Around lunchtime we lifted the anchor and pointed the bows south again towards the island of Paxos. A mix of motoring and some sailing as the afternoon breeze came in brought us to Mongonisi , a small bay on the south eastern end of the island. It’s a tight anchorage with a taverna to port with a quayside and the space for 3-4 boats to swing to anchor. As we wanted a quiet night we avoided the taverna quay and set ourselves to anchor back against the rocks on the opposite side.

Taking lines to shore from the stern with your anchor set out in front to hold you off the rocks takes up much less space in a busy anchorage. There was just enough room for us to drop our anchor off the stern of British flagged ‘Stonehenge’ and fall back along from an Autralian boat who was moored to the shore. It then got a bit messy as the Australian decided he was going to up anchor and re-moor in the middle of our manoeuvre.

Our stern lines secured to the rocks by well protected ropes and shackles
For this manoeuvre to work well we position Splice with her stern to the shore about 45 metres out, start dropping the anchor and reverse back until we are about 10-12 meters from the shore. We then hold the boat against the anchor with the engines whilst Chris swims the lines ashore and we tighten both lines and chain to hold Splice around 10m off the shore. This is quite a complex process with only two people and not helped when your neighbour starts to move at the same time as the swimmer is on shore. The boats got close enough for fenders to be readied but all was well in the end. The crew of Stonehenge told us later that the Australian had already tried to anchor 5 times and had been asking other boats to move to accommodate him..... that’s not going to happen!

We had a peaceful night and a trip around the bay in Fizz the next morning included chatting to Stonehenge for a while. It’s a nice place and worth a visit.

When Chris sailed Wayfarer dinghies on Paxos many years ago they made trips across to the smaller island of Anti-Paxos, so we decide to investigate to see if he could recognise anything. It’s only a 20 minute motor over but as we got closer it was clear that the small bays were very full of yachts and larger tripper-boats from Corfu. We motored passed the bays and Chris thought he could spot one he had visited but we declined to join the jostling match by trying to anchor. He remembered it as a quiet bay with few people other than the dinghy sailors.......not now.
We motored back up to the anchorage outside Gaios as the ‘Admiral’ had made strict rules about never entering that port again after the ‘double anchor lift’ extravaganza of our last visit. We dropped anchor about 50m to starboard to the south entrance and held well the first time. We watched a number of other boats have trouble anchoring and when it was quiet Chris went to swim over our anchor to check it was set well. We thought we had dropped on sand but it’s not.....its sandy coloured rock with gulleys and small pinnacles. Our anchor was in a gully with the point hard against the side and the chain had caught under a small rock as the boat swung, so we had a 90 degree turn in the chain. We were quite secure but it was not clear how easily we would recover our mooring gear. Anyway, it gave the ‘Admiral’ something useful to worry about overnight and with a bit of back and forward the next day we came away with just a scrape on the point of the anchor and the skipper didn’t need to dig out the scuba gear!

Main Photo: Drinks on the bow in Mongonisi