Monday 5 June 2017 – Schoinousa (or Skhinousa)

I rather wanted to stay on Amorgos a little longer, but we are a day behind so we compromised and had most of the morning there.  We are a bit shocked to see that all the boats around us had left by the time we woke up at 8am!  Well, at least that meant that there was no chance of our fouling our anchor on neighbouring boats!

We had a light breakfast and then I went to the two small supermarkets in the town.  I managed to buy a few things, but not everything I wanted.  The biggest problem is getting bread crumbs which I want to make my eggplant parmagiana.  But that will have to wait.  We have enough food for the next three days and by then we will be on a bigger island where we can reprovision.

So at about 10:30am we set out.  The weather forecast was for winds up to 11 knots and from the north.  As we were going west it sounded like we might even be able to sail.  So on the way out of the entrance to the harbour we put all the sails up.  Richard was delighted.

It didn’t take long for the wind to get up.  Most of the time for the first three hours it was a 4 touching 5.  That was the rub.  With the stronger winds came a rather choppy rolly sea and without my sea legs I felt rotten.  At first I hoped that it was just because I went below to write the log up.  But even in the cockpit, despite taking a sea sick pill, I still felt rotten.  So final solution, I went below to sleep with a bucket just in case!  It worked.  I felt much better after an hour and when the sea flattened out a lot.  We sailed almost the entire way – 20 miles.

We arrived at Mirsini harbour at about 2:30 pm.  As described in the pilot it is a delightful little harbour.  There is a ferry terminal for small Cyclades ferries and room on a wall to moor.  But we want to anchor and so we eventually managed to find a reasonable space to put the hook down.

We have had a very leisurely afternoon here having lunch and supper on board.  The only very minor disaster was that having used the wine we bought at the restaurant last night to make two Kirs, I managed to overturn one of them all over the cockpit!

We are actually ahead of our provisional schedule for this trip, but then there is a Meltemi forecast for later in the week so we will press on in the expectation of being in a port for 2-3 days until the wind and sea settles down.