September vibes @ Aegean Cargo Sailing

After an excellent dinner Friday night at Tou Zosef, Katerina’s restaurant in Andros, we started on Saturday our trip from Batsi to Tinos port, with our fridge full of cheese from the two great local cheesemakers Assoutis and Louvari. We sailed off at a leisurely 11 o’clock with little unstable wind blowing mostly from the south, exactly the opposite of the weather predictions of all the sites we could consult. So we practiced tacking that, on our vintage sailboat Lafri, makes for a good exercise of boat control. At around 15.00 we reached the passage between Andros and Tinos appropriately called “dysvato” meaning difficult to pass because of the confused winds and currents in the narrow space. From that point the wind became clearly north as predicted and it helped us sail smoothly to Tinos port just before 19.00 when we had the appointment with Yannis Kritikos. He came to deliver the outstanding “Louza”, that is pork fillet marinated in wine herbs and spices, baked and smoked. He reportedly makes the best in the Cycladic islands. The dinner at “To Koutouki tis Elenis” was a delight, as should be our last dinner together as a team of 7.

After one week of very harmonious sailing, Marc and Inger left our sailboat Lafri on Sunday morning to continue hiking the islands and Rosabelle to return home. That leaves us now four, Nikolas the owner skipper, myself under his orders along with Sofia and Allan, continuing to Ikaria, the island known for the long happy life of the local islanders. Easy sail off followed by some rough katabatic wind passage between Tinos and Mykonos and finally the open sea, bigger waves and stable north wind conditions that allow us to discuss, relax and try the comfort of the hammock before getting into the katabatic winds of Ikaria by 17.00. The winds go crazy around this wonderful island and they treated us a good taste of it for 3 hours from no wind at all to strong in the nose, side wind from the north and sometimes from the south. We arrived well worked out at the Agios Kyrikos marina just in time for dinner at the excellent traditional eatery Klimataria.

From captain Lucas notes// Andros-Tinos-Ikaria September 2021