Swimming, reading and taking it easy (Meganisi - Kalamos)

 

6th Aug 2020 (Meganisi - Kalamos)

Having spent a few days on anchor at Vliho on Lefkas - and catching up with Glen and Lynn on their catamaran ’Magnificat’. We filled up with water and swapped some books at the Vliho yacht club - a fancy name for a well run bar restaurant catering to a very British clientele. We left the busy, almost alpine looking cove and made our way through the throngs of charter yachts swarmed around Nidri (not as many as usual apparently) and back out into open water.

Made a short hop down to Meganisi - passing the island of Skorpios previously owned by Aristotle Onassis, (now owned by a Russian Oligarch). Found a peaceful and only partially occupied small bay, and tied back to shore - a skill that we are slowly but surely becoming more proficient at. Meganisi has a sad reputation for rats, after the local cat population was wiped out - so to avoid any unwanted guests, we fitted serrated plastic bottles to our lines to deter any inquisitive rodents. 

Spent a couple of days swimming, reading and taking it easy. The entertainment highlight of our stay was a large Italian motor launch captained by a 'Dog the Bounty hunter@ lookalike who’d decided at 10pm that his anchor wasn’t set and proceeded to rev his motor and spin his boat to the accompanying waving arms and screeches from his wife - to further add to the drama, they had a Great Dane on board, who sensing that something was amiss, decided to take a bite out of one of the crew’s buttocks. After an infuriating hour and  half, the long haired, swimming trunk clad captain decided enough was enough and sped away into the night. 

From the bay it was a good walk around the waters edge road to the town of Vathi where we walked this morning to pick up some bread. Vathi is - as with so many of the places we’ve been, yet another picture perfect fishing village turned tourist spot - with both fishing nets and cafe tables laid out along the quayside.

Returning to the boat after a longish and hot walk back from Vathi, we had a brekkie of smoked salmon and scramble and made ready to leave. 

Leaving the tranquility of the bay and turning into what appeared at first to be the charter yacht super highway - with numerous boats whizzing along in front of us. We blended into the traffic and made our way - with sails up and engine off to the island of Kalamos - a lush, tree laden steep sided island dotted with tempting looking beaches and a number of large, and expensive motor yachts. Losing the wind as we neared our destination we motored into the small - and at first glance close to full harbour at Kalamos town. Greeted by a rotund welcoming George who took our lines we were soon safely med moored. Our English/Welsh neighbour seemed nice at first, if perhaps a little chatty, - having now suffered a good few hours of his self centred verbal diarrhoea, I’d probably revise that slightly... As we stood on the bow watching a fast moving ballet of inept sailors in front of us a couple of very plumby posh chaps decided now would be a good time to leave (with wind picking up and a queue of charter yachts trying to come in). As they made their ill advised departure, the inevitable happened; they snagged their neighbours anchor - we shouted them through the way to resolve it, and they were soon gone. Strolled round the town quay, and me up to the church while Chez checked the weather using the wifi at Georgios cafe. Back to the boat for a dinner, interrupted by a nice Spanish couple who were considering buying a similar boat to ours. We downed forks for a few minutes to give them a quick look around, before our talkative neighbour butted in, and once again began running his mouth, and we decided to give our ears a rest and headed below.