off again and so we didn't have to use that boat hook again. But, I think that we'll be tying up our dinghy more securely after that episode!

We made it safely into another harbor (I didn't need to tell you this. If we hadn't, I wouldn't be writing.) and had a pleasant stay there until a fisherman came up to us to tell us to get off of his dock and go somewhere else. With my dad being nearly sick and the rest of us really tired, he put up a fight. So luckily we didn't move. But that fisherman would be like an extremely annoying dog our whole stay in that town.

Our plans after the storm had died down were to sail directly to the Dodecanese, a 50 mile (hence the title) trip to one of the group called Kalymnos. But this time we had a great sail, interrupted only when a fisherman forced us to jybe. But when we arrived near Kalymnos and its neighboring island Leros, we soon found ourselves heading for the wrong island! But our plans had suddenly changed at that moment and we found that we were going to stay at Leros for the night.

We got up early and headed out of the anchorage at around 8 a.m. We had about 30 miles to go, but we were excited to get to Bodrum. So we were off. The wind built continually that day, but as we were going downwind, it didn't really matter.

Bodrum!! It was an interesting entrance we made to the harbor. First off, we got lost the last 5 miles coming into Bodrum and we started going up and down like we were drunk! And then, when we came into the marina, we hadn't hailed them on VHF channel 73 and so we didn't know where to go! But, on our way out, my dad hailed the marina and we were told to med tie up on to the quay near the customs office (we didn't want to stay a night. All that we wanted to do was to get checked in to Turkey.).

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So that is my account of what happened since Naoussa. Since then we haven't done a whole lot except to go to West Marine and buy a boat hook, 3 heads, and a few other assorted items. There is a castle nearby and we will go to visit it on Tuesday (it's closed on Mondays).

P.S. I'm so sorry that I had to feed you all this information in one blog. I just couldn't get on the computer and remember to blog very often since Naoussa.