Broken promises

Samos, Greece

For weeks we had been promising ourselves that we would no longer try to move north through the Greek islands. The north winds have been brutal and even a terrific boat like Berkeley East could not make the daunting passages comfortable. We’re not sure if it was poor planning, bad judgment, rotten luck, or a bit of each, but no matter how hard we tried not to do it, we always seemed to end up pounding to the north. The island of Leros was the end of that trend, as the season was fading and the rest of the Greek islands were definitely too far north for us to even try for.

Leros is a low-key island that has been occupied by everyone from the Knights of St. John to the Turks, Italians and Germans. It was once famous as the island of Artimis, but most known as the home of Greece’s prison camps and mental hospitals. We stopped in Port Lakki, a deep bay where the shore is lined with art deco buildings from the Italian occupation that make it look like a movie set for a film about Mussolini. The town was quiet and we made a plan to explore the rest of the island by car the next day.

In the morning, when the weather forecast said the conditions were great to move north to the island of Patmos, we laughed! No, we actually laughed out loud. How stupid did those lame meteorologists think we were? Besides we still had a lot to see on Leros. We were still laughing when we pulled up BE’s anchor and began our journey to Patmos. Leros would wait.

The trip went as planned for a change, with little wind and calm seas we motored up to the island. The cruising guide said Patmos was the northern most island in the Dodecanese chain, so we told ourselves that it was the perfect turnaround point.

The island is known for being the place where John (the Apostle) had a vision from Jesus and dictated the book of Revelations. Christians come from all over the world to visit the Monastery of St John and see the Holy Cave of the Apocalypse where John lived while writing the book.

A few days later, we realized that the cruising guide was wrong and there was a small island in the Dodecanese that is slightly further north than Patmos. We knew we just had to go. The forecast indicated that a move to the island of Arki wasn’t out of the question, but we wondered what the chances were that we could move north yet again without getting caught in bad weather. Our luck held and we had a nice motor sail up to the small inlet of Porto Stretto, we were on a roll.

Arki was just what we were looking for, a quiet island away from the crowds where we could swim and relax. Our only complaint was that the local heard of goats and sheep had bells around their necks. Twice a day they would walk from one side of the island to the other, making quite a racket with hundreds of bells clanging. This wasn’t so bad at sunset, it was cute actually, but at sunrise it made for a much too early wake up call.

After a few days of relaxing we were ready to move on. The three closest islands were Agathonisi to the east, Lipso to the south and Samos to the north. We reminded ourselves of our promise to go no further north than the end of the Dodecanese island chain. We talked about how many times our moves north were very rough and painful. We agreed that we should not test our luck again with another move north. And then we decided to go north to Samos.

The weather gods smiled on us yet again and we had a good trip up to Pithagorion on the island of Samos, the southernmost island in the Sporades. The town is named after a Greek philosopher and mathematician we remembered learning about in high school geometry, Pythagoras, credited with developing the Pythagorean theorem. It was a nice anchorage, but we could tell it was August, it was getting more and more crowded and the boats were anchoring closer and closer.

Samos is also said to make good white wine and the winery, museum and tasting room were nearby. We went with low expectations but were pleasantly surprised at the quality of wine produced on this small island.

As we were watching the sunset over Samos that evening while sipping some of our new Greek wine, we talked about where to go next and decided that this really was the farthest north we would go this year. No more broken promises. The next morning, we pointed BE to the south and encountered big wind and rolly seas. We should have gone north.