Levitha

An early start and swift exit to avoid the hovering port police, we had another cracking sail across to the island of Levitha.

Levitha is an island inhabited by one family who tend a few goats, farm the barren land and fish the surrounding waters. They have laid a few moorings in the bay and encourage the crews of visiting yachts to visit them in their farmhouse, part of which they have turned into a ‘taverna’.

We picked up one of their buoys and after a brief rest, launched the dinghy and rowed ashore to try to find the farmhouse. We bumped into the men on a tractor in one of their fields and asked if there was any food available that evening – ‘what would you like, fish or goat?’ Of course it had to be goat, so a table was booked for 7 pm. What a brilliant experience – we walked up to the farmhouse and were greeted like long lost friends. There is no electricity on the island so we sat and had our meal with the wind generator whizzing away in the background. The goat was an interesting but not unpleasant taste, washed down with a bottle of their best Retzina! We were joined by two more crews, one of which was an English couple who lived and worked on the island of Leros. He works for a marina, and I was sure that I recognised him from some where – anyway eventually it clicked and I realised that I had seen him on one of the’ Distant Shores’ documentary programmes made by Paul and Cheryl Shard! What an incredible coincidence! Torches were needed to make our way back to the boat and the following morning we left early as we had the threat of strong southerlies approaching later in the day. Although we had planned to try to make it to Kos, we decided to shorten the journey and head for the closer island of Kalymnos… more of that in the next instalment!!……