We had been to the island of Chalki (pronounced “Halki”) in 2017 and it was great to get back there. It is a very pretty village set on a well-protected harbour. The houses are all well maintained and painted in many varied shades of colours. The jetty we expected to moor at no longer exists and there are now only a few spaces available to yachts on the harbour wall. The harbour was made even busier by a fleet of large RIB’s that were transporting a group of doctors from Athens that do a lap around the islands, supporting island communities with limited medical services. The medical personnel all wore t-shirts, with ‘we serve the community’ (interestingly in English rather than in Greek) across their back. The arrival of the 30 to 40 medical staff made Chalki quite busy.

One of the owners of a restaurant on the key helped us tie-up, we had a beautiful meal there of fresh fish cooked over charcoal, with an Greek salad and chips. At the end of the meal we were presented with glasses of clear liquid, which the owner proclaimed as ‘covid medicine’ but tasted somewhat like grappa.
During the day a fishing boat parked next to us, and proceeded to unload numerous tubs of small shrimps, known locally as Symi shrimp. (see gallery)

Just 20 nautical miles from Chalki is the island of Tilos. We had a good sail most of the way in 16 knot winds, just the last couple of miles required us to motor as the wind dropped down. We tied-up on the opposite side of the mole to the ferry jetty, which was a great place for people watching. Tilos is a sleepy town but when the ferry comes in people seem to emerge from the white houses and apartments that line the hillside. It turns out that Tilos had a big event on the weekend, with media and many dignitaries, as Tilos promotes itself as a ‘zero waste’ island. This is good to see, as many Greek islands, including big islands like Rhodes, have not embraced recycling at all.

We ate at a restaurant that overlooks the harbour and the bay, the views were stunning. We had chickpea fritters, bean and tomato salad with pesto and a local speciality called fouki (slow cooked pork in a tomato sauce served over fried potatoes). It sounds a bit odd serving the pork on fried potatoes but it works well in soaking up the juices. At the end of the meal we were brought a complementary dessert of a Greek version of mille feuille, which used filo pastry instead of puff pastry, with crème pâtissier, it was fantastic. The meal including wine only cost 26€.

We had an overnight stop in Palon harbour on Nisiros. This town was very quite and looking just a little run down. Our favourite restaurant run by George from Port Melbourne was not open which was somewhat disappointing – we always used to have a great meal here. Just had to try our luck at one of the other harbourside restaurants. We were their only guests for the night and we suspect all day.

We have always wanted to travel out to the more Western Greek islands and used a forecast of light winds for a week to travel out to the island of Astipalaia, about 38 Miles travel. We hoped for some breeze but it was unusually calm for this area so we motored all the way. We will spend the first night anchored in a lovely protected bay that we have all to ourselves. It is so quiet, with only the sound of lapping water and goat bells. On the edge of the otherwise deserted bay is a tiny, but well-kept church (see gallery). We will explore more of the island over the next few days.

For those of you who have not looked at the map on this blog, we have put markers at all of the locations we have been so far this year. The markers are; Yellow marks are linked to our blog posts, the White ones are places we have been and the Blue one is our current location.