Monday 20 June
We’re at the quay in Ios and John, being a keen photographer, takes the fast ferry to visit the very photogenic (but not so yacht-friendly) Santorini. These superfast ferries operated by Seajets and Hellenic seaways, are not driven by propellers but by water jets and we clocked their speeds on our AIS to be around 38 kts, about five times faster than motoring Clio. Apart from being uncharacteristically late this time, it should get John from Ios to Santorini, about 17NM South of Ios) in a bit over half an hour.

Tuesday 21 June
We have chosen Milos as our next island, hopping via a couple of other islands. The wind is predicted to be in our favour we make an early start of around 8 this morning. As usual the predictions are off by about 50% and we motor most of the way to Alopronia on Sikinos, a small island to the West of Ios. We arrive and anchor about one hour later, but there is not much there and we still have a way to go to Milos and decide to do the hop to the next island: Folegandros. We anchor in the very lovely bay of Karavostasis with the little tourist village Agkali. After a swim we headed ashore to a taverna on the hill overlooking the bay. Although they did not have deep-fried zucchini balls, Chris's favourite, we enjoyed baked feta, now a new favourite, and Tzatziki while watching the sunset. Since John had not brought ashore his wide angle lens we just had to stay one more night so that we could return to the taverna on Wednesday evening to take more photos. The Wednesday itself was reserved for sleeps, eats, reads, swims and other gruelling activities until we had to go to shore. We had another swim from the beach in the crystal-clear, light-blue water and proceeded to the taverna for John to take some photos with his wideangle, still no zucchini balls though.

Thursday 23 June
Today we have 20+knot north winds predicted. Normally we do not venture out if wind is predicted over 20 knots, but we figured with a third experienced hand on deck we could bounce towards Milos. The wind is now predicted to remain around 20 kts for the next 3 days and we don't want to miss out on Milos before we drop off John in Paros on our way to Mykonos where we pick up our next crew.

So with an already reefed headsail and mainsail, we set off. For the first hour or so Clio was cruising along nicely and then the wind began to increase. John was at the helm and for the next 4 hours ably steered us through 30+knots with Clio heeling just over 20 degrees and we speed along between 7 and 8 kts, not bad for such small sail area. John keeps us very well on course and he loves it (top-left photo). With him taking care of the helm, it leaves us to roam around and solve problems such as a dinghy shaking off its shackles and moving around way too much, keeping the sails trimmed to steering the boat easier (reducing weather helm) and perform the tacks. As we got closer to Milos the gusts were getting stronger and we reefed in more sail to keep Clio’s heel down below 20 degrees, above which her rudder and sail loses much of their efficiency. We did two tacks to get us on a direct course for the industrial bay of Vodhia (top-right photo) and happily set anchor behind a container ship from Hong Kong being filled with processed perlite. Maximum gust registered at that day were 36.5 knots. You can have too much of a good thing, that was enough adrenalin for some time, thank you.

A number of large opencast Bentonite (highly absorbent clay) and Perlite mines are operational in Milos, especially in the northeast part of the island. Bentonite is used for pet-litter and also in paper-making where it may also be used for de-inking during paper recycling. Perlite is another mineral mined on Milos, it is a very light-weight foam-like material and used in building materials since it is cheap and light. It also may find use as a filtering material in the food industry since it is an inert porous material.

We stayed in front of a big ‘no anchoring’ sign for a couple of hours to have lunch and waited for the wind to abate. We then moved around the corner to the very pretty bay out of the village of Pollonia for our two night stay on Milos. The anchorage is a minefield of mooring buoys and it took a bit of time to find a spot to drop our anchor so it would not get entangled with the local lines and anchors. Eventually we succeeded and attached one of the many moorings to our stern cleat to prevent us swinging during the night, hitting some of the other boats. All went well that night, so no big emergencies.

Friday 24 June
We went ashore this morning and enjoyed breakfast in one of the many small tavernas of Pollonia on the shorefront. We then strolled around this pretty little village and arranged to rent a car for this evening and tomorrow. Back to Clio for mandatory siesta time. At 4.00 we collected our small powerless rental and set off to explore the island. First stop the town of Adamantas, the main town on Milos, where after a very small walk, gyros were required to sustain us. John partook of the oversized ‘giant’ variety (bottom-left photo), while Francis and Chris stuck to the regular size which is already a feast. After some more strolling in very hot conditions we found an ice cream shop and could not pass by without sampling their wares. After finding a shady bench along the waterfront we enjoyed our double cones of chocolate and pistachio deliciousness and watched the activity on the quay. After some more driving about we made our way back to Clio for a good night’s sleep.

