Our first sail of the second part of the season was a whopping 6 miles, just around the corner to Cape Sounion. This is the second time Kincsem anchored next to the beautiful ancient Apollo temple and it was still ancient and beautiful! We walked up the hill this time to provide Barbara with her target 10,000 daily steps. It was hot but once we were back down, the beer tasted all the much better! The entertainment of the day was our anchor buoy, however. The German online harbor guide recommends setting an anchor buoy since the bottom in portions consists of overlapping stone plates. Not good if you get your anchor under one of those, hence the recommendation. If you have a buoy, there’s a line attached to the front of the anchor that runs to the buoy and you can pull out the anchor with that line, in theory. The more immediate problem, however, was that local motor boats thought that they could avoid anchoring themselves by picking up our buoy! Well, we will make sure the buoy is better labeled before we deploy it next time!

Next stop was Ormos Ag. Nikolaios (Agios or “Ag.” means “Saint”) on Kea. We found a lovely spot to anchor and swim notwithstanding the generally “suspect” water quality in that bay. The highlight was a visit to the “chora” - the main town of Kea. Here is where most people used to live up the hill away from any approaching pirate or enemy fleet. Everyone of these islands still has a chora - they’re usually quaint and built with narrow pedestrian streets and spectacular vistas. Most people still live there and you can find small hotels and restaurants in attractive settings. From Loulou, the chora of Kea, it was just a short walk to the Lion of Kea, an oversized lion cut out of the surrounding rocks some 2500 years ago. It is still well preserved, although it looked like it had slid down the steep hill for a few meters ….