Thesee's Cyclades Adventures - Levitha & Amorgos

Monday 13th May...

Linda -  It’s a go! Time to say ‘Goodbye’ to lovely Leros. I think we explored every corner of this island during the time we spent here last Autumn and the last three weeks. We’ve kind of got used to being here and so it felt hard to make the move and drag ourselves away. On the other hand, it was becoming a bit ‘samey’ every day.

At 8am we were at the Port Police getting our transit log stamped to say we were leaving. They ask you where you are going to so they can record it in the transit log. We don’t always know where we shall be able to ‘check in’ again, so we have to have a bit of a guess. Today we told them next stop would be Amorgos. In fact we are in Levitha tonight.  It’s a tiny island 23 miles west of Leros. 

By 9am we had departed the quay and waved goodbye to our kitty friend who was sitting on the quay watching. I hope someone will feed him tonight. There was good winds today and the sea was not behaving too badly. Although you could call the journey ‘quite lively’. We sailed all the way mostly doing 7 to 8 knots which is brilliant. We had two reefs in both sails also. Thesee was amazing once more. There were just a couple of biggish waves that made us roll about a bit. The first one made all Dean’s books fly off the shelf and all over the bed. The second one sent our bucket of fresh water flying around the cockpit.  And of course the Saffy-o-meter (her photo frame) fell over. She wouldn’t have been happy sailing today’s journey for sure.

Bye Bye Town Quay Leros

En-route to Levitha

Of course, we had two ships that wanted to cross paths with us.One was pretty close but the other one quite a way off. It's quite daunting watching them appear over the horizon and then be virtually on top of you within 15 minutes. 

This one passed in front of us

This one a little further away

Nearing the entrance to Levitha

It only took us 3 hours to travel the 23 miles, so by noon we were in Levitha and had picked up a buoy. There’s 10 buoys here, but only one was taken by the time we arrived. Now at 8pm all the buoys are full. 

This afternoon the winds were quite moderate in this cove, but we still managed to get the dinghy out of the locker and blow it up. The outboard engine was playing up a little. Dean worked his magic on it by checking the float, pilot jet, and main jet in the carburettor. He found a tiny blockage and also a bit of dampness degrading. All good now, thanks to Dean’s care and attention.

We’re getting back into the swing of things, the boat next to us is Austrian’s (only naked part of the time at the moment). Usually the Austrians are total! Oh and another boat with a fat bloke in his speedos. Thank goodness Dean is not Austrian and he doesn’t wear speedos either.

At the buoy field in Levitha

The displaced books scattered all over the bed!

Dean working on the outboard engine

Still working on the outboard

Quite a calm evening here.

A number of goats also!

The carburettor maintenance

Dean goes for a test ride

Tuesday 14th May...

Linda - No rest for the wicked. We were up and ready to leave Levitha at 9am. A few boats were heading the same way, probably about 4 or 5 including us. Once again the sea was lively, quite a bit more lively in fact than yesterday. Our destination was Katapolo, it's the main town on the island of Amorgos. The journey was almost 6 hours, a little longer than expected because we had to deal with another two ships crossing in front of us, one each way this time so even more complicated.  I don't know how we always seem to get such bad timing to cross paths within such close distances. 

Once again Dean had read the situation down to a T. The first ship (MSC) passed us a fair way off, but then we had the red/black tanker coming from left to right. There's no way you want to try and pass in front of one of these beasts. Dean had everything in hand, he changed course slightly from a beam reach to close hauled meaning we would be able to still sail but not quite in the right direction we wanted. Thus giving the tanker extra space to pass in front of us. I think we actually lost about half an hour by doing this, but once the tanker had passed we were able to get back on course to Amorgos.

MSC going, Tanker coming!

The waves today were higher than yesterday, but all went extremely well and we arrived in Katapolo at 2.45pm. A distance of 36 miles today.

Lovely fair weather clouds

Heading down the north coast of Amorgos

Dean tweaking the sails for maximum performance

Full mainsail now after the wind dropped off a little,

and we shook the reefs out.

