My Sister In Law Tina was sitting on the upper aft deck the other day with me on a particularly gorgeous Croatian morning while anchored in a quiet, pristine harbor with clear blue water, no wind and calm seas. She suddenly said, “This is unbelievable”. My response was “what is?” Tina responded “Well, we are anchored in Croatia, dont you get it?” I said “So?” She responded “It’s unbelievably gorgeous! Dont you realize how lucky you are? I thought about it later, and now I see what she meant. Carol and I have cruised to so many gorgeous, exciting places all over the world for the past 7 years on Seabird that I may have been becoming somewhat ambivalent to it all. We cannot do this forever (I dont think) so maybe I will start to REALLY appreciate it again.
Ken on Sans Souci remarked last night at dinner that we have been to 35 different places since we departed Gocek in early June of this year. We have traveled from Turkey, to the Greek Islands to Montenegro and on to Croatia, where we are now.
In the last blog entry we were getting ready to leave Livadia Harbor on the Greek Island of Tilos. Departures are almost always “routine”. Note that I say “almost”. One time on the GSSR, Braun on Grey Pearl was “routinely” raising his anchor and his hydraulic system blew a hose, spewing 35 gallons of stinky hydraulic fluid into the midship bilge and forcing him to crank his 300 lb anchor in with 200 feet of chain by using a hand crank.
This time, Roberta called on the radio to tell us that they needed a few more minutes because of an anchor issue. Here is what we saw:
Ken on Sans Souci remarked last night at dinner that we have been to 35 different places since we departed Gocek in early June of this year. We have traveled from Turkey, to the Greek Islands to Montenegro and on to Croatia, where we are now.
In the last blog entry we were getting ready to leave Livadia Harbor on the Greek Island of Tilos. Departures are almost always “routine”. Note that I say “almost”. One time on the GSSR, Braun on Grey Pearl was “routinely” raising his anchor and his hydraulic system blew a hose, spewing 35 gallons of stinky hydraulic fluid into the midship bilge and forcing him to crank his 300 lb anchor in with 200 feet of chain by using a hand crank.
This time, Roberta called on the radio to tell us that they needed a few more minutes because of an anchor issue. Here is what we saw:
 Ken observing his Science Project on Sans Souci's anchor |
Ken observing his Science Project on Sans Souci’s anchor
Getting it off took some time. We once pulled up our anchor in the Las Perlas Islands off Panama only to find an 18 foot center console (motor and all!) which had disappeared mysteriously a few years ago on the end of our anchor! As it turned out, it belonged to a friend of ours who lived there and it had gone mysteriously missing two years before!
Our goal was to get out of the Southeastern Greek Islands by the end of June. The reason is that the Melteme Winds tend to start kicking in, and they are nasty! They come with almost no warning and can kick up to 50 knots or more, staying like that for days or weeks at a time. You can sit on anchor in a harbor to wait them out, but that is not our kind of fun!
We tended to stay one or two nights at the most in these islands and traveled fairly quickly, stopping at Astipalaia, Ios and Paros.
Getting it off took some time. We once pulled up our anchor in the Las Perlas Islands off Panama only to find an 18 foot center console (motor and all!) which had disappeared mysteriously a few years ago on the end of our anchor! As it turned out, it belonged to a friend of ours who lived there and it had gone mysteriously missing two years before!
Our goal was to get out of the Southeastern Greek Islands by the end of June. The reason is that the Melteme Winds tend to start kicking in, and they are nasty! They come with almost no warning and can kick up to 50 knots or more, staying like that for days or weeks at a time. You can sit on anchor in a harbor to wait them out, but that is not our kind of fun!
We tended to stay one or two nights at the most in these islands and traveled fairly quickly, stopping at Astipalaia, Ios and Paros.
 at anchor |
Seabird and Sans Souci at anchor in Paros
 |
Town of Paros
From there we had a beautiful cruise to the island of Mykonos, which is a popular tourist location during the summer months. We stopped at a dock near town, but the water was skinny and there were no side ties for either of us. We decided to hop to the other side of the island, where there was a nice, large and protected anchorage, Ornos Beach. We took a cab to town, meeting Ken and Roberta for lunch, toured the town and headed back where we made the cab stop at one of the very few Starbucks on our trip! the local coffee here is not all that good so it was a necessary stop.
