The new adventures of Songbird - still Greece 2019

Welcome back! After a brief (cough) intermission in blogging, we're back again — and there's still plenty of adventures to tell!

So where were we? Right, somewhere on the west side of the Peleponnese. Kyparissia apparently, from where we headed further down the coast and into the spectacular entrance of Navarino bay, getting out of some rolly seas. We anchored in the NE corner in mud thick with history.

The bay was big, well protected, had good holding and several sights to visit, so we spent about 10 days here, shifting anchorages between north and south depending on wind direction. We've visited the town of Pylos, climbed up the old castle on the other end of teh bay, salvaged another anchor (people seem to lose these a lot) and dodged a squall. The latter necessitated some shouting at people who anchored amateurishly and then hid below during a thunderstorm with strong gusts and wind reversal that caused their boat to swing into ours. Luckily damage was avoided although they did look a bit rattled and hid in the abandoned marina in Pylos after that.

One day a big powerboat came within a meter of us and people started shouting, demanding papers. "Who are you!?" I asked, as the boat had no markings whatsoever and looked like any number of beat up old powerboats. "Hellenic coastguard" one of the guys on the deck yelled back, tugging on a small logo on his navy blue t-shirt. Apparently they don't have their own boat and just hire this local one, complete with lousy driver. He didn't bother deploying any fenders and inevitably touched our rubrail while we handed over the desired papers. Songbird's rubrail is clad in a stainless strip complete with slightly protruding screws, so we were unharmed while they added a few more scratches to their already large collection. I also had to slap someone's fingers as they were tugging on our lifelines. Not the best impression from this lot.

Leaving Navarino we headed further south, exploring some beautiful and uncharted anchorages. Also the town of Methoni, which was the only supply stop around and even had free and fast Wifi. One of these uncharted anchorages became an all-time favorite of ours, on an island populated only with goats. The next island over was a military exercise zone and featured the occasional fighter jet doing a bombing run. This southeast corner was very beautiful and quiet, there were no more charter boats and we really enjoyed our time here.