Astipalaia

We continue our mad dash to get to Athens by Monday to meet Shan, Heather and Lucca! We were up early again to get a 6:30 start because today is going to be a long one. About 73 miles to Astipalaia, which translates into about a 12 hour day. But not without a small glitch first thing in the morning. As we were pulling up our anchor it wasn’t coming up so easily. Not a big surprise because the last time we were in this harbour there were fouled anchors everywhere. Luckily, the French man a couple boat down who laid his anchor chain over ours was up and on the bow. He was able to let out more chain so we could pull up the anchor to see that in fact, his chain was right over it. Since we don’t have a trip line (on the list to purchase), Mike had to take an early morning swim to put a rope underneath his chain so we could then pull it off the anchor. It’s probably a good thing we got such an early start because we were most likely guilty of fouling our neighbors anchor as well!
We had an amazing day on the water. It was close to perfect except for the fact that we had to motor the whole way because there was so little wind. But the calm seas made it easy to get a lot of little projects done. And then there was just a lot of relaxing. We also had a visit from a lone dolphin who played in our bow wake for a few minutes. The scenery was gorgeous as we were rounding the north east side of Astipalaia, a barren island with high, steep cliffs that plummet right into the water. It was also incredible because we saw so few boats today, maybe one an hour, sometimes none. We started to wonder where everybody was and it was almost eerie as we pulled into Vathi Bay to anchor only to find it completely empty. The only others present were the family who owned a taverna on shore. And the only sounds were their voices, the goat bells and roosters. It was a perfectly calm, beautiful evening. After making dinner and eating at our new cockpit table under the stars and candlelight, we made our way to bed in the v-berth so we could took take advantage of the funneled breeze from the windscoop. We look forward to many more days, many more evenings, and many more anchorages like this.

An afternoon snack