Med Mooring Challenge - Sailing Greek Islands

This is really cool. We're doing a sailing week 12-day trip through the Greek islands. This stop is Seraphos and the Cyclades. We've got eight of us on board, Cheryl and I and six others. It's sail away week and exploring the little town up on the peak of Seraphos. This time on Distant Shores we demonstrate how to do a Mediterranean mooring, dropping the anchor and backing up to the quay and visit quaint Greek villages and deserted azure bays in the beautiful Aegean Sea. We're Cheryl and Paul Shard, hosts of the Distant Shores Sailing Adventure TV series. We've been cruising and living aboard for 34 years, documenting the sailing lifestyle. Join us for the building of our fifth boat, a custom aluminum Orion 49. This video is brought to you by NordVPN. We travel a lot, and that often means using guest Wi-Fi's in public places like hotels and airports. NordVPN adds an extra layer of security when we're traveling. 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We're just coming into the port of Epidaurus. We're hoping we can do a med mooring to the town Most ports in Greece are set up so that visiting boats back up to the harbour wall, maximizing the number of visitors and allowing for flexibility for wider or narrower boats. In most cases, you will drop an anchor to hold the bow out and tie at least two stern lines to bollards, rings or cleats. We're going to come in close and take a peek at where we're supposed to go, trying to understand the chart. And then we have to plan the scope for turning around. We want to let the scope out with probably 40 meters minimum of chain, and then we back up for the key and tie off on the key. It can be difficult to judge the distance off, and if you don't have a lot of chain, you might end up running out before you make it to the dock. In our case, we have over 100 meters of chain, that's 330 feet, and a sturdy Lumar V4 windlass, the same brand we've had on all our own sailboats. So we'll get fenders down each side, our two big ball fenders at the stern for stern towing. Normally when med mooring, you can look at the harbour wall and try to judge where everyone else has dropped their anchors. Ideally, you put yours in between theirs at 90 degrees to the dock. Here with the bend in the harbour wall, we'll try to place it a bit north. We've set up ready to drop the anchor on the bow. We've got fenders down both sides and stern fenders to stop us from bouncing on the dock. And then we have two stern lines, and we just need to manage the approach. I've got the GPS showing us we are 300 feet away, so we need to get a little closer. Great when we've got somebody on the dock who's going to grab a stern line, that's helpful. The kern is at the bow, ready to drop the anchor. Yeah, so drop the anchor now. Pay out road as you back towards your slot. Do not put tension on the road until there's enough scope to be sure it doesn't drag. When we're a boat length from the key, we begin snubbing the anchor. Just flush the passerelle on those boxes. We have set up two stern lines ready to throw to a helper on the dock. In many cases, the dock is more crowded and you can grab on to neighbouring boats until you can get someone ashore to deal with the lines. If there was no one to help, we would have to put someone ashore with a very nice gangway or passerelle. It has hydraulic controls to allow it to raise and lower as well as extend and retract. Thank you very much for your help. Once the boat is safely secured, we have interesting plans ashore. Two of our crew aboard this voyage are doctors and interested in seeing the nearby ruins of the Temple to Asclepios, god of medicine, healing and physicians. He's the guy with a snake on his staff, and the most famous temple to him is a taxi ride away. It was the most celebrated healing centre of the classical world, the place where ill people went in the hope of being cured. So down there, that's the fountain that provided the water, and this is the ritual eating area. So presumably where they get their healthy meals. Prosperity from the visitors allowed the town to build this 14,000 seat theatre 2,500 years ago, a highlight for visitors interested in Greek or medical history. Yeah, it's just an incredible place to be, to think of the patients coming here from far and wide, hoping to be cured of whatever ails them. It's so much similar to have patients come to hospitals with hope in their hearts. Just incredible to get a sense for the deep history of medicine, people's attempt to help others the best they could with the technology they had at the time. Yeah, a privilege today as it was back then. So the last part of med mooring is to get the anchor up again. And that's usually the next morning, as most people stay one night in the Greek docks here. Some people spend two or one, but there's usually a lot of changing around of anchors. And this is where there's a risk of having the anchors on top of each other. So if one anchor is laid out and then crosses over another one, the last person in is hopefully the first person out again, in which case there will be able to hopefully just lift the chain up off your anchor chain or your anchor. So in our case, it's a little more complicated because the