Our first taste of night sailing

We had enjoyed a beautiful time in Olympia, our imaginations were fired with Olympic ideal, I was visualising the athletic torsos of Ancient Greeks….and then I was brought back to the present day by a weather report, predicting 25 knots of southeasterly winds heading in our direction.

In order to sail south, we needed to take advantage of the next 6 hours of relative calm. And that meant arriving at our next port (Kiparrissia) after night fall.

We weighed up the options and decided we didn’t want to miss this weather window or the opportunity to experience a night sail.

I was apprehensive as the sun disappeared over the horizon. Surely it’s not a good idea to enter an unknown port at night?!

We were nevertheless on route and could see the layout of our destination on the chart plotter. Rod Heikel informed us that Kiparissia is a small port, mainly occupied by local boats, with a new breakwater that would give us good shelter.

We saw a beautiful sunset, night fell and we passed the time playing I Spy and chatting, which was a useful distraction from the sight of the inky black swell of the empty sea. In time, I will appreciate this as a beautiful thing.

On approaching land, we searched for any navigation lights that could help us find the entrance to the harbour. No such friendly green flashing lights were visible so we had no option but to follow the chart plotter and hope for the best.

We did find the entrance and there was a pathetic green light marking the end of the breakwater which only became visible meters before we arrived.

We saw a yacht moored alongside the western wall and decided to join them. We encountered two hazards en route: one yacht anchored in the middle of the harbour without anchor lights, and an anchor buoy that narrowly missed our prop.

With these two hazards thankfully avoided, we moored and fell into bed at 11pm.

Thank you Nemrod for the safe night passage.