Nisos Leros to Nisos Aganthonisi

Posted at 9:52 PM, Jun. 29, 2009

Time is drifting by far to quickly as we have continued our northerly passage up through the Dodecanese group of islands which stretch over 100 miles from Rhodes (Rhodos) in the south to Agathonisi in the north which is where we are as I write this. The next island group north of here are the Sporades.

The last blog posting had us at Pandeli on Nisos Leros and from there we had a good sail just off the wind in up to 15 knots. The prevailing winds at the this time of the year are northerly quarter winds but for the last week or so the meltemi has disappeared and we have had southerly sea breezes, mostly south westerly’s, which has been great for making to the north. 

From Pandeli the next port of call was Patmos.  We had heard of it but that was about all so were unprepared for the sight of the enormous monastery dwarfing the port town and the chora. The monastery is more akin to a medieval castle and was clearly built to withstand assaults from marauding forces whether they be Saracen pirates or suchlike. Within the monastery there are 40 churches and the chora is a maze of small narrow streets with whitewashed houses as we saw in the Cyclades last year.         The imposing St John Monastery  - built to withstand attacks it seems

The monastery was built in honour of St John in 1088 (but presumably took many years of construction) as on the road up from the port town to the chora is the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse where St John saw the vision of fire and brimstone and wrote the Book of Revelation in AD95. John was exiled to the island and lived in the cave for three years. So Patmos is an island that caters for both tourists and pilgrims - we figured John must have been a pretty old guy by this time, at least in his eighties?

                                     The monastery from the water

We had a couple of nights on the quay at Patmos and Nicki and Richard departed from here by hydrofoil back to Kos and then by ferry to Bodrum. Berthed alongside us was a Westerly 43 centre cockpit boat flying both British and NZ flags owned by Tim and June. They have strong NZ connections and live in Cambridge (the NZ one) for 6 months a year and then sail and spend time in England for the other 6 months.  We have been cruising with them for the past few days and Swagman friends if you read this they live in Beaulieu (Lord Montague territory we are told) in the New Forest so cannot be far from you.

                    Nicki, Pam & Richard looking down to Patmos from the monastery.

From Patmos we headed roughly eastwards for Nisos Arki but found a most delightful very small island adjoining Arki called Nisis Marathos. There are three tavarna’s in the bay and laid moorings to pick up. An absolutely delightful spot, amazingly clear water and a sandy beach which is a rarity unless you happened to have Cleopatra as a lover – which would probably not be all bad news. The Pilot makes a minor mention of this island which is a shame as it was one of those 99.5% bays very worthy of a stopover and with dinner ashore even better! The Pilot talks of two taverna’s in the bay owned by the same family who were born on the island, but in fact there are three and the right hand one is the so called upmarket imposter  - so in our view don’t patronise him and instead support the local family – Pirates Taverna at the left hand end. Lots of goats with bells on and wild goat stew and wild goat chops featured on the menu – the former ordered by both Pam and Tim.

From Marathos we stopped for lunch at a delightful bay, Caribbean blue water, on the bottom of Arki and then is was a slow genaker  run for the 10 miles across to the top of Nisos Agathonisi and anchored off in a bay on the NE tip. This bay was notable for the strong military presence – there were two powerful RIB’s and all the soldiers were dressed in full camouflage gear and hard to spot amongst the scrubby rocky landscape. This small island has a permanent population of 120 and last year 5,000 refugees turned up via Turkey. We are now in the main port of the island and when we arrived there were 18 refugees on the jetty who were marched off in military style, two abreast, up to a building above the village where they remain at present. By the end of the day there were over 100 there and they were still there the following morning. 

                       The soldiers head out to sea - guns in hand and on foredeck

We struck this at Symi last year and we thought as Symi was close to the coast of Turkey they must be the recipients of a lot of refugees but that does not seem to be the case and although we are close to Turkey at Nisos Agathonisi (8 miles off the coast) it does look as though many of the Greek islands have refugees as a major problem. Here at Agathonisi there are plenty of slashed inflatables and the rubbish bin was full of what looked like good life vests. At Nisis Marathos we met another kiwi boat called Agronauta and they had picked up two backpacks and some wreckage from the sea and reported into the port police at Patmos – only to be told don’t worry just refugees nothing that you can do.

All systems aok  on board and weather continues to be kind to us. No sign of the meltemi again as yet!

Cheers

Keith & Pam