Freya & Us

The replacement air filter was supposed to arrive on Tuesday. On Tuesday afternoon we tracked Yannis down - he'd forgotten to order it! We went to see George, his son, in the chandlery and watched while he ordered it. Now it wouldn't be here until Thursday. Oh well, a few more days in Kalamata isn't so bad - but on Wednesday we realised we'd missed the weather window and so it went on.......

We did have a good few days in Kalamata shopping, walking along the beach, socialising etc but it was frustrating as we were ready to go, Freya was ready to go and we were going!

Thursday afternoon the filter did arrive and was duly fitted but the wind around the Mani Peninsular was gusting 50 knots, typical as we hadn't had any at all since we'd been back! And then it was 45 knots in Kalamata on Saturday. Tiger came for cuddles in the middle of the night as he was scared of the wind! But Sunday looked good and we were off - motoring the whole 47 miles as there was no wind at all - until we rounded the peninsula when it blew up as we approached the hidden entrance to Porto Kayio, our first anchorage and home for tonight, and blew all night! A nice solid, pretty anchorage though and we slept well.

Our next stop was to be Elafonisi Island, hanging off the bottom of Maleas peninsula 25 miles away. We started off motoring on a very still, beautiful morning. Then we got the sails out and sailed, just a little bit, then motor sailed to our planned anchorage on the south of the island. Unfortunately the north westerly winds and swell forecast were actually southerly which made the anchorage very uncomfortable. We went in to have a look, it was stunning with a white sandy beach and clear turquoise water but sadly we couldn't stay. We headed round to the east of the island to a more sheltered bay which still had the turquoise waters and was still up there on the stunning scale - just not quite so high.

Having had a cup of tea and made sure Freya was well and truly stuck to the bottom we decided to go for a walk. The island is only 3 miles long and so any direction was possible and we decided north towards Elafonisi town which was about 2 miles away. After securing the dinghy to a rock and scrambling through the prickly undergrowth to the road we had a lovely walk along the coast. The town was very small, very pretty but mostly closed. It's on a narrow passage near the mainland, has a very pretty church on a small island across a causeway and lots of traditional fishing boats moored in the small harbour. We had a very welcome drink at very tourist prices(!) before heading back to Freya. On route we came across lots of flotsam washed ashore (dumped) from passing fishing boats. Paul was very excited combing through it looking for just the right sized plastic crate he wanted to help organise all that useful stuff in the cockpit locker. He found just the one and he was still smiling about it as we had dinner in the cockpit watching the sunset.

Next stop Monemvasia, 31 miles away. Not much in the way of sailing but a beautiful trip around the Maleas cape. Certainly not the Cape Horn of the Med for us. We moored on the wall in the little harbour where there were 2 other boats.

The link to our map seems to be stopping people leaving comments on the blog, so I've removed it from these posts for now. I will be keeping it up to date so simply go to one of the special map only posts and click the link there to see it