Sailing the Dodecanese Islands
The good ship Elsa took us in a clockwise circle from the Greek island of Kos off the coast of Turkey. We chose the Dodecanese Islands to avoid the monsoon winds of the central Aegean know as Miltemi. This strategy was a little too successful, and we ended up mostly motoring.
The heat was profound, so we spent as much time as we could swimming in the clear azure waters.
The islands are mostly barren, with a few settled bays and hilltops and lots of goats. The town of Simi on Simi Island was lovely! We anchored in quiet bays away from the toasty marinas for several nights, cooking dinner on the boat.
One night was in a lovely bay enclosing a pilgrimmage site for Greek Orthodox who come to commune with St. George.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Miles writes:
My favorite parts of the sailing were swimming and reading my book. Tashi and I decided to make a sport of diving and jumping and spinning off the boat. The goal of this game was to get as close to the same jumping time as the other.
There was a big difference between sailing and motoring. When sailing, the boat tended to rock and heel more, compared to when the motor was on, we rocked a lot less.
I liked sleeping on the boat because it tended to rock me to sleep.
One time Tashi and I swam from the boat to a small island a little bit off land. We found some ruins, and a bunch of weird bushes and pointy rocks. We saw a bunch of really pretty fish. Some were plaid. Some were colored, and some were huge and had purple heads with yellow bodies.
PS. James did some great sailing on his birthday and we celebrated at a nice restaurant in Kos.
