Parthenion on Leros Island

Sunday 24 October 2021

Turkey tour, Monday next. Aussie mates in Didim have arranged a week-long excursion. Don't know yet what it will be, where it will go or what we will see, but we're signed on. In current practical terms that means we have to sail to Leros today, as this passage will get worse later, and on to Didim tomorrow, same reason. Although meandering about, adrift in a sea of serendipitous possibility is fun, it's also good sometimes to have goals, purpose and direction; builds character. We're full of it... character.

Started out before 0700. Sunrise is around 0800. Bugger! Wind, forecast to increase significantly as day advances, is now just enough to provide an extra knot of speed. One good characteristic of increasing wind is that boat is better stabilized as sea builds more slowly. What really sucks is dying breeze with persistent high waves. This location augurs thirty knots or more by evening. Anchorage on Leros is apparently sight of many wrecks, a bad omen, but extremely well protected from all sides with good holding in mud. Tomorrow starts much later as we wait for easing of Meltemi by afternoon. This all assumes latest GRIB (Grievous Repeat of Inane Bullfeathers) is reasonably accurate on this occasion. Confidence soars.

By tomorrow afternoon, if all continues to go well, we will have given the one finger salute to nonsensical authority (isn't that usually redundant?) and trespassed through Greece without infecting their population with our undocumented foreignness or abusing their restaurants, cafes and retail with our unwanted Euro. Their ignorance is piggy bank's bliss as we've been off the boat only twice in the last two and a half weeks creating little opportunity to squander hard-earned currency on dirt-based pleasures.

Belying forecast, wind has eased over the past two hours. And yet, along with gullibility score, confidence soars.

Jack & Jan