Most of the places we’ve visited during the last few weeks we’d already cruised to in 2012, but now we move on to a new destination – Yithion, for a delightful surprise. Some places don’t live up to expectations but Yithion surpasses when we drop anchor behind the causeway linking the mainland to the tiny island of Nisos Kranai, mentioned in Homer’s Iliad as where Paris and Helen (of Troy) spent their first night together after eloping.

Envoy at anchor off Yithion

The island of N Kranai where Paris and Helen of Troy spent their first night together

Yithion has been inhabited since ancient times and was once the principal port of the Spartans. Now it’s a small town of about 5,000 working Greeks and although the waterfront is lined with tavernas it’s not a real tourist or cruising destination.

We enjoy a great lunch with Kevin and Diane at a really atmospheric tavern loaded with relics (including us!)

An interesting old cannon with huge stone wheels

Here Kevin and Diane catch a bus to Athens to continue their travels and while our general plan is to cruise east to Santorini to meet Doug and Sharon in about three weeks we stay on for a few days to soak up more of Yithion’s atmosphere.

This sledge is used to haul fishing boats from the water for maintenance – the same system as used for many hundreds of years.

We take our RHIB into the nearby well-protected harbour and meet a Dutch cruising couple, Marcel and Leena from the yacht Tomskii Kastan and it turns out they own a property in Kerikeri (New Zealand), where their son now lives and knows our friends Bruce and Leslie of catamaran Midi.
The next day we return to the harbour and find a very elderly American guy having real problems berthing his 9m sports style motorboat in a strong beam wind. His wife is in semi-shock and tears as their anchor has fouled another anchor and they can’t free it. As they are very close to Marcel’s boat I take him out in our RHIB to see if we can help. Marcel dons a face mask and pulls himself down the anchor chain six metres below to the seabed and on the third attempt frees their anchor. We feel very sorry for the extremely grateful American couple but it’s obvious from their next berthing attempts they’re a disaster waiting to happen as they get their angles of approach all wrong, don’t put out enough anchor chain and maneuver at excessive speed.

Vista of Yithion

Shipwreck on beach north of Yithion

In a rising northerly we cruise south-east to a large bay called Ormos Xilis which offers good shelter from the north. We no sooner anchor off a small village called Plitra at the head of the bay when the wind turns south gusting 25 knots and soon we have whitecaps rolling in. Envoy is well secure at anchor and reasonably comfortable bow on to the seas and with the forecast still saying the wind will turn to the north we stay on. Sure enough within a couple of hours the wind turns right around and the sea quickly calms again. We often find over here that in the couple of hours before sunset the wind does some strange things, often blowing quite strongly onshore and then settling offshore after sunset.
Early next morning I take our RHIB to a fishing boat jetty to find some fresh water and meet Alexander, who lived in Sydney for 40 years but moved back here to retire. He now does casual commercial fishing and time for both of us is no issue so we shake hands and enjoy a long chat about life in general. I find water from a dripping tap on the end of an ancient pipe and find the right hose connection from the large selection I took ashore with me.
Later Diane and I go ashore for a look around and Plitra is virtually deserted, but we have coffee frappes at Jimmy’s Taverna. Jimmy is a Canadian who tells us that about 250,000 Greeks ancestry live in Canada. After chatting for a while we ask for our bill but Jimmy won’t accept payment and says the coffee is free.

TECHNICAL
Replacing incandescent or halogen lights with LED lights is a current topical subject in boating and technical magazines.
Until recently it has been necessary to replace the light fitting in order to use LED bulbs, but now LED drop-in replacements are available for most types of conventional bulbs.
LED lights use less power, last longer and generate less heat, but they are more expensive and their light is not as “warm” as conventional lights (although this situation is improving). Incidentally LED bulbs are not rated in watts like conventional bulbs but in lumens (lm) – a measure of the light produced from a lamp.
Envoy has mostly halogen lights and we did an exercise in replacing a bulb with an LED in a light above our galley sink where the amount of heat generated is excessive. We bought a Chinese-made “Dixplay” brand bulb and it fitted the socket with no problem. The cost was 10.80 Euros (about NZ$18) compared with 2.50 Euros (about NZ$4.17) for a standard bulb. This purchase was made at a chandler and both bulbs would have been cheaper in a specialist lighting shop.
The result was the light was bright enough, was not excessively bluish and did solve the heat issue – but would we use LEDs generally? No – LEDs are great for an application where power saving is all important, for example in a sailing yacht or freedom caravan, but aboard Envoy we generally run the engine for several hours daily as well as the generator for three hours daily (to power the refrigerator) so electrical power and battery charge is not an issue. In addition we have a considerable number of spare conventional bulbs aboard and we cannot see any advantage in paying the considerable additional cost to go LED. How’s that for being a Luddite!