Saturday 25 June
Today we headed to Plaka and started our day with a visit to the small but interesting and charming archaeological museum to discover a little about the history of Milos.

Milos or Melos (Greek: Μῆλος) is a volcanic Greek island is part of the volcanic arc (see this blog entry) in the Aegean Sea, just north of the Sea of Crete. Milos is the most South-Western island in the Cyclades group.
The island is famous for the statue of Aphrodite (the "Venus de Milo", now in the Louvre and well protected from its original owners), and also for statues of the Greek god Asclepius (now in the British Museum under the same circumstances), the Poseidon and an archaic Apollo in Athens. Milos is a popular tourist destination during the summer.

One of the other high-tourist-value places to visit (yes, we used TripAdvisor) are the Christian catacombs. The catacombs were the meeting place of the early Christians, where they held their religious ceremonies and buried their dead, out of sight of the pageants of that time and also their persecutors. The Catacombs were dug out of volcanic tufa (a relatively soft rock), and indicates that Christianity was established on the island in the 1st century AD, developing greatly during the 3rd and 4th centuries A.D., see for more details http://www.catacombs.gr/. Inside the catacombs, vaults can be seen in the walls which contain graves, and the floor has been used for this same purpose. The latest number of vaults recorded was 126 (Anna Petroheilou, 1972) and it is estimated that thousands of people were buried here. Sadly these tombs have also been desecrated by tourists over the years before the locals took back control and now guard the catacombs as part of their national heritage. Excavations have stopped now due to lack of funding.

Our next stop was the ancient roman amphitheatre, a walking distance away from the catacombs. The Roman Theatre was originally constructed by the inhabitants of the ancient city of Klima, possibly during the Hellenistic Age (3rd century BC) is estimated that it had a seating capacity of 7000 spectators. They have been nicely restored and are used as a venue for play, musical performances and other events.

By now it was very warm so we went looking for a beach for some lunch and a swim to cool off. Despite John navigating and Chris back seat driving we managed to land at the little fishing village of Mandraki instead of our planned destination of Firopotamus. But we found a great little taverna overlooking the water, so we enjoyed a great lunch in this ‘wrong’ spot. We love getting lost!
After being well fed and wined we managed to direct the driver aka skipper to the beach at Firopotamus to soak ourselves in the lovely cool and clear water of a delightful little cove (bottom-right photo). Would easily live here for some time, an unpretentious but beautiful spot with magnificent views and a small community of autochthones, no infinity pools here.

It was time to get back to Clio, after another ice-cream of course (thanks John). Polyaigos is an island that lies just West of Milos and is on our way to Paros, where we plan to go tomorrow taking advantage of the predicted 15 kts of South winds (just for that day). As it is only about half an hour away, we motor over to stay the night before heading back to Paros. This is a truly beautiful spot, very quiet with crystal clear water and sandy beaches. During the night the wind changes to the South (as predicted), but puts us side-to in the gentle swell that kept us rolling just too much for a good sleep all night.

Sunday 26 June
We were up at the crack of dawn this morning hoping to catch some predicted south wind to get us to Paros, but after sailing about 8 NM in the right direction the wind gave up on us and we motored the three hours to our anchorage in the port of Paroikia on Paros. As this is John's last evening with us skipper treats us all to dinner in the lovely restaurant that Chris and Francis had visited two years ago. We drop off John a couple of hours before to do some sightseeing with his wide-angled lens and buy presents for the home-front. When Chris spotted John reserving a table 2 m from the water, we jumped in our trusted inflatable Cleo and run her ashore close to where John is sitting. We’re enjoying a beautiful sunset while the water is lapping the shore and enjoying a Greek feast.

Monday 27 June
After a leisurely breakfast on board it was time to move Clio onto the quay and give her a good wash. Then sadly, it was time to say goodbye to John as he boarded the ferry back to Piraeus to begin his long journey back to Oz. We will miss you, you were a great crew member, helmsman, court photographer and first-class stew-brewer, thank you. Tomorrow we have to ready Clio for our next (Dutch) crew and start making way to Mykonos.