Saturday, March 19, 2016

TOP CRUISING SPOTS OF THE EASTERN MED (PART 5) – NORTH-WEST COAST OF CRETE

While Envoy is in Lefkas Marina, Greece, we are home in Auckland, New Zealand planning to return to Greece early next month to commence cruising by late April.

Destination 5: Gramvousa
Where is it?: On the north-west coast of Crete, which stretches 260km from east to west in the southern Aegean Sea.
How long is required to enjoy here?: A few days or about three weeks for the greater area.
Brief outline: A delightfully isolated spot on stunning Crete, rarely visited by cruisers having some great anchorages, mountain villages and ancient Minoan sites
Must do: Pay your respects at the New Zealand war cemetery in nearby Soudha Bay where 446 young Kiwis are buried.

It's a sombre feeling visiting the NZ war cemetery at Soudha Bay

Crete is a large island with three mountain ranges rising over 2,000m, an extremely rugged topography and few major inland roads. With many rocky ravines and caves it’s easy to see how the partisans were able to resist the Germans so effectively in WW2. On every spare piece of land there are olive trees – over 21 million of them in fact!

We often encountered herds of goats on Cretan roads

Cretan villages are exactly as you would picture them – narrow winding streets where a car has to pull over to let an oncoming car through, ancient rustic buildings mostly in a poor state of repair, old men with waistcoats and mustaches sitting outside small tavernas, elderly hunched-over women dressed totally in black.

Picturesque village of Alikambos

There are only a few areas to anchor on Crete’s north coast offering good shelter because the Meltemi wind is consistently from the NW or N generating a 1-2m swell. One is Ormos Milati, a stunning bay protected from all except easterlies, and although this is one of the best anchorages on the coast we were the only boat anchored here. It's on the NE side of a four-mile long inlet, Soudha Bay, a deep and beautiful harbour and NATO base where we found about 13 warships anchored.

Natural anchorage of Soudha Bay. Ormos Milati is on the north-west entrance

Around the most westerly point of Crete’s north coast is the island of Gramvousa. This is a spectacular area and the island has a couple of bays on its south side, making it reasonably sheltered from the Meltemi.

Gramvousa is the most isolated of out top ten spots

Envoy anchored at Gramvousa

Crowning the island are The ruins of a huge Venetian fortress built in 1579 crown the island, and was the last Cretan stronghold to fall to the Turks in 1692. In the early 19th century the area became a haven for pirates until an Anglo/French expedition rooted them out in 1828.

Looking down from the castle

On rocks separating the two bays is the wreck of a steel ship, about 40m long. Most of the parts are still recognisable, and a sombre reminder of what can happen at sea.

Envoy anchored near shipwreck

Shipwreck with castle behind

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