Having said Goodbye to our guests we left Kos and headed slightly north to the island of Kalymnos some 24 miles and 3 hours away. What a wonderful surprise it turned out to be! The harbour was situated in the main town which was a fabulous mixture of beautiful venetian architecture, quayside bars and restaurants along with ‘normal’ shops selling kitchen equipment and children’s clothes. Touristy but not tacky!

The plan was to stay a couple of days and take advantage of the fact that it was a relatively large town to get some boat work done i.e. engine to be serviced and the pesky mooring light to be fixed!

The mooring light, as it suggests, is the light at the top of the mast that you put on at night when you are moored (well actually anchored) outside of a harbour e.g in a bay. It is important so that at night other boats can see you as they approach or leave. You may remember back in August we had a number of people (including Jacques whilst I was away!!) going up the mast in an attempt to fix it but to no avail.

The wonderful Harbour Master, Giannis, racing about the quay on his moped was a gem, helping and advising on all matters be they boat or life related! He organised an engineer, Kostas, for us within a matter of hours of arrival and once he had assessed the situation and ordered the required parts said he would be back in two days, three at the most! Well true to his word Kostas did come back three days later to tell us that the parts had not arrived. Five days after our arrival, the engine was serviced but by then the wind had kicked in and we could not move on.

In many ways we are lucky that the boat, us and Kostas are still here to tell the tale as unbeknownst to me (and Jacques was too amazed to tell at the time) Kostas was down in the engine room, moving oil from one receptacle to another with one hand whilst flicking his lighter to ignite his roll up with the other!!!!

In the days we waited for Kryptonite Kostas to service the engine, we employed the services of a another, non smoking, specialist to go up the mast to try again to fix the mooring light! This time with success!! Hooray!

We ended up almost taking up residency in Kalymnos, when you are somewhere for nine days it starts to feel like you live there. We had been to watch the football in one bar, had marvellous meze and ouzo in a ‘salty dog’ sailor bar, tried the local pizza (I know, I know!) and as expected it was not good, had numerous gyros pitta souvlakis, visited the local fishing shop and got to know the local supermarket checkout staff very well!

With the realisation that we would not be moving on very soon we decided to rent a car and go see the rest of the island. I am sure if we had not stopped to see the sights we would have been back at the boat in twenty minutes. It turned out to be even more beautiful around the rest of the coast and inland. We even climbed up to see the ruined Kastro (Castle) complete with the settlement which was inhabited from 1495 to 1812 and the views were magnificent.

We had planned to do this island tour on the previous day, Saturday, but what with engineers and washing and the urgent need to get my nails done we postponed for a day. Never been so pleased about a decision in my life!

Saturday when Kostas arrived I took myself off to the winding back streets to find a nail salon hoping to book an appointment for the following week. When I came upon Fani’s beauty salon I found the owner undertaking some DIY on her pedicure basins and when I showed her my hands she ushered me to a seat and commenced with the manicure. She spoke very little English and my Greek has not significantly improved to have the traditional salon conversation so we just smiled and nodded and I stood up to look at the shelf with the colour options choosing a vibrant purple! Fani had just started applying the varnish when then there was an almighty shaking and rumble as if an enormous juggernaut had gone past the building, which was impossible as there was barely room for two mopeds to pass each other! I was speechless as was she for all of three seconds then she smiled and carried on painting. Wishing I had got to the section on Duolingo that covered Earthquakes I let it go but my heart was racing and I was keen to get back to Jacques on the boat!

Jacques, of course, had felt nothing given the gentle rolling of the boat and it was not until we visited the fishing shop where the owner spoke perfect English and he confirmed that it had been an Earthquake and that they happen regularly the last having happened in July this year! He said all of his fishing rods were swaying in the stand and almost toppled over. It measured 4.1, not catastrophic but not to be sniffed at! Might have been a different story had we been 600 feet up at the top of the Castle!!

Earthquake with a Magnitude 4.1 Strikes off the Coast of Kalymnos, Greece

I was brave enough to go back to Fani the following week to get my toenails sorted out and although she was very lovely and didn’t attack me with a range of power tools like the Naxos experience, there were still some parts of the procedure that were a little unusual!

We were sad to leave Kalymnos but we had definitely seen all there was to see and done all there was to do and it was time for the next adventure and to have some downtime in the spectacular bay in the south of Pserimos.

Little did we know how much we would appreciate this solitude and peacefulness along with the chance to mentally prepare ourselves ahead of the arrival a week later of a couple of last minute guests!

We had the most funny, happy, laughing, irreverent and perhaps a little too much drinking of a time!

More on the escapades of Jo, Sara, Tracey and poor Captain Jacques next time!

Take care, be kind and laugh whenever you get the opportunity!

Tracey xx