Aquatic Rodeo in Mykonos

The new Mykonos harbor was built by EU money and left for the Greeks to finish. So of course it has never been finished. There is water and electricity on the quay, but none of it is turned on. Mooring lines have been laid in some places, but despite the fact that they were laid only last year, they are still in a state of disrepair. With all of the dysfunction of this port, the main problem is that there is little to no protection from the strong Meltomi winds. When we came into the marina the winds were 25 knots. That strong of winds does not make landing a boat safely to the quay an easy job. To do it without incident requires a lot of experience and sometimes just plain luck.

We call it harbor theater. Or sometimes harbor drama. One couple referred to it as Aquatic Rodeo. It is both entertaining and horrifying in a car wreck kind of way. Because Mykonos is only a couple day sail from Athens it gets a lot of sailors who sail maybe every couple of years renting boats for the week to have a holiday in the Greek islands. Mix that with forceful winds and you have a combination that can only be spelled d-i-s-a-s-t-e-r. One by one we saw boats running into the quay at full speed knocking chunks of fiberglass off their hulls, anchor chains crossing in an unbelievable tangled mess and boats being blown sideways into the bows of other boats. I would estimate that 80% of the boats in the marina were either the battering rams or the receiving end of the out of control boats. It was so bad, we felt uncomfortable to leave the boat to go do anything. We were more than happy to leave the marina after a couple of days of stress and wind.