Amorgos is just like one big rock

Castle at the entrance to Katapolo

Here we are and at anchor in a lovely spot with 

great views

Fast ferry arriving

Nice Church on the shore in the anchorage

Our route today on 'Vessel Finder'

...and where we came from

We found a nice restaurant (with tablecloths) and enjoyed a very lovely meal tonight. My chicken souvlaki was so good. We could even see Thesee from our dining table.

Yamas

There's Thesee at anchor

Looking out of the inlet at sunset

The town lit up looking exquisite

Wednesday 15th May...

Linda - Oh My Word.... seems I took 50 photographs today. I'll show you the best ones from our fabulous day on Amorgos. Well we wanted to go and see the monastery which hangs on the side of a cliff face, so we needed to hire a car to get across to the other side of the island. The weather today was very calm so we were happy to leave Thésée sitting at anchor. 

Sunrise in Katapola, Amorgos

We took the dinghy to the beach because it was really the only place we could find to lock it up to something. When we beach the dinghy we always get our feet wet so have to stop and change footwear once ashore.

Dean drying off his feet and changing shoes

Thesee sitting on his own all day long

Dinghy locked to the stairway

We picked up the car hire and set off up the mountain where we stopped to take in the views looking back down into the bay.

Bay view

Close up... there's blue Thésée

It was a short 15 minute drive through the Chora (name given to the high town on an island) to reach the Monastery of Hozoviotissa. It's an 11th century structure which was erected as an ode to the Grace of Panagia..... aka The Virgin Mary of course. She's very popular in Greece.

Friendly cats when we arrived. Just want fuss not food.

First view looking up to the Monastery

Car park with a view

Dean recording a video

What a beautiful sea today

You have to walk up zig zags from the car park

😍

More photos as we get closer

It's so extraordinary 

More views looking south

Dean's arrived

Me too

It's such a tiny doorway to get inside

Looking out of the tiny doorway

We pre-empted the dress code and wore long trousers and I took a cardi to cover my shoulders. But still I had to wrap a scarf around my waist when we entered. Inside the guide was very informative and although we were basically only allowed into the one room very small Church, we were then allowed into another room and supplied with refreshments and pictures of many Priests. There was a friendly French family there too and we had a little chit chat. 

To be honest considering the size of the Monastery, we were a little disappointed to only be allowed into two/three rooms. Still we can't really complain as there was no entrance fee. 

As we left and made our way back to the car park people were arriving in big numbers. It's a good job we were early birds today. When we left the car park there were about 20 cars, opposed to just 1 car when we had arrived. 

Looking straight up the cliff face on our way out 😮

Next stop was back into the Chora to find coffee, ice-cream, and loos. We wish we hadn't found the loos they were so disgusting. 

The Chora

Church

Same Church with windmills up on the hillside

Streets in the Chora

There's not a million places to see on this island, but to make use of the car we travelled 30 minutes to the south of the island to see the shipwreck of the Olympia.  It was February 1980 when this commercial ship reached the coast of Amorgos and due to strong winds (Force 10) led it directly onto the rocks. The ship's crew consisted of contemporary pirates heading from Cyprus to Greece. That's why the ship was under the flag of Cyprus at that time.

The shipwreck has been used as a shooting area for various travel shows and documentaries including the movie Le Grand Bleu (The Big Blue) in 1988

Here's the shipwreck

We had to walk down the pathway to see it up close

Nearly there

Arrrrrr... Pirates

So much excitement on our rare day out ashore. We'd spotted a nice looking taverna on the way here. It was the obvious choice for lunch out in the middle of nowhere. Funnily, another 3 hire cars arrived after us... all been to the shipwreck. 

Taverna

Very pleasant and welcoming

We were back in Katapola late afternoon and pleased to see Thesee looking happy with a number of new neighbours. Before returning the car we stopped of around the north side of the harbour for a little walk and more refreshments..... and loos. 

One more thing to do was to find the Botanical Garden here. A bit of a job to find it but we did in the end. What a waste of time. It was just a load of old uncared-for plants and bushes. Quite embarrasing really. It was just a gimmick for a bar. We didn't stop for a drink. 

Well, that was our exciting day out in Amorgas. Now we've been there done that tomorrow will be another island destination. I think I'll start a new blog post because there's SOOOOO many photos on this one.

The next blog post will be called 'Thesee's Cyclades Adventures - Naxos, Paros, Sifnos, Serifos'