dock wall has a bit of a kink in the wall, which means that there's a chance that a few of these boats have crossed their anchors just due to the geometry of the crossing of the wall. So we'll see how we go this morning, see if we can avoid getting into a anchor tangle out there, in which case there's usually someone around who will jump in and be a diver for a few extra euros in the Greek harbors. We're going to give this a try getting out of here. We probably have crossed lines because of the corner, way the corner of the slips goes together, the lines come over each other. So we've got everything ready to go and a friendly group of people watching us. You can ready to take us out of here and just thrust the bow over to center us up. Okay, got it. Okay. Hey, hey. All that preparation pays off. So the other things I prepared to leave, we went to talk to a diver just so we would have a phone number in case we needed a diver. And I talked to our two neighbors in case the anchors were crossed, then they were willing to help out too. And what would have happened if the anchors were crossed and we tried to raise us? Our chain would be underneath one of their chains and a risk of lifting their anchor if they were crossed. So then we would have to let by, let go and perhaps have them go around it. Because I'm not sure a diver in that case could be a big operation. Anyway, it worked out perfectly, even though it was a weird key and we're underway. Summer winds in the Aegean can get pretty strong. This wind is called the Meltemi and comes from the north, usually with clear skies and warm temperatures. We reef down and get gusts up to 30 knots. At the island of Hydra, we have calm conditions. So with longtime cruising friends aboard sailing yacht Carrad, we do a raft up, tying stern to the shore. Tying stern to the rocks is one of the fun things of being able to anchor here in Greece. So we've run shorelines from the stern out to tie around a rock and then you use a rope looping around the rock and tie onto that so you don't risk chafing through the big long line and it getting shorter every time you use it. And there's lots of these little bays where we can find a spot. In this case, it's a little bit deep. It's about 70 feet where we've anchored here and then we tied the shoreline on with about a 100 foot long line which we're using the whole length of, sitting here in about 10 meters of water. We tie a shore like this twice on this trip, both in situations where the water is a bit deep to allow us to anchor freely. These locations are often referenced in the cruising guide. The history of Serafos goes back over 3,000 years and we've heard the historic hilltop capital called Kora is well worth a visit. Wow, look at that view. Oh my goodness. Sunny day at the top of Serafos. We're seeing our boat, Aegean Star down there at the dock. Hey, she's the only one at the dock. Yeah. Ferry coming in. After getting a better view of the island from the height of the Kora, a few of us decide we want to see more. So organize a taxi tour with local driver Irene. There is one main road winding around the island of Serafos which is located in the western Cyclades island group, about 92 nautical miles from Athens. So it's an easy ferry ride away from the country's capital. A taxi tour around Serafos takes about three to four hours, depending on how many places you want to stop. And we're surprised by the number of attractions there are on this 30 square mile island. From ancient monuments such as this Hellenistic marble watchtower, circa 300 BC, to a beautiful monastery, to the remains of a once prosperous iron ore industry. The resident population of Serafos today is about 1500 people, but at one time 3,000 people were employed here mining iron ore. Oh you see the rail tracks. So this is where the carts were carrying the iron. There was about 3,000 people working in the mines. The exploitation of the island's extensive iron ore deposits began in the late 19th century. The mines closed in the 1960s, but all around the island you still see evidence of the work that was done here. Today the economy of Serafos depends on small-scale agriculture, but primarily tourism. Irene takes us to many quiet villages with beautiful beaches. And relax. Yeah, it's very quiet. Don't have supermarket, no cigarette, no bread. All people go to Livadi and buy things. Comes here with the things and stay here one week and relax. It's very good. So we see why people choose Serafos as the place to get away from it all. Our 12-day cruise through the Greek islands of the Western Aegean Sea comes to an end all too soon. Would you like to see some more of these how-to sailing technique videos? Let us know in the comments below. And if you'd like to sail to distant shores and build your skills with us, check out our Sail Away Week schedule and join us for some tropical sailing in the British Virgin Islands this winter. Info in the description below. And if you enjoyed this video, please like, share, or comment. It helps us a lot. And hit the notification button so you don't miss a single video. Next time we take you to the Netherlands for an update on the build of our new and visit METS Trade, the annual marine equipment show in Amsterdam. Thanks for watching.