Sailing Slow, Sailing Fast, Sailing Rocky-Rolly

After two days in pretty Emporios, it was time to move on.  We were up early as we had a relatively long sail ahead of us.  As we were dropping the mooring lines a pod of dolphins came into the bay to swim around the boats.  What a treat!  After nearly two years sailing around the Mediterranean this was the first time we saw dolphins.

It's a dolphin!

More dolphins in the early morning light

Our destination was Kamari/Kefalos anchorage on the southeastern side of Kos.  The winds were light but we were determined to motor as little as possible.  We poled out the genoa using our new snap shackle snatch block to stop it flogging in the light winds and with the wind behind us we tootled along at 3 knots.

Poled out genoa

We arrived at the anchorage in the late afternoon after an easy but slow ride.  We had visited this bay when we hired a scooter in May and it looked a great place to stay.  What a change in the place now it was peak season!  It was very touristy, mainly with tourist from the north of England.  It didn’t seem like Greece.  Give me the small, quiet islands any day.

 

 Just an overnighter in Kos then another early start and longish day sail to Tilos.  This time we had good winds and a great beam reach sail to Livadhi, Tilos.

Woo Hoo - 7+ knots

 

We dropped the hook, had a swim and shower then an early night to get ready for the next day sail to Symi.  There was a steady NW wind and we sailed all the way at 5.5 kts.  It would have been perfect except the seas were very rolly off our beam which made for a rocky-rolly ride that brought on a touch of the queazies. 

We were going across a shipping lane and had some close encounters with some cargo ships.  We chatted with one on the radio and eventually he changed course.  Evenso he came within about 500m to us, which is a bit too close for comfort with these big ships.

Large cargo ship close by

We entered pretty Panormitis harbour in the late afternoon after another great day of sailing.