GREECE – Kalamos Island

There are a large number of islands in the Ionian Sea, although most people only visit one or two of the ‘big seven’ – being, from north to south, Corfu, Levkada (or Levkas), Meganisi, Ithaca, Cephalonia, Zykanthos and Kythira (much further south off the Peloponnese and not really an Ionian Island at all).  However there are many smaller islands, some of which are populated with one or two small towns, and some of which have only a lighthouse or a chapel. Kalamos is actually quite a large island, very close to the Greek mainland and surprisingly high, rising steeply from the sea on on the west side.  It is also surprisingly green with stunted shrubs and trees on the west side but large, luscious pines on the east.  The waters are crystal clear and where there are sand bottoms, the water takes on an aqua hue.  After having little to no wind from our anchorage heading southwards, and then what wind we did get was on the nose (typical!) we motored the whole way towards Kalamos.  A lovely white sandy beach caught our eye just before reaching the town/port of Kalamos and we decided to drop our anchor here and spend the night, thinking ourselves to be well-protected from the prevailing northwesterlies and well dug in with our anchor in sand.

Our beautiful anchorage on Kalamos

Tad enjoying the crystal clear water

BISOU at anchor

Thoroughly enjoying our afternoon snorkeling and swimming in the beautiful water, we were unprepared for the rising gusty winds that began to hit us early in the evening.  Reaching 40knots plus, the gusts swung poor Bisou on her anchor until the early hours of the next morning.  We were thankful that we had dug our anchor well in earlier in the day.  Although the winds were not predicted to be that strong, we figured that we had experienced for the first time this season, the ‘katabatic’ effect of the winds over the mountain top and through a niche right in front of us.  The next day we decided to head a little further south to a bay on the same island which sounded lovely and remote as well as seemingly protected from the prevailing winds.  We anchored in Port Leone, again on the east side of Kalamos, although we were disappointed to find the water not nearly as clear and lots of rubbish at the bottom.  There had been a town here which was deserted after the 1953 earthquake destroyed its water supply.  A church still remains, however, which has been kept painted and most likely used by the inhabitants of nearby Kalamos town.  The anchorage was quite busy with a number of yachts and so we chose to anchor stern-to the shore on the eastern side of the bay.  By 3pm the winds were gusting to the point that we did not feel comfortable and made the decision to weigh anchor and leave for more protected waters. We motored back up the eastern side of Kalamos thinking that we would take shelter in an anchorage on the eastern side of the sister island, Kastos, but on reaching our destination found that the winds were still gusting much too strongly for us to be comfortable.  At that point we figured we would head back north to the town of Mytika on the mainland, just north of Kalamos, which we had passed the day before on our way to the lovely anchorage where we had spent the previous night.  It was a hard slog motoring through nasty chop with winds gusting to 40 knots (more katabatic winds) but eventually we arrived in the bay to the east of Mytika, with shallow sandy water and dropped the anchor.  Although it was still windy, and remained so until later that night, there were no gusts and the seas were relatively flat.  We had a good 

night’s sleep!

Port Leone on Kalamos

Old disused windmill on Kalamos