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I think I need to start this story about a year ago. Around Christmas last year a tiny seed of a travel idea germinated in my head.

Dodecanese, Greece

Nickjenkins
2003-11-20 16:38:39

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though I succumbed and ordered the crayfish. Luckily it seemed that everyone was willing to help me dispose of it otherwise I might not have been able to manage it myself.

After dinner we secured a bottle of wine from the restaurant and retired to the boat. On the way out to the inflatable we stopped to talk to a young man fishing for whitebait off the pier and discovered that not only had he been to London and Reading but he'd also lived in Melbourne for a couple of years.

Getting into the inflatable while slightly inebriated proved a bit of a challenge for the crew and we nearly lost at least one over the side during a badly timed lunge to sit down. Back on Isis we opened the wine and lay on the deck and staring up at the Milky Way and talking about how far away work and the rest of the world seemed.

Next morning was a bit of a late start and we didn't get out of the anchorage and on the water till about 12pm. The wind was the reliable 15 knot north-west Meltemi and we beat away from Kalymnos and up the coast of Leros. In a long days sailing we covered a good twenty nautical miles (36km) and pulled into Ormos Partheni at about 4pm.

Ormos Partheni was in much the same pattern as Emborios only even less populated if anything. It had at one time been a large military base and so sported a full size airstrip, a small army contingent and a considerable boatyard. The were no laid moorings available however and we were forced to anchor in the north east end of the bay. A few yachts were already swinging at anchor in the little harbour and our first attempt with the tiny CQR anchor convinced me it was not to be trusted. Not wanting to spend a sleepless night wondering if the scraping sound on the hull was just the dinghy riding up and down or was in fact a neighbouring yacht grinding its way down our sides, I determined we were going to lay a second anchor. Digging ...