From there we had a beautiful cruise to the island of Mykonos, which is a popular tourist location during the summer months. We stopped at a dock near town, but the water was skinny and there were no side ties for either of us. We decided to hop to the other side of the island, where there was a nice, large and protected anchorage, Ornos Beach. We took a cab to town, meeting Ken and Roberta for lunch, toured the town and headed back where we made the cab stop at one of the very few Starbucks on our trip! the local coffee here is not all that good so it was a necessary stop.
 |
Ken and Roberta in Mykonos
I dont know if I mentioned this before, but prior to the trip I RELUCTANTLY upgraded to Nobeltec Odyssey, a new navigation system that came out which is an upgrade from my old, somewhat reliable and outdated Nobeltec Admiral. I have used it for several months now and have concluded that it is a FAR better and more reliable system than Admiral. It is like comparing Windows 7 to Windows XP. One of the cooler features is the boundary cirlce function. When you drop your anchor, you draw a boundary around the spot with the same radius as your anchor chain. It shows you where you are in relation to the circle. If you drag, your boat appears outside the circle. It is not uncommon to have this in a Nav system, but this one allows you to draw the same circle around other boats, as long as they have an AIS tracking system. I did this for Seabird and for Sans Souci and activated the tracking system for both boats. One time at a windy anchorage, Kens tracking showed he travelled nearly three times the distance we did in the same amount of time at anchor!
I dont know if I mentioned this before, but prior to the trip I RELUCTANTLY upgraded to Nobeltec Odyssey, a new navigation system that came out which is an upgrade from my old, somewhat reliable and outdated Nobeltec Admiral. I have used it for several months now and have concluded that it is a FAR better and more reliable system than Admiral. It is like comparing Windows 7 to Windows XP. One of the cooler features is the boundary cirlce function. When you drop your anchor, you draw a boundary around the spot with the same radius as your anchor chain. It shows you where you are in relation to the circle. If you drag, your boat appears outside the circle. It is not uncommon to have this in a Nav system, but this one allows you to draw the same circle around other boats, as long as they have an AIS tracking system. I did this for Seabird and for Sans Souci and activated the tracking system for both boats. One time at a windy anchorage, Kens tracking showed he travelled nearly three times the distance we did in the same amount of time at anchor!
 |
 |
 |
Town of Mykonos
Poros
One of the main stops welooked forward to was Hydra, an island just south of Athens. Sans Souci and Seabird had this routine that we did prior to going into any harbor. We used the Boundary Circle feature within our navigation system that I described above to draw two circles in the harbor representing our anchor swing to see if there was enough room to anchor. If the two circles did not fit, we did not go in, also factoring in the other boats anchored at the time in that harbor. We were disappointed to find that none of the harbors were large enough for our peace of mind. Mind you, both Ken and I are VERY conservative when it comes to anchoring scope. I like at least 4 feet of chain for every foot of depth and Ken likes even more. That limits where we can anchor, but we do sleep well at night!
After that, it was off to Poros, a large, well protected anchorage just south of Athens. The water in the bay is less than 50 feet everywhere and with numerous smaller protected bays within. We found the perfect spot, well, sort of….
Sans Souci is a big boat. Anchor it close to a 30 foot sailboat and you will get endless stares, mostly of fear, thinking that if the big boat got loose from the anchor, you would get squashed like a bug. Actually, Sans Souci was fine, but he could sense the guy in the sailboat was not going to have a good night’s sleep, so he pulled anchor and moved out a bit. As it turns out, it was not enough because the sailboat moved an additional 100 yds toward shore later in the day.
Hydra
Both Sans Souci and Seabird were really looking forward to visiting the island of Hydra (pronounced “eedra”. As I stated earlier, it is an island just southwest of Athens and has gorgeous little harbors, a cute city and lots of history. About 1900 people inhabit the island on a permanent basis, with thousands more visiting during the summer months. Even though the name means ‘water’, much of the natural water has disappeared and they import lots of it now and have recently opened a desalination plant.
