Princess Nayeli: Strofadhes Islands

After spending a bit of a stormy and bumpy night in Pilos we woke up to a calm morning with just a few rain drops here and there.

We left Pilos and motored the 35 miles to Strofadhes islands in no wind.

The two islands lie about 30 miles away from any land. They are tiny islands, the larger one (Stamfani) is about a mile long.

We anchored at the South bay of the Northern island (Arpia). On one side we had Arpia and on the other the view of the monostry on Stamfani, about a mile away. This monostrey was built in the 13th century by a Byzantine ceasar because his daughter found shelter on this island after abandoning a sinking ship.

What was supposed to be a deserted place, turned out to be sort of a home to somebody.

We found some sort of a small hut at the bay on the other side of the island, a small power boat tied to a rock there, and lots of hunting gun cartridges. They say that this place used to be full of rabbits...

Later on, we found the guy who lives here: We saw him working around some ruins of a old house, later on he was in our bay doing underwater fishing, and at night he was going around us with his small power boat in total darkness within the hundreds of rocks that are spread all around here.

We also had an interesting incident: We all went to check the anchor while swimming above it. First Yasmin, then myself and eventually Shay.

We saw that the anchor chain was tied around a big rock. We knew it won't be easy to pick it up. We were also looking at repositioning the boat in the tiny bay.

While swimming in the crystal clear water of the bay, we found a nice mooring line in the middle of the bay. So we decided to struggle with the anchor in the evening and move to the mooring line.

The manouvre was not easy at all. Shay was in the water, telling us where to steer the boat so the chain would go off the rock. After a few attempts we managed to untie the chain from the rock and pick up the anchor.

The sunset in the bay was breathtaking. The sun was already behind the island and was painting the sky and water in deep red orange colors, as if the sky is on fire!

The night was a bit bumpy with 20kts winds and some waves in the bay. We also had some background noises of some animal that we couldn't recognize.

Today, we woke up to a 4 beaufort sea, and sailed close hauled all the way to Katakolon. Our Grand Soleil loves those winds and we were running more than 9 kts with reefed sails all the way to Katakolon.

Tomorrow Shay is going to Olympia and we are sailing to Zakinthos from where Yael, Noga and Yasmin will be flying back home.

Pictures from Koroni to Strofadhes: