Dodecanese July, 2025

Strictly speaking, you are not in the Dodecanese until you are as far South as Patmos. We were headed for Psara, followed by Inousses, both North Aegean Islands. Our departure from Skiros was very early. We had pretty good conditions to sail most of the way. In the end, it was only a 10-hour sail across the middle of the Aegean, however it seemed to take forever. My second mate was feeling a bit ill, so it must have felt like an eternity for her. We were exhausted by the time we anchored in Psara, so we didn't bother going ashore.  In fact. we didn't even take any photos from the boat.

The following day was just awful. We had another 6 hours of motoring around the top of Chios to get to the safe harbour of Inousses. There was bad weather forecast and it seemed to have come early. 5 of the 6 hours we were directly into 23+ knots of wind and wild seas. Jackie still wasn't feeling well and the conditions seemed to exacerbate things. We were both very happy to finally tie up to the quay in Inousses harbour and spend a few days decompressing.  

Inousses has a terrific natural harbour with a lovely little town on the side of the hill, that's a delight to wander around. But at the same time, it's a strange place. We were able to pay for water at the quay so that we could wash the boat. However it dribbled out of the tap and we were only allowed to use it for 1 hour and no more. The restaurants were either not open, or uninterested in serving us. And oh my lord the wasps were bad. During our stay, a rather large bush fire broke out on the Island of Chios and we could clearly see the flames being whipped up by the strong winds. The resulting power outages that also affected us on Inousses, which made the restaurant situation even worse. (something that I thought could not be possible) And I swear that every wasp on Chios took refuge on our little island. Thankfully, Jackie was feeling better though.

From Inousses, we sailed down the charred coast of Chios towards Patmos, where we would spend a few more days hiding from the Meltemi. On the way we stopped at beaches on Chios, Fournoi and Arki. All lovely in their own way, but nothing worthy of photographs. To be honest, if we had pulled out a camera, the wind probably would have blown it out of our hands. 

Patmos was going to be our home for a few days as unbelievably, the wind was somehow going to get even worse. We med-moored to the town quay, laying out all but a couple of meters of our anchor chain and settled in for 4 days of Meltemi. I think we explored every street and every shop on Patmos. We caught a bus up to the Cora and walked the trail back down. We even visited the cave where St John supposedly wrote the Book of Revelations.

From Patmos we made our way south to the island of Leros. We will be wintering NJ in Leros at the end of this season, so it was nice to check out the ship yard and all the facilities that the island offers. We anchored in a remote bay in the North of the island (near the ship yard and airport), we anchored in Lakki (the main town) and we took a mooring ball on the East side of the island in an attractive town called Pantelli. Pantelli is known for its windmills and castle that are situated high on the hill, overlooking the bay. 

While in Lakki, we decided to catch the island bus all the way North to the ship yard. In the blazing summer heat, we stopped the bus in between stops and began our walk to the yard. The road felt very remote and seemed to be governed by a large herd of goats. That is until we turned the final corner and found ourselves at a standoff with the true guardians. A group of 5 or so angry looking dogs. One of them, a rather large German Shepard, did not seem happy with us at all. Not wanting to risk a hospital visit or a rabies shot, we about faced, making it back to the main road just in time to see our returning bus disappear into the distance. We ended up walking to the (now closed) airport and calling a taxi for a ride back to Lakki. We did eventually get to the shipyard (by boat) and were met with giggles when relaying our story about the dogs. “Oh, they are our pets and would have been happy to see you”. We have since received emails from the shipyard, introducing the dogs with photos and names. 

The Island of Kalymnos was our next stop. The main harbour (Pothia) is not recommended by the sailing community as the harbour master is grumpy, unhelpful and sometimes outright rude. So we decided to stay in a tiny little village bay down the far southern end of the island. Vlychadia is a very small holiday village that looks to be used primarily by locals trying to get away from the tourists in Pothia, or perhaps they are trying to get away from that grumpy harbour master. The little village is rather cute and the bay offers great protection from the weather.

From Kalymnos we sailed to the fascinating island of Kos. Just off the Turkish coast near Bodrum, Kos has a mix of Greek and Turkish cultures. It's covered in ancient Greek, some Turkish, and vast Roman ruins as well. In contrast, the North corner of the island has an enormously popular resort beach called Tigaki. Kos is also famous for its wind powered water sports. However, that's a part of the island we have not got to yet.

Just South of Kos is a small volcanic island called Nisiros. When I say volcanic, it's basically a volcano poking up out of the sea. There isn't much there other than a handful of very small villages, a small harbour town littered with restaurants, a rather cool Greek fortress, a Monastery that looked like way too much hard work to get to, and… oh yeah… a massive volcano that you can walk into. The volcano experience is both surreal and overwhelming. We had hired a car which allowed us to explore the volcano early in the day, before the tourist hoards arrived. We had the whole place to ourselves and boy was it impressive. Words can not describe the feeling of standing inside a volcano crater that is still venting sulpha and hot gasses. Wow. While we had the car, we made it our mission to drive every single road on the island. We succeeded, well before lunch.

 We were beginning to run low on time before we needed to check in to Turkey, so the next few days were quick stopovers. Tilos is south of Nisiros and a short sail away. We only spent the night there and didn't even go ashore. The next day was a small Island just North of Rhodes, called Alimia. This idyllic location with its crystal clear water and white sandy bottom felt very remote. The water was warm and there was hardly a soul about. On the shore is an old WWII army barracks, where the home sick German soldiers spent their time graffitiing the walls with images of their home town and girls that may have been. They must have felt very isolated and alone down here. 

The next day we sailed around the South West corner of Rhodes and made our way up to the very historic, and very popular town of Lindos. Wow what a spectacle. Lindos is a fabulous place to spend a few days, but man was it hot. Protected by a natural harbor, the town of Lindos flows like a waterfall down a steep embankment and almost tumbles into the harbour at the bottom. This is made even more spectacular by the enormous castle that sits high on an outcrop, overlooking the ancient town. Did I mention it was hot… Like heat stroke hot.

While we were in Lindos, we decided to hire a car and drive into Rhodes town to have a look around. We have been to Rhodes before, however we somehow completely missed the completely unmissable, and enormous, old town. The man that rented us the car warned us about driving into Rhodes city centre as there were many one way streets and very busy. Clearly he has never driven in Melbourne after the football, Rhodes was a doddle… While we had the car (and the air conditioning that it provided) We decided to drive out to the far North West corner to see Monolithos Castle. Castle is probably overstating it. Nevertheless, it's an impressive place to build a something…

With only a handful of days left before we needed to check into Turkey, we made our way to the island of Symi. Symi town is beautiful, and possibly my favourite town in all of the Dodecoanese. Colourful and interesting, Symi was bursting with personality. As we would soon find out, Symi is everything that Turkey is not.