We are currently tied up in the harbour at lovely island of Lipsi waiting for the meltemi to blow itself out. The meltemi is strong northerly wind that blows through the central Aegean. For the last few days we have had winds of 20-30 knots, although this morning it is calm, so hopefully todays forecasted strong winds do not eventuate. Prior to arriving in Lipsi we had almost a week of no or very little wind, which is great when anchored out, but not so good for sailing. This is typical for the weather patterns of the Aegean, where it seems to be either blowing strongly or calm.

Lipsi harbour is overseen by Manolis, the harbour master, who is a real character. When boats come into the harbour, he shouts instructions that nobody seems to understand and gets very grumpy if they are not followed. He assists boats to tie-up to the harbour for a fee of €5, however if things go wrong, he takes no responsibility. Today an Italian boat needed to re-anchor and proceeded to drop their chain over ours, despite being told they were dropping their anchor in the wrong place. Manolis’ response was that they were wrong and shrugged his shoulders and walked away. The Italian skipper snorkelled over the anchor and admitted his anchor was over ours, but he just shrugged to us and said it was only a little bit. This would have created a problem for us and the Italian boat as we would have snagged their anchor, when we go to leave. Thankfully they were encouraged by several other people to re-anchor again while it was calm. This time they listened to instructions, and dropped their anchor so that it was not crossing other chains.

In the last blog, Matt asked the question ‘do we need to book to get into harbours?’ The answer is it depends on the harbour. For marinas the answer is ‘yes’, you usually need to book a few days out. For marinas, we also need to consider they day of the week, as it is often difficult to get a booking on a Friday or Saturday, as this is when the charter boats do their turnaround, so marinas are usually full on these days. For most town harbours there is no requirement to book, although the harbour in Pythagorio, Samos has started taking bookings this year. For harbours that are busy, we tend to use the strategy of getting in early in the day, about 10.30-11.00am, when boats from the previous day are leaving, so we usually find a gap. This strategy generally works for us.

Marinas tend to be expensive, so we avoid using them as much as possible. Some marinas can cost over €100 per night, with additional costs for power and water. Town harbours are much cheaper ranging from €0 at Arki per night, €10 at Lispi to €55 at Samos, which is one of the more expensive harbours. If we anchor out in a bay it costs us nothing.

Lipsi town is well supported by minimarkets selling all the essentials and an excellent bakery. The bakery supplies bread, a range of savoury Greek pastries such as Lipsi cheese pie and spanakopita, as well as Greek biscuits and baklava. We have had some lovely meals at the tavernas and ouzeria at Lipsi. Many of the tavernas have octopus hanging out to dry during the day, which they grill over charcoal and serve with olive oil and lemon, which is delicious. Last night we ate local fried Lipsi cheese, baked eggplant with a tomato sauce and stuffed goat, all of which was delectable.



Before arriving at Lipsi we visited the Greek islands of Agathonisi and Arki. Agathonisi is very pretty. The harbour has a sandy beach, which is rare in these parts, and crystal blue water. It is the perfect island for a quiet beach holiday, where you want to escape from the rest of the world! There is not a lot of room in the bay, the ferry requires a large space to anchor and turn around. The locals have installed two mooring buoys for visiting yachts, as well as bollards on the shore to tie up to. We picked up a mooring, where we stayed for two nights. The first day a group of four boats who were travelling together anchored very close to us, as can be seen in the video. They had very little anchor chain out, only about 10m, we were lucky it was not windy. We put our fenders out as we did not want any touching of boats in the middle of the night, which thankfully did not eventuate. Some skippers, do not have any concept of safe distances and swing room. The next day they moved and we had plenty of room.




Arki is also a quiet island, where the main industries are goat herding and fishing. The harbour only has room for about 10 yachts, which are catered for by two tavernas and a café. One or two tour boats come in during the day but by 4.00pm they are gone, just leaving the yachties and locals. We spent one night in the harbour and three nights anchored out, which enabled swimming off the back of the boat.



We plan for the next week to anchor out in bays around Lipsi and Archangelo, as the meltemi settles down.

The weather today is 29 degrees, but the wind is just starting to pick up again, the forecast is for gusts over 30 knots.