We motored around the headland to arrive in Kioni early and had chosen to visit at the weekend as our contacts suggested this was less crowded.....the charter fleets were at home changing clients!

When we arrived there was one quayside space we could possibly have used but it was on the north side, bow on to the wind gusts we expected and right next to the ferry berths! We chose to anchor back to the rocks on the SW side of the harbour next to a set of steps and with rings set into the rocks for lines to be attached. It’s a very pretty place and well worth a visit. We stayed three nights and enjoyed the visit though we had to spend a good deal of time each day protecting our boat and anchor chain from ‘mooring-loony’s’.

There are only about six tavernas in town, we tried ‘Mills’ on the first night which was good but quite pricey, ate on board the second night as it was stormy and we had plenty of rain, and patronized ‘Calypso’ on the last night, probably the best place given the combination of quality and price.

Many boats come and go around you in a harbour like this, we needed to stop anyone dropping their anchor on ours or on our chain and as some people don’t look around them, we had to be on our guard. Each afternoon Chris had to go to the bow and wave, shout etc at people mooring on the opposite quay intending to drop across more than half the harbour. We had mostly very pleasant neighbours, a very helpful Swede guy, a Belgium group, an English Sunsail charter skipper and her Italian clients, a helpful French boat nearby......the skipper of this and Chris re-set the anchor of the Sunsail charter boat together using our dinghy when she dragged just after finally mooring up.

Mind you we saw the other side of things too, as we got a Greek charter skipper with his clients next to us and he was determined to get his passerelle back to shore even though this meant pushing his boat onto our lines and forcing us to change our ropes about. The worst of this attitude was on the last night. A charter catamaran with a hired skipper came in late, the harbour was very full but there was plenty of space in the bay outside. He was determined to stay inside the harbour and dropped anchor and reversed back against the quay outside a taverna against all the small fishing boats with the local Greeks shouting at him. He ended up against the bow of an Australian flagged boat leaning the weight on his anchor chain whilst he tried to get them to move their boats for him. This of course failed and in the end he dropped his anchor in the middle of the harbour across 6/7 other boats chains and managed to get a line to shore. He sat there all night. Most sailors are considerate and helpful, unfortunately there’s always the minority.

We will probably return to Kioni in September, it might be a bit more peaceful then!