Sunday 20th April – Friday 25th April 2025

We all enjoyed our night in Patmos, watching the local children performing traditional dances and then stuffing our faces with yummy Greek food in a lovely Greek Taverna, served to us by a lovely Greek waiter with a strong Geordie accent! 😂 Turns out his Geordie mum married a handsome Greek guy! All very Shirley Valentine. ❤️

We set of from Patmos the next morning to make our way to Ikaria. Ikaria is one of the most northeastern of the Aegean Islands, it was created when Icarus on his escape from Minos Prison ignored his father’s advice and flew to close to the sun and crashed into the sea. 

It is also the birthplace of Dionysos, the god of wine! My kind of place. 🍷

We actually anchored in a stunning little bay with a tiny secluded beach. The surroundings were gorgeous. 

There were people on the beach, who had managed to clamber over some pretty big rocks and down a pretty steep shaley hillside! 😳

We enjoyed some downtime chilling on the boat. With one small drama when the anchor dragged and we re anchored but dragged again and almost hit some rocks! Jaques & Tracey were on hand to avert any disasters! 

The stars at night were unbelievable, so clear and so many to see! Jaques showed us an app on his phone called ‘Star Gazer’ which is fantastic, you point it at the sky and it tells you the constellations and stars. 🤩 Grantley & I spent quite a while up on deck just star gazing. 

The following morning we were off again. We are making our way to Mykonos. 

The ocean initially was eerily calm and misty and almost flat water. It looked very otherworldly, we thought we saw some dolphins, but they were just large fish jumping in the distance. The last part of the journey we were heading straight into the wind which makes it a little chilly. We were just arriving at the entrance to the Mykonos harbour when the wind really picked up, it turns out Mykonos isn’t great when the wind is in a northerly direction. Jaques decided the best bet was to avoid Mykonos and instead go across to Tinos, which has a much more sheltered harbour. 

This is what we did. We moored up at the Town Quay, in the main town, Hora, which was a perfect position to see the wonderful surroundings. 

Tinos is a busy little town, lots of ferry’s in and out. Tinos is also famous as a Greek Orthodox pilgrimage site. 

The large Church of Panagia Evangelistria at the top of the hill houses the Icon of the Holy Virgin Megalocharia. Pilgrims make their way from the port, up the steep road to the Church on their hands and knees. The town has very kindly provided them with a narrow carpeted area on the side of the road to make this journey a little easier! 

We arrived in the late afternoon and had a walk to the supermarket for essentials, butter and wafers! Then we went out again in the evening for dinner. 

The little windy lanes are fabulous and full of wonderful, shops, bars and restaurants. It was surprisingly busy and felt wonderfully vibrant. We opted to go to a Gyros restaurant, so Grantley & I could sample our first (but absolutely not our last!) Gyros Pitta! 😋 This is an essential Greek fast food, which comprises a soft pitta filled with seasoned meat, either chicken or pork, Tzatziki, tomatoes, olives and chips!! It was bloody delicious! So delicious in fact that Grantley had a second one! 😂

Grantley and I had a wander around the next morning, Grantley bought himself a string of worry beads. We have seen so many of the older Greek and also Turkish men holding and using them, the noise of the beads is quite soothing. The lovely lady that we bought them from gave us each a small safety pin with an evil eye 🧿 bead on. I tried to attach mine to my top, the bead fell off and went bouncing down the hill! Luckily it missed the drain and Grantley managed to rescue it! 

I have to admit that I am struggling to not buy more things here in Greece. Everything, clothes, bags, shoes, jewellery is in my favourite colours, blues, turquoise, greens it’s so hard to resist! 😬

Grantley and I found a fabulous Bookstore/Cafe! It was in one of the windy lanes. It was spread over 3 floors, with new and second hand books. They also had several books wrapped in brown paper, called Date Night. The idea being that you buy the package and then on your date discover what the book is! Such a good idea. I bought one for Tracey and Jaques. Which incredibly turned out to be a book about boats, called ‘Sealed Orders’ from The Fighting Sail Series!  ⛵️ 😍

We met up with Tracey and went to explore the church. We also spotted a couple of crawling pilgrims. 