Since there was no room for us to anchor, and we had moved on to Poros, we decided to take the high speed ferry from there to Hydra.
 |
As you can see from above, the ferry itself looks like some sort of evil predatory beast, but it is fast and comfortable, travelling at 38 knots, or 5x the speed of Seabird!
 |
Entrance to the harbor at Hydra
We did not see a single car while on Hydra. We did see a lot of Donkeys though. They have Donkey rides and they are waiting for you as soon as you step off of the boat. Obviously, with all of them right there, you need to watch your step as the evidence of their presence is everywhere!
Although they have a tourist use, the locals also have to rely on them to transport goods around the island. Below is the local Beer Delivery vehicle on the island.
We did not see a single car while on Hydra. We did see a lot of Donkeys though. They have Donkey rides and they are waiting for you as soon as you step off of the boat. Obviously, with all of them right there, you need to watch your step as the evidence of their presence is everywhere!
Although they have a tourist use, the locals also have to rely on them to transport goods around the island. Below is the local Beer Delivery vehicle on the island.
 |
Organically powered Beer Delivery Vehicle on Hydra
Athens
Ken and Roberta had been in Athens many years ago, but we had not. They were not all that anxious to go back but finally relented and we headed to the city. We had our choice of many marinas, but chose Athens Marina and it turned out to be a good choice.
Athens
Ken and Roberta had been in Athens many years ago, but we had not. They were not all that anxious to go back but finally relented and we headed to the city. We had our choice of many marinas, but chose Athens Marina and it turned out to be a good choice.
 |
Athens Marina with the Olympic Village in the background
It is located next to the old (2004) Olympics facility. Unfortunately, while the marina was very nice, the old Olympic facility looked like it had been through a war. All the buildings were covered with grafitti and left to rot.
Athens, as a whole, sadly, is in disrepair. Their economic problems are quite visible everywhere you look. The streets are dirty and there are a high percentage of buildings that are abandoned.
It is located next to the old (2004) Olympics facility. Unfortunately, while the marina was very nice, the old Olympic facility looked like it had been through a war. All the buildings were covered with grafitti and left to rot.
Athens, as a whole, sadly, is in disrepair. Their economic problems are quite visible everywhere you look. The streets are dirty and there are a high percentage of buildings that are abandoned.
 |
Sadly, this beautiful city shows signs of economic frustration.
The people, on the other hand, are proud and friendly. They seemed happy to have us there and went out of there way to make our stay enjoyable. Carol also signed us up for every tour conceivable. The most interesting one to me, was the Parthenon, on top of the Acropolis. I didnt realize this until we got there, but Acropolis simply means “the highest point in the city”. There are many Acropolis in Greece because of this but the one with the Parthenon on top is the one everyone seems to associate with it. Actually, this Acropolis is not even the highest point in the city, but for some reason it got designated as such.
One thing I could not help but notice on this ancient structure was the presence of these “dots” on the building that were obviously not put on by the ancient Greeks. They looked fairly recent and when it was questioned, the tour guide told us that Google had placed the dots on the building do aid with their 3D mapping (I never realized how they did it before) and did not remove all of them. A well placed source from Google has seriously questioned the story, but it is what I heard while there from the tour guide.
The people, on the other hand, are proud and friendly. They seemed happy to have us there and went out of there way to make our stay enjoyable. Carol also signed us up for every tour conceivable. The most interesting one to me, was the Parthenon, on top of the Acropolis. I didnt realize this until we got there, but Acropolis simply means “the highest point in the city”. There are many Acropolis in Greece because of this but the one with the Parthenon on top is the one everyone seems to associate with it. Actually, this Acropolis is not even the highest point in the city, but for some reason it got designated as such.
 |
One thing I could not help but notice on this ancient structure was the presence of these “dots” on the building that were obviously not put on by the ancient Greeks. They looked fairly recent and when it was questioned, the tour guide told us that Google had placed the dots on the building do aid with their 3D mapping (I never realized how they did it before) and did not remove all of them. A well placed source from Google has seriously questioned the story, but it is what I heard while there from the tour guide.
 |
These “Dots” were in many places on the Parthenon
Corinth Canal
It took a bit to convince Ken to go through the Corinthe Canal, a very narrow passageway which splits the lower half of Greece in half. When you look at it on the map below, it looks like it was made for a canoe. I was a bit hesitant at first also until I read the details on it. The alternative is to take the boats hundreds of miles out around the south coast of Greece to get to the western coast and the Ionian and Adriatic Seas.
