Having left fabulous Folegandros we headed out on the 26 mile, 4 hour journey to Santorini. The island is uniquely spectacular as it is formed from the devastation of a volcanic eruption in the 16th century BC, which has shaped its rugged landscape. The whitewashed, cubed houses, often with the famous blue domed roofs of its two principal towns, Fira and Oia, cling to cliffs above an underwater caldera (crater). They overlook the sea, small islands to the west and beaches made up of black, red and white lava pebbles. When you sail into Santorini you are literally sailing on top of a volcano!

This is what makes the surroundings so incredible and everyone’s goal during a visit to Santorini is to have the chance to witness the spectacular sunset.

The issue for sailors in Santorini is that they are not very welcome (all of the mooring space is dedicated to the 100s of tourist boats on day or sunset trips) there are no marinas and anchoring is impossible in the 500m plus drop to the bottom of the volcanic sea bed!

The few options there are to secure an overnight stay in Santorini are to be found with luck and timing! We managed to get a buoy in the bay opposite Oia but with the condition that we could not arrive before 7pm – given that sunset was 8pm we thought this should be just about OK!

The bay we were in is shown with the red pin and Oia, the main area to see the sunset from a rooftop bar, is shown with the purple pin.

It turned out that there was no way to get across to main town before sunset, we couldn’t take the boat and no time to take a water taxi but we were determined to get the best view possible! The ‘obvious’ option was to load up the dinghy with Prosecco, Ricard, beer, crisps and a speaker and bounce our way the 3 miles across the sea to leave the shadow of the cliffs and into the unhindered view of the horizon from the shores of the main island!!

I cannot describe the madness of this so I’ll let the photos speak for themselves! And the stunning sunset made it all worthwhile!

Having been chased away just after sunset by the returning tourist boats, we bounced our way back to our mooring and the humble but beautiful bay we would call home for the night!

Looking at the picture above there would appear to be a number of potentially glamorous places to have dinner but in fact only one place was open and it was the perfect ending to a memorable day!

The next day we headed back north to be able to disembark our guests (and me) and to pick up our next visitors in Mykonos. We went via the Little Cyclades again and and overnight stay in the charming island of Schinousa.

I was first to ‘jump ship’ and fly back to land based home for a few days. In my absence Jacques has had up to 42 knots of wind, some adventures with old friends back in Naxos and some rain!!

My few days back in UK are nearly up and normal service (and weather I hope!) will be resumed next week

Happy Weekend!

Tracey

PS Now officially given up on the winch!!