Although I am an Agnostic I was raised as a catholic and I always light a candle when I go into a church. I find it very moving and comforting to take a few minutes to stop and remember all of the people I love who are sadly no longer with us. 

The church was beautiful, calm and very ornate, lots of silver and icons.

I loved the little streets of Tinos, another Island to add to your list if you’re exploring the Greek Islands! 

We decided to eat onboard on the last night, it was very windy and a little cold. Grantley & Jaques popped into town and grabbed us all some delicious Smashed Burgers! Very tasty. 😋 

We left Tinos to make our way to Kea, a longish trip of approximately 5 – 6 hours. Unfortunately after an hour or so as we were motoring along we had some smoke coming out of the engine. We had this just after we left Leros and Jaques thought there might be some residue that was burning off. However as we had a long trip, the decision was made to divert to Syros, a much closer island that had a marina and good Volvo mechanics. 

We moored up at the town quay, with the help of some old Greek guys who were sitting on a bench sharing a box of wine!! 😂

We moored up and set the passerelle (gangplank) twice due to having to manoeuvre about. This particular passerelle is large with a hinge in the middle it’s heavy and quite unwieldy, both Jaques and Tracey have sustained injuries from it the last few days! No sooner had we got sorted when the harbour master came and told us that the mechanic could look at the boat in the morning but we needed to move the boat from the quay across to the Marina! 

On a side note, the harbour master looked bloody fabulous! He was driving a trike thing, wearing red and white trainers, white shorts with a Hermes belt, a white T shirt under the most amazing shiny, red and white spotty shirt! Honestly he looked brilliant. Sadly I didn’t get a photo! 

We moved the boat across to the marina. Everything went very smoothly, no passerelle needed, thank god! We literally stepped off the boat onto the dock.

Tracey was very excited to learn that there was a Lidl in Syros, this meant good French Cheese! 🧀 

Tracey, Grantley & I walked into town, called into what we thought was the Lidl, it wasn’t 🤦‍♀️ eventually found the actual Lidl, bought French cheese, wafers and another essential item, Lidl fair trade Caramel & sea salt chocolate! Happy shoppers! 😂 

We had a delicious supper onboard comprising French cheese, nibbles and Jaques amazing Greek Salad! 🥗 

The next morning the mechanics arrived, Grandfather, Father, Son. All really lovely guys, they work on all the ferry’s and large passenger boats in the area and are very much in demand, so the fact that they fitted us in was amazing. They spent about 40 minutes on the boat, figured out the turbo was blocked, unblocked it and only charged €50! And as if that wasn’t fantastic enough they said to wait 5 minutes and someone would bring us some ‘Locum’ (local pastries, sweets) we waited for 15 minutes and then decided we really needed to leave, just as we moved away from the harbour we spotted a white car beeping and flashing their lights, it was the mechanics with our Locum! We about turned and headed back, as we certainly didn’t want to offend them. Jaques did a drive by on the dock and they expertly lobbed a carrier bag onto the trampolines at the front of the boat! 😂. The bag was filled with delicious local nougat and boxes of sugary pastries! What an awesome treat. I can’t believe that these lovely men came and fixed the turbo, charged a pittance and then gave us gifts! How cool. 

The rest of our journey to Kea was great, rainy and a little chilly but we made good time and Jaques & Grantley even made a yummy Banana Cake. We arrived at Kea around 4pm. 

We were welcomed to the island by a few beautiful dolphins leaping in front of us!🐬 💙

Once again we were helped by a local guy to moor up. Then we opened up the back of the boat and relaxed in the glorious sunshine with a cold glass of wine, people & cat watching. Heavenly. ❤️

We had dinner at a local taverna run by an old Greek couple, the food was great. A nice mixture of dishes, their Greek salad wasn’t quite as good as Jaques but everything else was lush. 

We ended the night back on the boat sipping Lemoncello and chatting shit! 😍🩵💚 A perfect end to a fantastic day. 

Have a fabulous weekend everyone.

Books read.

Birds without Wings Louis de Bernières. 

This book has taken me a while to read, but wow was it worth it. It is a truly fantastic book, beautifully written, funny, informative and poignant. A new favourite.