Sherrie's Cruising Blog (Sailing Catamaran Element): Leros part 1

May 31 - June 5

We left Kalimnos this morning heading towards Leros. The wind was right on our nose so there was no sailing to be had. We are currently anchored in Alinda Bay.

Leros has a lot of history from World War II. We will be visiting the two Canadian soldiers graves while we are here to pay our respects.

After we arrived and got our anchor set we dropped the dinghy in search of the strongest wifi. It happened to be a lovely restaurant/bar called Palentino. It had a back end of an old VW beetle as one of the seats. Nice place with a great view.

We headed back to the boat and the adults had a shot of ouzo and a beer. As the ouzo kicked in I had a craving for mushroom caps. It just so happened that we had some fresh mushrooms aboard so I whipped up a cream cheese filling and cooked them up. They were awesome! We had a feast.

The following day we promised the girls that we would take them to the beach. We let them play there for awhile and then went for a short walk down the street to se what was around.

We rented a small car on Tuesday to explore the island. Before we left Alinda Bay we found the war memorial cemetery to pay our respects to the soldiers that lost their lives. The land has been donated by the people of Greece and is very well kept and tidy.

We hopped back into the car to check out the next bay called Krithoni bay. We walked around, had an ice cream and as we were returning saw two girls out of control on a moped. They hit a white car with a bang, leaving the car shaking……. This white car turned out to be our rental car. We were lucky to have been returning to our vehicle when we did because it left a dent and scratch on the passenger side. The girl that was driving it was very nice and willing to pay for the damage. It turns out that she had no drivers license and had rented the moped under her grandmothers license. We got the moped rental company involved as well as the car rental people. Everything turned out well.

We headed out to the next bay over called Pandeli which was absolutely stunning. Nice little beach surrounded by restaurants and beautiful views. The six windmills can be seen from here along with the castle. There are some lovely apartment to rent that have windmills attached.

We drove up the road to see the castle and windmills up close. We were pleasantly surprised and very thankful that the road wound its way up to the castle. The down side was that it was closed.

We returned to Alinda Bay and got back to the boat. This was the calm before the severe storm where we damaged our right rudder when we washed ashore. The wind had been high for the two previous nights. The change was that the swell increased and the angle of the swell. This combination lifted our anchor and allowed us to drag. Luckily Shaun was able to get the engines fired up and kept us from a full fledged grounding. As my sister inlay pointed out “boating is 95% fun and 5% terror”. I am inclined to agree. The terror has subsided thankfully. We are now in Leros Marina in Laki on the island of Leros. We are living on the boat which is now on the hard (on land). We have received a quote for repairs and I nearly fell of my chair…….

We have rented a car for the week so that we are not bound to the marina. It is a 2KM walk into town which is difficult for Jordan.