Day 16 & 17 – The real Evelina and onto Faleraki

Much as I would quite like a pirate ship I suspect it wouldn’t be that comfy, especially as the one photo’d in yesterday’s blog is actually a 3 island day tripper boat. Now there’s an amusing story, the 3 island day trip is as follows, first stop Kalymnos town on Kalymnos, then (after copious alcohol) onto Vathy, also on Kalymnos, then onto Pserimos village on Pserimos. 3 island tour? Take as long as you need.

So here’s a shot of the real Evelina, a Jenneau 410, probably even better than Corfu with only one real disadvantage, twin rudders making the boat a bit of a pig to steer backwards (you need water flowing over the rudder to enable steerage, water washed over by the propeller makes steerage happen quicker, but not the case with two rudders).

We had an early start from Kalymnos town (6:45), Bill is really trying to convert me to ‘farm time’, for the 30 mile bash north into the wind to the island of Lipsi. The cunning plan is that this is as far north as we want to go so given the prevailing northerlies everything back towards Kos should be a lovely sail. We were expecting wind and a bit of rough sea (not really rough) so expecting bashy crashy all the way. It was like that for an hour then the wind dropped and it was really rather pleasant. Here's a picture of Kalymnos town as we left, the early morning light was amazing.

Parking at Lipsi was no real problem other than learning a new boat that doesn’t like backwards very much.

Lipsi to a little gem of an island, very quiet and peaceful which not many charter boats make it to. This is another place we’d like to come back to when we’re too old to sail but not to old to do Greek island ‘back packing’ (obviously with wheely luggage. A couple of piccies of Lipsi.

This morning we had a relatively late start, leaving at 10 for the arduous journey of 8 miles to Arki. We ended the journey at the lovely Faleraki, no not that Faleraki, the clubbing hot spot on Rhodes, Faleraki the cafe at the harbour in Arki.

Arki, population 54, is very small and remote, the main village/harbour has just one cafe/bar and two taverna’s. Rather annoyingly there are also two shops (mostly clothes and bags!), one a kind of bohemian place that’s part of the cafe, Faleraki (see below) and the other probably the smallest shop in Greece (see below).

Arki is as cute as any place we’ve been, and so quiet, if you can’t relax here, you can’t relax anywhere! Here’s the rest if Arki.

And, of course, in the corner of the harbour there is a partitioned off area full of model boats. We think there’s associated with Nikos’s tavern, but this will need more research.

Better than that, as with everywhere in Greece there are ‘fixer upper’ opportunities on Arki, this one comes with a thriving business.

Not much parking news other than a reminder of the old adage – can you ever have too much anchor chain out? The answer being no unless you run out of chain just before you reach to harbour wall (embarrassingly you can’t throw a line to helping hands on shore and have to go out and start the process again). This nearly happened to us today at Arki, proving it’s a narrow line between looking a fool or an accomplished expert. Tomorrow the winds are building a bit but not enough to stop us going East to Agathonisi.

More soon,

Yamas

P.S.

Just finished writing the blog and spotted this chap rowing home.