The canal itself is VERY NARROW. It probably seems narrower than it is because the walls of the canal are about 75 feet high and straight up!
They say small cruise ships go through here, but after doing it, I dont see how. Even with our narrow boats, it took some level of concentration to stay in the middle. Having said that, a small tanker went through just before us and did fine. We hired an agent to make the arrangements for us. It cost almost $900 USD for the passage, most of which was the canal fees! Still cheaper than the fuel cost to go around the long way.
Click on this link below to see the video of part of the transit
http://youtu.be/ClPjfIZURJI
While going through, I wondered what would happen if a boat lost power in front of us. I dont think I could have turned around!
Next Blog: Western coast of Greece, Montenegro and Croatia
Corinth Canal
It took a bit to convince Ken to go through the Corinthe Canal, a very narrow passageway which splits the lower half of Greece in half. When you look at it on the map below, it looks like it was made for a canoe. I was a bit hesitant at first also until I read the details on it. The alternative is to take the boats hundreds of miles out around the south coast of Greece to get to the western coast and the Ionian and Adriatic Seas.
 |
The canal itself is VERY NARROW. It probably seems narrower than it is because the walls of the canal are about 75 feet high and straight up!
 |
They say small cruise ships go through here, but after doing it, I dont see how. Even with our narrow boats, it took some level of concentration to stay in the middle. Having said that, a small tanker went through just before us and did fine. We hired an agent to make the arrangements for us. It cost almost $900 USD for the passage, most of which was the canal fees! Still cheaper than the fuel cost to go around the long way.
Click on this link below to see the video of part of the transit
http://youtu.be/ClPjfIZURJI
While going through, I wondered what would happen if a boat lost power in front of us. I dont think I could have turned around!
Next Blog: Western coast of Greece, Montenegro and Croatia
More Pics:
 |
Believe it or not, this is a private yacht belonging to a wealthy individual and docked at Athens Marina. I imagine the interior is equally as interesting!
 |
Mykonos at night
Greg Heiland
28 Aug 2013SUBJECT: Father & Son Summer Asia Tour
We meet three summers ago in Taipei..taking the English guided tour through the National Palace Museum.
John and I really enjoy reading your BLOG posts.
I just returned from a 32 day Asia trek with my younger son, Michael.
I thought that you would enjoy this video that he produced on our trip.
https://vimeo.com/72462529 (https://vimeo.com/72462529)
Keep sending the awesome updates. You are living the dream!
Regards,
Greg Heiland
President & CEO
Valutek
1005 N 50th St l Phoenix, AZ 85008
D 602.761.2300 l F 602.252.1972
Albany – Phoenix – China – Malaysia
Visit my blog
From: blog-37452-comments@t… [mailto:blog-37452-comments@t…] On Behalf Of sargosy@o…
Sent: Tuesday, August 20, 2013 6:11 AM
To: Seabird
Subject: Symi to Athens and the Corinth Canal
My Sister In Law Tina was sitting on the upper aft deck the other day with me on a particularly gorgeous Croatian morning while anchored in a quiet, pristine harbor with clear blue water, no wind and calm seas. She suddenly said, “This is unbelievable”. My response was “what is?” Tina responded “Well, we are anchored in Croatia, dont you get it?” I said “So?” She responded “It’s unbelievably gorgeous! Dont you realize how lucky you are? I thought about it later, and now I see what she meant. Carol and I have cruised to so many gorgeous, exciting places all over the world for the past 7 years on Seabird that I may have been becoming somewhat ambivalent to it all. We cannot do this forever (I dont think) so maybe I will start to REALLY appreciate it again.
Ken on Sans Souci remarked last night at dinner that we have been to 35 different places since we departed Gocek in early June of this year. We have traveled from Turkey, to the Greek Islands to Montenegro and on to Croatia, where we are now.
