As there was no news on the tracker of the arrival of our windlass parts, we decided to head off to Ermioni. By car this is 20 minutes across the peninsula but it's a nice days sail around the coast by boat.

We decided to extend it a little by a trip to a cove on the southern side of Hydra for a lunch stop. The first hour or so we managed to make way with the sails but by late morning it was clear we needed faster progress so the engines did the last hour of the morning session. Ay Nikolaos is a small cove with only space for a few boats, there's a beach club there whose customers seem to de delivered by the regular small ferries. The shallow anchor places were taken when we arrived so we had to drop the anchor in 17m and reverse back towards the cliff, Chris then swam a line ashore and fixed it to a rock we had selected.

This is a technique often used in Greece, you see all sorts of boats 'tied back' to the shore. It allows more craft to use the same space than if they were swinging around. (It is also a tactic used by big motor boats who put their anchor chain right cross the middle of the bay to try and prevent others stopping there... we love big motor boats!). We would always use two lines ashore to keep us stable if we were staying any length of time but one is fine for lunch.
It's a pretty bay and we had an enjoyable lunch before Chris got another swim to release the line and we continued on towards Ermioni.

After a day in the harbour at Ermioni we did a day trip across the gulf to Dhocos Island and targeting Derrick Cove, a small bay set off the larger anchorage are there. It's very popular and we were pleased to find a place free amongst a flotilla who had clearly spent the night there. We moored back to shore and were set in a lovely spot. After a while the flotilla all left and we had the cove to ourselves. This was not going to last... and we saw a small boat approach and set up to anchor back near to us. Suddenly four large catamarans came around the corner and headed at him at high speed. It was like a swarm of wasps as they buzzed around him preventing him from anchoring. They clearly wanted his space themselves as they then spent the next two hours trying to anchor four cats rafted together in this corner of the bay. The small boat just had to sit there and float whilst they made multiple mistakes trying to get lines ashore and set anchors, it would have been very amusing seeing them fall over rocks, get pulled back into the water as the lines were too short, drop anchors in the wrong place etc if their behavior was not so irritating! They eventually managed three anchors and two shorelines between four cats.

The 'wasp cats' swarm the smaller mono

After watching this performance we then had another hour or so of screaming and shouting play in the water before we decided anywhere was more peaceful and dropped our lines to head back to Ermioni. The small boat who had been floating in the midst of all this, blocked from the shore, took our place.

Main photo: Ermioni harbour