Hydra

Well weren’t we pleased we made this little detour! What a beautiful place (another one!). We had a brilliant sail goose winging down wind to the small harbour at Hydra. As we approached we could see yachts going in and promptly coming out again, unable to find a berth, so we weren’t holding out much hope but we decided to go in and have a look anyway.

There was a ‘Sailing Holidays’ flotilla in and they were all moored up together on the harbour wall, stern to. Not a spare berth anywhere, but we decided to ask when the flotilla was leaving. Two Ozzy skippers told us that they were in for the night but said that we could raft up in front of them if we liked! ‘No thanks’ was our initial reaction but then decided ‘why not’ we had never done that before so it would be a new experience… We dropped the anchor in the middle of the harbour and motored back on to the flotilla yachts – very scary, but the Ozzies helped us in and took our stern lines to two of their flotilla yachts. We were in and it was clearly the done thing here because within hours boats were rafted up four deep on both sides of the harbour! There was a real sense of community in the thick of it with people climbing over each others boats, chatting and swapping sailing stories all day! Great fun. We managed to get ashore and went for a lovely walk around the small town. Justin went to pay the port police for the ‘mooring’ and managed to pick up some free wi-fi from a local bar to get the forecast for the following day. All looking good for the 40 miles across to the island of Kynthos in the Cyclades.

     

There is no natural water on the island and so they have to bring it all in by tanker.

There are no cars on the island either so all materials are carried by mule. A ship arrived early morning and unloaded its cargo of sand directly onto the quayside and the locals used shovels to fill sacks and then loaded them onto mules to deliver around the island.