It was a relief to finally have a solid day of sailing after 5 days in Kos doing boat repairs. It’s frustrating when the repairs stop our movement west, but we also know this is a big part of what it takes to prepare for a circumnavigation – nothing is simple on these boats. Yesterday we spent the day repairing the autopilot – a problem of our own making because we clipped the shore as we backed into the dock in Kos, which broke the bracket that attaches the autopilot control arm to the rudder shaft. Tunger and I spent most of the day yesterday fabricating a new mounting system using stuff we found around the boat. Mainly it was Tunger doing the fabricating – actually I didn’t do much at all come to think of it.
With a working autopilot we set off at dawn this morning to head for Amorgos about 70 miles west of Kos. This was by far our biggest day yet. The wind built to around 18 knots by mid-day which was enough to let us cruise most of the way at 8-9 knots. At that speed the boat leans way over on its side, and if there are girls on board (there weren’t) they start to panic because they think the boat is going to tip over. True yachties call this “heeling” and they know it’s 100% normal. We call it the “gangster lean”.
We arrived in Amorgos just before sunset, so tomorrow morning we’ll do a bit of exploring to check things out. Amorgos is a cute little town with not much to see or do, so our stay here will be short. Tomorrow afternoon we head for Ios where we’ve heard some interesting things about naked Italian sunbathers there. We’ll probably need a couple days to investigate what’s happening with that.