We were up early, preparing to leave. We lashed the dinghy down, wound the shore power cords, removed and coiled our extra ropes, etc. We were off. Joanne brought up the anchor and the swivel on the anchor was kinked so it wouldn’t fit through the anchor channel. It got stuck in the anchor channel as we tried to pull it up. Terry crawled out onto the bow sprit and hit it with a hammer and it released but not before he hit his foot with the hammer by mistake (he also dropped the hammer into the water). Then we used the snubber hook to lift the anchor onto the deck and manually unkink it. Next problem . . . it was coming up upside down. So we took turned it around with the boat hook. Long story short, it took us about 20 minutes to get the anchor up. But then we were on our way to Santorini. We motored most of the way.
Santorini was a round volcanic island until about 21,000 years ago when it erupted and the center of the island collapsed. It erupted again in 1630 BC and it blew out at least 4 times the amount ejected by the 1883 explosion of Krakatoa. Today there are five islands that were part of the original island.
We sailed through the caldera created by these explosions (see map below).
It was very cool to see Santorini’s cliffs which are striped as a result of 2 million years of volcanic activity. Here are some pictures of us taking pictures.
Here are the pictures.
We planned to anchor on the southern end of the island. As we were rounding the end of the island we saw dozens of catamarans. We thought it was going to be difficult to find a spot to anchor. We checked out the first anchorage but Rick didn’t like it because it had a rocky bottom and the anchor might get stuck. So we proceeded to the second anchorage called Akrotiri and it was better so we anchored (although the boat is really rocking as I write this so I’m not sure it is much better).
We had lunch on board and then prepared to go into town. Terry decided he’d stay with the boat. We dinghed ashore and discovered that there was a bus to Fira, the main town.
In town we followed some of Rick Steves’ walking tour. The town was full of shops, many of them jewelry stores, and frankly it was pretty touristy but the views were magnificent. Here are some pictures.
It was very hot and we were in the sun most of the time. After we finished the tour we stopped in a restaurant to have a cold drink and admire the views. We decided it was too hot to go to Oia, another town at the far end of the island, so we caught the bus back to Akrotiri harbor and then dinghied back to the boat. Here are pictures of the harbor and the moon that night.
We feel lucky that we made it to Santorini because it looked like it wasn’t going to happen, given the lack of a proper anchorage and exposure to wind and waves.