This episode's video tends to say it all - sailing in the Greek islands is not always calm waters and having fun.









We arrived in Serifos, which is in a very windy part of the Cyclades. When the Meltemi blows, Serifos tends to be right in the middle of the strong winds. When we arrived, it was only meant to be about 15 knots but we had gusts over 25 knots as we entered the bay. We anchored in the bay for a short time until the wind settled down before going into the harbour. The harbour is small and requires boats to drop an anchor and reverse up to the harbour wall. The harbour has a big chain down the middle, which used to have lazy lines attached, but these have been long gone. The chain means that great care needs to be taken not to catch your anchor. The local scuba diver makes a lot of money diving to untangle anchors at €150 per anchor. This is typical of many Greek harbours, that let their lazy lines deteriorate. Lazy lines mean than you do not need to drop an anchor, which would have prevented much of the chaos shown in the video.

We dropped our anchor, which seemed to hold for the first day but on day two we had a cross wind and it became evident that our anchor was dragging. A yacht moored next to us on day one, had a long line attached to the chain in the harbour as their anchor was also dragging so we knew this was an option. When a diver was in the water untangling an anchor from the chain in the harbour, we asked the habour master if he would thread our rope through the chain to make us secure. We negotiated a price, which was significantly less than the €150. This turned out to be an excellent move as on day three, when we planned to leave, the wind unexpectedly came up, gusting at 37 knots. This made it impossible for us to leave the harbour, not to mention all of the tangled boats opposite us blocking us in. We were tied up very securely, which meant we were mostly immune from the chaos that unfolded.

The video only shows a small portion of the chaos, as we had to stop filming as we were helping other boats whose anchors were not holding. We also had an Italian boat that managed to catch their rudder on our mooring rope. We were worried that their propeller was going to cut through our ropes that were holding us securely. We managed to get through the communication barrier and explain what they had done, there might have been some raised voices though!. There was some frantic times while we attached a rope to their boat to hold them secure, while we lengthened our lines so that they dropped down below the depth of their keel. The Italian boat was not able to drop an anchor, so they ended up being tied up to SCII for the next two days. It was a very stressful 30 minutes but we survived unscathed. The Italians presented us with a bottle of wine to thank us for our assistance, which was very nice of them. The harbour master saw us in the bakery later in the day and patted Glenn on the shoulder saying 'Well done Captain'.

Today it is still blowing with gusts up to 40 knots. We just have to sit it out and wait for the wind to die down. The island of Serifos is very pretty, so there are worse places we could be to sit out the Meltemi. We have enjoyed eating out at the restaurants that line the shore. We have reprovisioned including filling up with diesel, which is delivered to SCII by tanker. In typical Greek fashion, the driver is smoking a cigarette as we fill up. We have also enjoyed the local bakeries, including trying the local speciality of Serifos almond biscuits.







The forecast for tomorrow is for lighter winds, so hopefully we can get out of the harbour. Our plan is to head for the more protected waters of the Saronic gulf and out of the very windy Cyclades.