In the last blog entry we were getting ready to leave Livadia Harbor on the Greek Island of Tilos. Departures are almost always “routine”. Note that I say “almost”. One time on the GSSR, Braun on Grey Pearl was “routinely” raising his anchor and his hydraulic system blew a hose, spewing 35 gallons of stinky hydraulic fluid into the midship bilge and forcing him to crank his 300 lb anchor in with 200 feet of chain by using a hand crank.
This time, Roberta called on the radio to tell us that they needed a few more minutes because of an anchor issue. Here is what we saw:
Ken observing his Science Project on Sans Souci’s anchor
Getting it off took some time. We once pulled up our anchor in the Las Perlas Islands off Panama only to find an 18 foot center console (motor and all!) which had disappeared mysteriously a few years ago on the end of our anchor! As it turned out, it belonged to a friend of ours who lived there and it had gone mysteriously missing two years before!
Our goal was to get out of the Southeastern Greek Islands by the end of June. The reason is that the Melteme Winds tend to start kicking in, and they are nasty! They come with almost no warning and can kick up to 50 knots or more, staying like that for days or weeks at a time. You can sit on anchor in a harbor to wait them out, but that is not our kind of fun!
We tended to stay one or two nights at the most in these islands and traveled fairly quickly, stopping at Astipalaia, Ios and Paros.
Seabird and Sans Souci at anchor in Paros
Town of Paros
From there we had a beautiful cruise to the island of Mykonos, which is a popular tourist location during the summer months. We stopped at a dock near town, but the water was skinny and there were no side ties for either of us. We decided to hop to the other side of the island, where there was a nice, large and protected anchorage, Ornos Beach. We took a cab to town, meeting Ken and Roberta for lunch, toured the town and headed back where we made the cab stop at one of the very few Starbucks on our trip! the local coffee here is not all that good so it was a necessary stop.
Ken and Roberta in Mykonos
I dont know if I mentioned this before, but prior to the trip I RELUCTANTLY upgraded to Nobeltec Odyssey, a new navigation system that came out which is an upgrade from my old, somewhat reliable and outdated Nobeltec Admiral. I have used it for several months now and have concluded that it is a FAR better and more reliable system than Admiral. It is like comparing Windows 7 to Windows XP. One of the cooler features is the boundary cirlce function. When you drop your anchor, you draw a boundary around the spot with the same radius as your anchor chain. It shows you where you are in relation to the circle. If you drag, your boat appears outside the circle. It is not uncommon to have this in a Nav system, but this one allows you to draw the same circle around other boats, as long as they have an AIS tracking system. I did this for Seabird and for Sans Souci and activated the tracking system for both boats. One time at a windy anchorage, Kens tracking showed he travelled nearly three times the distance we did in the same amount of time at anchor!
Town of Mykonos
Poros
One of the main stops welooked forward to was Hydra, an island just south of Athens. Sans Souci and Seabird had this routine that we did prior to going into any harbor. We used the Boundary Circle feature within our navigation system that I described above to draw two circles in the harbor representing our anchor swing to see if there was enough room to anchor. If the two circles did not fit, we did not go in, also factoring in the other boats anchored at the time in that harbor. We were disappointed to find that none of the harbors were large enough for our peace of mind. Mind you, both Ken and I are VERY conservative when it comes to anchoring scope. I like at least 4 feet of chain for every foot of depth and Ken likes even more. That limits where we can anchor, but we do sleep well at night!
After that, it was off to Poros, a large, well protected anchorage just south of Athens. The water in the bay is less than 50 feet everywhere and with numerous smaller protected bays within. We found the perfect spot, well, sort of….
Sans Souci is a big boat. Anchor it close to a 30 foot sailboat and you will get endless stares, mostly of fear, thinking that if the big boat got loose from the anchor, you would get squashed like a bug. Actually, Sans Souci was fine, but he could sense the guy in the sailboat was not going to have a good night’s sleep, so he pulled anchor and moved out a bit. As it turns out, it was not enough because the sailboat moved an additional 100 yds toward shore later in the day.
