Lenny and I in the cabin planning a route

On our trip from Limnos to Agios Efstratios, we ran into the typical navigation situations around the islands in the northern Aegean. The local rule of thumb is that when the coast drops rapidly into the sea, the depth of the water close to land is deep, but if there is a shallow beach, the depth is shallow, also. So, when we would come close to an island, we would carefully study the drop of land in order to plan our route. One of the interesting additional problems is that the wind blows in a circular direction around the islands, increasing in speed until what looked like a calm day, could turn into a Bft. 5 wind suddenly. So, we always had a conference about routing when we had reached an island. Sometimes we could sail very close to land, near the rocks, and make a direct line to the harbor mouth. At other times, we had to sail outside the shortest route and cut back in when the harbor appeared. Agios Efstratios was easy to see and the harbor mouth was very clear, so this was a pleasure.