Today is the last day of Richie and Siobhan from AYC, who joined me for a short five days in Agios Nikolaos. We just had a great sail from Chalki, a small, picturesque island off the West coast of Rhodes. The Parasailor was up for a few hours and the breeze kept picking up in the afternoon to close to 20 knots. We experimented with different ways to trim the sail, including a barber hauler for the leeward sheet to keep the two clews of the sail on the same level. It gets a bit more challenging as the wind and sea pick up, but I'm always amazed how easy it is to fly this sail without a spinnaker pole.

We very much enjoyed Chalki. Our Rod Heikel cruising guide said there was supposed to be a "T" shaped dock to moor to but that it was only in place from April to October. It was not there, however, when we arrived so we anchored in front of the town. We dinghied in and explored the town and noticed a couple of additional yachts that seemed to be looking for the dock and anchored in different parts of the bay. As we were sitting at dinner on the water front at 9:30 pm that night, a small fishing boat arrived, towing a monstrous swim dock and a couple of guys tied it up to a small mole. Someone must have noticed the lost revenue opportunity!

Chalki is a very dry island with only a few houses, many of which look like they were recently restored. There are still some houses in various stages of disrepair, so if one were interested, one may be able to buy one on the cheap! There are, of course, a couple of churches, one of which is nicely restored. The other one seems closed and has a clock that stands at 4:20 - it is only right twice a day. Rumor has it that the clock chime was ringing every 15 minutes and some time ago, the locals got a bit annoyed by the sound. So they turned it off one day .... There is a ferry boat that arrives from Rhodes once a day with a load of tourists and some much needed provisions, but once that's left in the afternoon, Chalki returns to its sleepy self. At dinner on the water front, we counted only a handful of tourists, including a nice Australian couple we talked with some over dinner. He had done the Sidney Hobart race 6 times but was here "only" backpacking for 4 months in the islands. They had identified Chalki as a place to come back to, having been there 3 times before. Maybe it's because there's very little to buy, even less to do other than gaze over the attractive surroundings. There is apparently another church some 1.5 hours away on foot. We did not make it there.

Before Chalki, we stopped at Pigadhia on the island of Karpathos. That's a big, wooded island with beautiful scenery. The main town, Pidadhia, is a big tourist town although, in early May, tourists are few and far in between. So we had a great dinner after a long sail over from Sidheros, the East end of Crete.