In this episode of Sailing A B Sea we eventually end up going north against the Meltemi wind after our second attempt at leaving the Greek Cyclades island of...

Closed Captions (CC):
Well this is part two of our attempt to

leave Milos island. We're going out

today as the weather's fairly calm and when

we get out of the bay here we've got two

choices east toward Polyaigos which is

three hours or dash straight north up to

Serifos which is approximately five

or six hours. It all depends on what we see

when we get out there.

But before we left

Milos we had to get the boat ready

We've pretty much got this down pat now haven't we, cleaning the boat?

We've been anchored here just outside Adamas port

area on the Greek island of Milos for

nearly a month now and pretty much every

day we've had a constant blow of wind

from the north

It's the Aegean Sea and the Meltemi wind

blows pretty constantly but today this

morning it's now 8 o'clock in the

morning and the wind has died away to

nothing and left this beautiful sight

but also it's allowed some clouds to

form and a kind of mist. It's quite

pretty, the water is crystal clear and we

can see our anchor chain wandering off

into the distance

Our solar panels provide us with 600

watts worth of energy and usually by

9:30 in the summertime our batteries are

back up to 100% fully charged. Well it's

currently 9:04 in the morning and our

batteries are eighty-eight point five

percent so that tells me that there's

something wrong with our system and I'm

gonna bet my bottom dollar that they

simply need cleaning.

Much dirt? Filthy dirty! Let's see

Well while I clean isn't perfect it's a

heck of a lot better than it was and

when we go into the harbour here at Adamas in Milos we'll fill up our water

tanks and when we've got the hose pipe

out we'll actually get the brush and

fresh water sprayed all over that to

give it a real good clean before we head

north. But that's good for today

it must be a Wednesday because behind me

is the celestial cruise ship and she's

just come into the bay and he's about to

drop anchor we're about to do some stuff

too. Today is the day we are going alongside

and we're gonna top off our diesel and

fill up our water tanks. We're down to our last

70 litres of water so we've got to put

600 litres in the tanks and also after

we've washed A B Sea with salt water give her

a rinse off with fresh water so we're

gonna crack on with that but before we

do any of that I want to say a big

welcome aboard to Heather and John

Drummond aka the Old Travel Bums who are

our latest patrons, thank you very much

you two, your support is really

appreciated in making this journey of

ours sustainable.

We'd just tied up side-to

when a ferry arrived and its wake

threatened to push us against the dock so

Baz, the fuel man, the guy from the port

and a really helpful granddad used the

boat hooks and pushed A B Sea away from the

dock as far as possible. Luckily she

wasn't damaged but it was a bit unnerving

Give a kiss to Australia! I will!

Good morning it's twenty five past seven this

morning and we've made a really quick

snap decision to up anchor and leave

while there is a break in the wind. We're

only going to Polyaigos island which is

about a 3-hour passage but we just want

to get there while the wind is as low as

its hopefully going to be and then we

can drop anchor in a sheltered place so

we'll see you when we get there

So now we've left Adamos harbour at

the Greek island of Milos and we're

headed out into the water we were not

sure exactly what we were going to see

but it's not too bad I mean there's a

big swell, we've got 16 knots of apparent

wind but it's coming dead out of the

north. And the wind kept increasing first

to 22 knots and then as we came out of

the Milos-Kimolos Straits the wind

increased to 30 - 35 knots on the port

bow. At this point we'd furled in our sails

and we motored the last half hour

towards Polyaigos. Because of the wind

strength and direction and the size of the waves

we got fairly wet!

We arrived at Polyaigos at 11 o'clock after a

three-and-a-half hour passage and

anchored in 8 metres with 40 metres

of chain out. There was some shelter from

the meltemi and there wasn't too much

of a swell in the bay

The following morning we decided that rather than sit

out the next few days of wind in this

small isolated bay we'd return to Milos

as we'd have the wind behind us and

we knew that the holding and shelter in

Adamas bay was good

Well this is part two of our attempt to

leave Milos island, we're going out

today as the weather is fairly calm. But when

we get out of the bay here we've got two

choices. East toward Polyaigos which is

three hours, or dash straight north up to

Serifos which is approximately five

or six hours, all depends on what we see

when we get out there

You know when we left Milos the other

day to come north we had Passagus

Interruptus because of the weather. We only got to first base out at about four

or five islands that we were hoping to

go to to get to Athens so we went back

to Milos because it was really big

waves and big wind wasn't it Baz? Yeah but

today we escaped Milos. Not that it was, you know a

horrible place to be - not at all - but we finally made it

out and five and a half hours later we

are in Serifos, yes, so that's five and a

half hours further north, yes, which is good.

We had what 15 to 18 knots of wind

almost on the nose, yeah so we didn't get

much sailing in but you know we got a

little bit in. Yeah, but we knew we were

going to have to motor most of the way

because we headed north into the wind

simple as that. Yep. Where we are here on the

south coast of Serifos we're in a bay

it's quite a big bay but unfortunately

only the eastern section of the bay is

available for anchoring, the western

section of the bay has got a lot of

chains on the floor from looks like some

sort of mining industry in the past has been there and

left a lot of debris so that's sort of

not a good idea to anchor over there. We

dropped in 6 metres we've let out 40

metres of chain and we're now sitting

here nicely tucked against the wind in 8 metres of water. There are violent gusts

yes if the meltemi's blowing so it

probably wouldn't be somewhere that

you'd want to come in big winds. No this

is not a hidey hole from the meltemi

that is for sure and the violent gusts

here if that wind is blowing more than I

would say more than 30 knots, yeah, it's

not gonna be fun. No but there's a couple of

really nice long sandy beaches and I did

notice on the way in that there are a

few sort of caves in the cliffs so that

might be nice for snorkeling, yeah yeah

We might stay here for tomorrow as well

because the wind is predicted to be

exactly the same as as it was today and

so we know that the day after the wind's

gonna drop away to almost nothing which

means we can motor further north to our

next Island. Yes because we did notice

that even though it wasn't really it

wasn't a hard passage for us the just

that wind and the sort of 1-1.5 metre

waves did slow us down by about 2 knots, yeah

So we're here, yep, time for beer, yeah. And ooh,

before we go we'd just like to say welcome

aboard to our latest patron Frank

Schwarz. Yeah thank you Frank, you're a

gentlemen. Yeah lovely to have you on board Frank

Yeah. He's joined the pool party tier I think. Ooh what d'you get for that? There is a credit mention at the

end of the videos yeah and also a

postcard once a month. Lucky fellow

Yeah and of course, prior access to videos ahead of the general public. And the next tier up for people

that have been like my little A5

watercolors get one of those for free

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it's a gift

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Anyway, talk to you guys later!

you