Leros

We spent a week on the pretty island of Leros anchored in the very pleasant harbour of Lakki.  

The harbour of Lakki.  The marina on the left is where we will keep Songster for July-August

We had a few repairs to do and some business arrangements to make, as well as the usual sightseeing.  The first repair was to the main sail.  The sail had ripped at one of the reefing cringles in the big blow going to Levithia.  The cringles were not well reinforced so we had the rip repaired and the other cringles re-inforced.  It was a straight-forward repair for the sailmaker and he charged us a very reasonable amount. 

The repaired and re-enforced reefing cringles

Our other repair was to reattach the outhaul cable which had come undone inside the boom.  This required drilling out rivets to get access to the boom interior, replacing the bolt that had broken, reattaching everything then re-riveting the end of the boom to the shaft.  Bob could have done this repair but we didn't have all the equipment we needed on hand and would have had to go hunting for the bits and pieces in the hardware stores.  So we decided to have the workshop at the marina in Lakki do the work.  They did a good job but it cost about double what we thought it would.  Such is life.

Taking the boom by dinghy to the workshop

Major chores done, it was time to see some of the sights of the island.  We hired a motor scooter and set off to explore.  Like many of the islands in the Dodecanese group, Leros has a history of occupation by the Ancient Greeks, the Knights of St John, the Ottomans, Venetians, Italians and a strategic battlefield in World War II.  The Italian influence is especially strong on Leros.  In the early 20^th Century, Mussolini injected large sums into the islands for public works, including a naval base.  Many of the building bear the distinctive Italian Rationalist architecture that Mussolini favoured.  I have to say that I prefer the traditional blue and white Greek Island buildings.

One of the old, and now derelict Italian buildings

Our first stop on the scooter was the Castle of the Virgin Mary (Panagia Kastrou) overlooking the villages of Pandeli, Platanos and Agia Marina which make up the capital of the island.  The castle was built in the 11^th Century by the Byzantines then taken over by the Knights of St John in the 14^th Century.

The capital of the island

Castle of the Virgin Mary on the hill

The walls of the castle

Painting of the icon in the castle chapel

View from the castle

Local traffic obstacles

Windmills

We passed by a Commonwealth War Cemetery where over 100 British and Canadian servicemen are buried.  Most had died when the HMS Intrepid was sunk by German bombs in September 1943.

Commonwealth War Cemetery

A few days after our scooter tour of the island we thought we would explore the War Museum.  Google maps had the location on the other side of the Lakki harbour.  We thought this would be a pleasant 3.5 km walk to the museum and headed off.  Past the marina we entered the grounds of the old psychiatric hospital, apparently with a rather sordid past.  Then we came to a migrant camp Last year the island was inundated with migrants coming in on dinghies from Turkey.  We noticed a few Syrians in town and here was there temporary home.  It looks as if they have freedom of movement during the day as they were walking in and out of the gates.  The police guards seemed very relaxed.  

Migrant Camp

Finally we walked all the way to the Navy base and still saw no sign of the War Museum.  We asked the guard who told us the museum was on the opposite side of the harbour near where we had started are walk!  Thank you Google maps. 

The next day we tried again.  This time initially going to the site indicated by Trip Advisor, which was also wrong.  We asked some locals and the museum was another kilometre further down the road.  When we got there it was closed.  This was definitely not to be.  

We consoled ourselves with a cold beer at a harbour side cafe and made plans for our next destination.