Hydra
Both Sans Souci and Seabird were really looking forward to visiting the island of Hydra (pronounced “eedra”. As I stated earlier, it is an island just southwest of Athens and has gorgeous little harbors, a cute city and lots of history. About 1900 people inhabit the island on a permanent basis, with thousands more visiting during the summer months. Even though the name means ‘water’, much of the natural water has disappeared and they import lots of it now and have recently opened a desalination plant.
Since there was no room for us to anchor, and we had moved on to Poros, we decided to take the high speed ferry from there to Hydra.
As you can see from above, the ferry itself looks like some sort of evil predatory beast, but it is fast and comfortable, travelling at 38 knots, or 5x the speed of Seabird!
Entrance to the harbor at Hydra
We did not see a single car while on Hydra. We did see a lot of Donkeys though. They have Donkey rides and they are waiting for you as soon as you step off of the boat. Obviously, with all of them right there, you need to watch your step as the evidence of their presence is everywhere!
Although they have a tourist use, the locals also have to rely on them to transport goods around the island. Below is the local Beer Delivery vehicle on the island.
Organically powered Beer Delivery Vehicle on Hydra
Athens
Ken and Roberta had been in Athens many years ago, but we had not. They were not all that anxious to go back but finally relented and we headed to the city. We had our choice of many marinas, but chose Athens Marina and it turned out to be a good choice.
Athens Marina with the Olympic Village in the background
It is located next to the old (2004) Olympics facility. Unfortunately, while the marina was very nice, the old Olympic facility looked like it had been through a war. All the buildings were covered with grafitti and left to rot.
Athens, as a whole, sadly, is in disrepair. Their economic problems are quite visible everywhere you look. The streets are dirty and there are a high percentage of buildings that are abandoned.
Sadly, this beautiful city shows signs of economic frustration.
The people, on the other hand, are proud and friendly. They seemed happy to have us there and went out of there way to make our stay enjoyable. Carol also signed us up for every tour conceivable. The most interesting one to me, was the Parthenon, on top of the Acropolis. I didnt realize this until we got there, but Acropolis simply means “the highest point in the city”. There are many Acropolis in Greece because of this but the one with the Parthenon on top is the one everyone seems to associate with it. Actually, this Acropolis is not even the highest point in the city, but for some reason it got designated as such.
One thing I could not help but notice on this ancient structure was the presence of these “dots” on the building that were obviously not put on by the ancient Greeks. They looked fairly recent and when it was questioned, the tour guide told us that Google had placed the dots on the building do aid with their 3D mapping (I never realized how they did it before) and did not remove all of them. A well placed source from Google has seriously questioned the story, but it is what I heard while there from the tour guide.
These “Dots” were in many places on the Parthenon
Corinth Canal
It took a bit to convince Ken to go through the Corinthe Canal, a very narrow passageway which splits the lower half of Greece in half. When you look at it on the map below, it looks like it was made for a canoe. I was a bit hesitant at first also until I read the details on it. The alternative is to take the boats hundreds of miles out around the south coast of Greece to get to the western coast and the Ionian and Adriatic Seas.
The canal itself is VERY NARROW. It probably seems narrower than it is because the walls of the canal are about 75 feet high and straight up!
They say small cruise ships go through here, but after doing it, I dont see how. Even with our narrow boats, it took some level of concentration to stay in the middle. Having said that, a small tanker went through just before us and did fine. We hired an agent to make the arrangements for us. It cost almost 900 USD for the passage, most of which was the canal fees! Still cheaper than the fuel cost to go around the long way.
Click on this link below to see the video of part of the transit
http://youtu.be/ClPjfIZURJI (http://youtu.be/ClPjfIZURJI)
While going through, I wondered what would happen if a boat lost power in front of us. I dont think I could have turned around!
Next Blog: Western coast of Greece, Montenegro and Croatia
More Pics:
Believe it or not, this is a private yacht belonging to a wealthy individual and docked at Athens Marina. I imagine the interior is equally as interesting!
Mykonos at night
You can access the blog entry here.
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homeused.net
30 Aug 2015Nice info dude…
homeused.net (http://homeused.net)