All night the wind howled down into the anchorage and it was still blowing strongly when we slipped the mooring line in Ormos Levitha at 9.50am and motored out into the bay. We knew the wind was forecast to drop but would be Force 5 or above all day and were not sure whether to go or not. So we decided to put a couple of sails up and venture out, just for 5 minutes then decide whether to turn around and go back again or keep going. As we looked through the binocs from the flat of the bay it looked like the horizon was covered with palm trees moving fast – hell, they were waves! And big ones too. But we decided to go a little further and suddenly we were miles away from Levitha rocketing along in the sun through the waves in a good force 7 near gale and it was fun! Petronella just flew along at over 7 knots and I now hold the record of 9.7 knots as we surfed off a particularly large wave. We were reminded of Bernard Moitessier’s saying of his Joshua “Give me the wind and I’ll show you the miles” And it’s true, Petronella loved the speed – you can tell when she is really happy. No-one else around other than one huge cruise ship which passed rather too close to us. Kos, which had seemed so far away this morning, took only 5 hours to get to and we crept down the western side as the wind came further and further from behind and got stronger, trying hard not to gybe. Then round the southern end of Kos and straight into the force 6 wind – we bashed our way north for what seemed like an interminable length time but was actually only 2 hours and we finally anchored in Kamares at 6pm. Made a cock-up of anchoring as the depths on the chart were nothing like we found when we were there. Good views of Turkey across the straight.
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| Speeding along with following seas |
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| Approaching Kos |
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