After one thoroughly enjoyable night socialising and more planned, the weather turned in our favour and thus we made the decision to go, even giving up the offer of another beer run. Lines undone and we were heading for Nisiros. Winds were fluky and we saw gusts up to 26kts and then down to 3kts - definitely a Gordon sailing day! Good to arrive in the harbour and our first anchor back to the quay went like the book says and our lines were taken by Sven, from C'est La Vie, we hadn't seen him since a drunken post wall painting in Portugal 2004.
A car hire with Rassy Lady (price bartered for by P) took us to the Volcano of Nisiros, the newest large active volcano of the Aegean Sea, having only starting to appear 160,000 years ago! We were able to walk in the crater named Stefanos, smelling the sulphur from the numerous vents some of which were bubbling away. Made more awesome as we were the only ones there. The wild flowers on the rest of the island were beautiful, certainly a good time to visit.
Sailing on to Tilos we opted to walk rather than hire a car (couldn't get the price down!). A 2 hour up hill walk to Mikro Horio, a ghost village whose 1200 inhabitants left for the port town of Livadhia in the 50's. The only intact structures are a church and a house that is now a music pub in the summer months. The church was locked when we got there, sod's law as we walked down, two locals drove up and opened the church and rung the bell!! It was Easter whilst we were in Tilos and the procession with the shrine had the whole village (all 50 of them) doing a circuit of the village before the church service, ringing bells and lots of bangers at midnight. The bangers had been going off since we had arrived back in Greece, don't really think they needed to practice them as much as they did!
We were paying in Tilos and thus we moved on even though it was still windy and wavy and thus a wet and rolly sail to the island of Symi.
Our First anchorage of the year saw us in Panormitis a large key hole bay with a large picturesque monastery in it. Symi's biggest rural attraction. Worth a look round and a loaf of bread from the bakers a must. Our first BBQ of the year but coats, long trousers and blankets were required - still we did BBQ. The anchorage was a place you could stay for a while, supplies ashore and a bus to Symi Town but we think it would get very busy in the summer.
With a poor weather forecast, thunderstorms and rain, we moved onto Symi Town. An eventful quay with crossed anchor chains, trapped anchors on underwater obstructions, we even saw a yacht dump its stainless anchor and chain as it had got into so much difficulty one day and then watch the local diver recover it all the following day. We were thankfully OK and even with a strong wind coming into the harbour held OK but saw alot of people leave, some with more difficulty than others!
Restless Lady appeared with Colin, Jill and Emile and tied up perfectly in 30kts, Pimms already in hand. A lot of catching up and drinking was done before a very enjoyable meal ashore in the "best restaurant" in town. Lets just say there were some shabby heads the next day but Restless Lady carried on with their intinery of getting the boat back to Spain in 5 weeks and moved on - even in the rain!!
A day recovering, sightseeing and shopping before we headed off to Turkish waters in a nice gentle breeze.
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