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Beautiful sailing, the wild Mani and nice „Hello again!“ in Kalamata

At some point you have to leave even the most beautiful anchorage. The sails want to be hoisted and a new destination is needed. So we pull up the mainsail and the mizzen already before anchoring in the bay of Elafonisos and then slowly motor out of Ormos Sarakiniko with destination Porto Kagio. Now it goes over the Laconian Gulf. Laconic means "short tempered" or " briefly said" (King of Macedonia: "When I have defeated you, your houses will burn, your cities will be in flames and your wives will become widows." To which the Spartans replied, "If!"). For us today, in short, and fortunately not at all warlike, "Did we have a fair wind right away?" "No!" So patience in the search for the sailing wind is needed. But soon we can also roll out the genoa and sail as if on rails between anchored cargo ships with full sail towards the Mani peninsula. How beautiful!

In front of the bay of Porto Kagio we hoist the sails and anchor alone in front of the small village, where there are almost more motorhomes than sailors. Later some more boats come. Actually, we wanted to go ashore here, because our food supplies are gradually running out. But we are not sure if the anchor will hold with the gusts of wind from the mountains. So tomato sauce with rice. At night the wind turns to the east and there are heavy gusts. We get quite close to the shore with our stern, although the anchor holds. A small buoy knocking on our stern then wakes us up finally. Because of the narrowness in the bay and the neighbouring boats we could not pull out much chain, so we can't catch up any chain now. So to be on the safe side we place the anchor again. This works well in the dark. Then everything is OK and the next morning we can comfortably drink our coffee in the cockpit, look at the beautiful surrounding with Mani village, rock caves and mountains and then sail off again.

In front of the bay of Porto Kagio we can set the sails right away. Since we want to sail around Cape Tenaro and don't know how the wind will be behind it ("Don't trust an App!", quote from our friend Mats from Messolonghi) we only pull up the genoa and the mizzen. And the fact that we didn't pull up the mainsail turns out to be a good decision a little bit later. We sail around the cape, thinking that we can sail comfortably to the selected anchorage "Ormos Limeni". But shortly north of the village Gerolimenias at the steep rocks of Cape Lipoula the wind suddenly blows up strongly and it costs despite reefed genoa real strength to keep our windward-greedy boat on course. East wind whizzing down over the high mountains. Shortly before our chosen anchorage for the night we are in gusts of 40 knots, which continue to blow in the bay. We can't imagine a reasonably calm night here. Don't trust an app, how true! Such an app cannot predict regional conditions. It says that we will have a maximum of 23 knots of gusty wind overnight. We've spent the night here with that much wind before. OK. But 40 knots! That's not necessary. So we add another two hours, further north.

There we find a little paradise. Anchoring in the bay of Kardamili in front of the rocks and the beach of Kalamitsa. Calm, quiet, clear water, red rocks, green hillsides overgrown with cypresses. And after the second attempt to place the anchor so that it doesn't get stuck under a rock or the anchor chain gets wrapped around the rocks while swinging, we have found the right spot of sand and fall blissfully asleep after the last meal from our supplies.

And then again Kalamata. We are heading under sails to this place the next day. Here Aglaya spent the winter before last on land and the underwater hull got a refit. We moore in the marina for a few days, can take a really nice warm shower, wash clothes, clean the boat, meet old friends again, buy delicious things for cooking. And let's see: Maybe we will find someone to get our depth gauge going again. And of course we say hello to our mechanic from the winter before last, Mr. Vardakas, who is as old as we are and doesn't want to stop working because he just loves doing it. What a great „Saying hello“ again!

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