It was good to see the end of the meltemi and continue our Cyclades adventure. Our cunning plan was to head West to Syros and on as far as Kithnos and then head south to Serifos and then back to Paros to pick up Dale and Karen. Then to Naxos and then head South West to Mylos before island hopping to Ios, where we will catch a ferry to Santorini for a few days. Then back East to Rhodes and finally to Leros where we will put La Mischief on the hard for the winter.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Leaving Mykonos, we headed for Syros – 20nm away. We had a beautiful sail across and headed to Ermoupolis, the capital of the Cyclades. We pulled up to the wall stern to, right next to some fellow Aussies in Ric and Helve on Tangaroa. The wall is somewhat challenging with large ferries coming and going, creating large wakes that threaten to push you onto the wall. Gangplank management in the order of the day. But the plus side is the vibe created by all the restaurants, metres from La Mischief – great for people watching.
Ermoupolis was a great town. In the age of the steam ship it was a very powerful and important town and you can still see lots of mansions with exquisite wrought iron lining the streets. Some are still magnificent, some are abandoned shells of houses.
The streets are lined with marble, the old town is a delight to wander through and the granite rocks that form the breakwater could make a thousand brilliant kitchen benchtops.
The town is the largest in the Cyclades and has a couple of big churches, one Catholic and the other Greek Orthodox. We took a short sunset taxi ride up to a wonderful town up on the hill, Ano Syros with winding narrow lanes and whitewashed houses, then walked down back to the boat. It was originally a medieval Catholic settlement and still boasts a wonderful 13th century church.
With our dose of town life over, with its obligatory visit to the boat shop and supermarkets, it was off to explore the island. We headed across its Northern top and down o a nice little bay called Ormos Grammata for a lunchtime swim. It was too narrow for a nighttime anchorage so we kept going south to Ormos Kini, where we were reunited with Ric and Helve, who had circumnavigated the other way.
They had to re-anchor as they had just discovered a large uncharted rock right in the middle of the bay. Wow – not on charts and not in Rod. Beware.
After an Aussie restaurant night, and another day of enjoying the bay and the cute town it was off west to Kithnos.
For photos of Syros see https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10202204249620601.1073741937.1620379103&type=1&l=87ebed591f
A Little Bit of Mischief 