After leaving Mykonos we island hoped overnighting in Siros and Kythnos on our way to Hermione to catch up with the sailing vessel "Perfect Sense" and our friends Mats and Liz. It was wonderful to see them again and we also met their guests Bill, his daughter Fiona and Son in law Steve. We had a lovely time catching up with them and chatting with Bill & Co. Next day "Perfect Sense" was heading for Spetse and as we didn't want to gate crash Bill and Co's holiday we decided to head for Poros. We went on the pier as it was my birthday and Steve was taking me out for dinner. I had a wonderful day skyping with the family and got to say hello to our gorgeous granddaughter Stella. I got a lovely surprise when Mats and Liz arrived with guest in tow, they decided that they wanted to celebrate with me, so all in all I had a wonderful day.
We ended up staying on the pier for several days as Steve decided that he wanted to get a new anchor, we have had a few incidences with our old CQR Anchor and we had lost confidence in it. We went into the local marine shop and Steve saw that they sold ROCNA Anchors so we ordered our new anchor, it was a bit touch and go there for a while as all the banks in Greece closed and no one wanted to accept cards, and all the ATMs had run out of cash. Luckily they were all reloaded overnight and we were able to withdraw enough to pay for the anchor. The anchor arrived the next day along with 20m more chain and Steve was happy we decided that we wanted to test the new anchor (aka Rocky Balboa) we left Poros and headed for Porto Kheli further down the mainland coast on the way we gave the CQR a fitting burial at sea. We spent 2 nights at Porto Kheli then headed back to Poros to say our fairwells to Mats and Liz as we needed to start heading for the Corinth Canal and on to Messolonghi where we are leaving Split Enz to return to NZ to be with our Daughter and Son in law for the birth of their first child. Our little grandchild had other ideas and decided he was going to enter this world 2 weeks early, so gutted not to have been there but so thrilled that we will be able to spend the whole 3 weeks kissing and cuddling our new Grandson Lachlan Ferdinand Alexander van Holst.