Yesterday, after another motor-assisted 'sail' from Agathonisi towards the North to Samos (one of the bigger Sporades islands), we anchored just outside the port of Pythagorion on the Meltemi-sheltered South side of the island. Francis put some more glue on Cloe to patch up her bum trying to stem the water getting in for change, instead of trying to prevent air from getting out.

Today, Friday 10th July, the forecast is for strong northerly winds for the next couple of days so we decided to up anchor and head into the safety of the harbour and tied up to the quay. We were greeted by Diamonda the harbour monitor who informed us that it was €10 per day water and electricity included, bargain after the €100 in the Netsel Marin. We came in alongside an English yacht with a family who were preparing to leave. We just parked Clio in a bend in the quay where both our neighbors pointed their bows toward each other. As anchor chains are supposed to form one line with the boat, it was impossible to prevent them crossing each other's anchor chains, and for us to cross theirs. We decided to stay put until they left in case they needed us to assist in untangling the anchor chains or prevent Clio to hit the quay if they needed to up our anchor to get their chain from underneath ours. We indeed had crossed their chain but the young man on board jumped into the water and very quickly had our chain free from theirs. Unfortunately ours was not the only one, the two boats next to us had also crossed so the young fellow spent the next 20 minutes or so diving and threading ropes for the rest of the crew to be able to lift chains and get themselves free at last.
We are very happy that we came in when we did as by the afternoon the quay was full and latecomers had to anchor outside and spent a bumpy night in the wind and swell.
Pythagorion is a fairly touristic town, especially around the quay which is completely taken up by restaurants and cafes (bottom-left photo). The tourists seem to be a bit older and there are no blaring discos (that we were kept up by). Stepping off Clio and you're stepping straight into a restaurant. We believe we can order from our back deck if we would want to.

After enjoying Gyros (Greek kebab) we visited Craig and Julie on the Aussie yacht 'Hullabaloo of Normandy'. They are from Melbourne and we had a lovely chat. We then strolled to the end of the quay and sat on the rocky beach wall. Chris noticed that there was a lot of rubbish, especially plastic on the beach and because of her litter paranoia she found a plastic bag and set out to clean up that little patch (top-left photo). At least that is a small amount plastic that will not be choking the sea life.

We get to see so many interesting characters in our travels, and here is no exception. As we sat on the rock wall a busker set up in front of the nearby restaurant and commenced his limited repertoire of instrumental 'Zorba's dance' and vocal 'Que Sera', we think the people may have actually paid him to move on please. By the time we had got back to Clio there he was again in front of the nearby tavernas with the same renditions of those two songs. You had to admire his persistence if not his talent.

Next day, Saturday 11th July, we hired a car and set off to explore this quite large island. We also had a quest to find more chocolate. On reaching Samos we enquired at a coffee shop about large supermarkets and much to our delight were told there is a Carrefour just down the road. As we walked towards the store we encountered an elderly Greek woman begging in the street, a tragically sad result of the Greek crisis, we expect. We donated a few Euros and her face lit up, another sad experience of such lovely people suffering economic decay, made worse by the insistence of the Northern-European lenders, especially Germany, to squeeze the life blood out of the Greek economy. Even the IMF is now starting to feel queasy about the ruthless way the European sister Greece is being humiliated by her Teutonic brother.

We checked out the Carrefour supermarket and we're excited to see that they had our favourite chocolate bars so we stocked up, mainly to support the Greek economy, as we hope you will understand. We bought also a few other minor essentials like fruit and veg as well. We found much to Francis' delight a boat shed/chandlery on the far side of the harbour with a small chandlery where he was able to purchase a break pin for the outboard propeller to replace the makeshift one he had made up previously. They also had some mooring ropes that were too good to pass up. Our old ones were 8 m and we've been struggling to keep sufficient distance from quays, so we now have 11 m lines with 5000kg breaking strength each , approx. 10,000kg as you double them up to tie them back on the boat.

We spent the rest of the day enjoying the drive around the island which is very green and lush. It appears to have very good soil with lots of farming happening. There is also a large military base on the island and we think that this might also serve as a camp for the bus loads of refugees that have been arriving on the ferries every day that we have been here. The good thing about seeing them in the buses is that they are not drowning at sea. There is no turning back of boats here, and even though Greece is struggling to care for its own they still take care of asylum seekers on a huge scale.

From the hill we noticed a small port on the south side of the island and wondered if the English couple Andrew and Kate on Freedom, whom we had anchored next to on Agathonisi had made it to here from Pythagorion. We drove down and found them tied up to the wall and joined them on board for a drink and a lively discussion about the Greek crisis.

On Sunday 12th July the Meltemi is still with us and gusting very strongly today. Chris headed off for a walk this morning and went around the headland to the marina in the next bay. After a lazy day Chris took Francis back to the marina for a look and on the way back we enjoyed a swim off the end of the beach. When we got back to Clio, Craig and Julie joined us on deck for drinks. We enjoyed getting to know each other and had lots of laughs, thanks for a nice night guys.