sailing the cyclades mid summer, too windy or not?

[vyv_cox]

If that is the Meltemi then the cars are pointing NW which makes the shadows at 16:00 late afternoon.

All the best from Sherlock.

The meltemi blasts down the Kafireas Strait and batters Kithnos right in its path. The wind direction is NNE, so the cars are facing close to east. I think the photo was taken at about midday when the wind had not really got going for the day.

Edit: it was taken at 11:25 on 19/08/2009

 

[BurnitBlue]

The meltemi blasts down the Kafireas Strait and batters Kithnos right in its path. The wind direction is NNE, so the cars are facing close to east. I think the photo was taken at about midday when the wind had not really got going for the day.

Edit: it was taken at 11:25 on 19/08/2009

Damn and Blast. Having nothing better to do I have just spent an hour with your Photo from Loutra bay on Kythnos. If the wind is blowing from NNE via the Kafireas Strait then the two island smudges are the Evia peninsular and the North tip of Andros.

Something does not add up I thought. The Kafireas Straits are 30nm away so where is the island of Gyros which is only 15nm away (off the picture?) The haze makes me think that the "straits" I can see are actually the gap between Gyros and Syros. this puts the cars pointing as you say just North of East. Therefore, from the car shadows the sun must be in the South East which doesn't seem right.

So I then have a shock that on my Laptop I use for Navigation I have no tables to tell me where the sun was in August 2009. I carry a sextant for emergencies but didn't realise that my reliance on GPS was so complete that I didn't even know that I no longer stored the sun tables.

Anyway I made a guess at close to my original estimate and returned to your post from my CPM Chart program to find that you had just updated your time to 11:25.

A fascinating exercise and highlighted my missing sun tables. However I still maintain, from guess only, that the cars are not pointing East but Rather North(ish).

I think that this is a far better game than the "where is it" puzzles on Scuttlebutt because the clues to solve it are Navigational and the solution available from Charts.

Do you have any more? Maybe a bit easier to solve.

 

[vyv_cox]

I think the Google Earth pic is aligned N-S. Wind direction in this is rather more northerly than in my photo, which was taken close to the end of the peninsula at the north of the bay. I think the island dimly seen through the mist has to be Gyros, which from memory has this appearance. I doubt if Evia could be seen from here, even given good visibility, although it can from further around the peninsula. The shadows look about right to me, a little east of south, correct for the time of day in the Aegean.

 

[BurnitBlue]

I think the Google Earth pic is aligned N-S. Wind direction in this is rather more northerly than in my photo, which was taken close to the end of the peninsula at the north of the bay. I think the island dimly seen through the mist has to be Gyros, which from memory has this appearance. I doubt if Evia could be seen from here, even given good visibility, although it can from further around the peninsula. The shadows look about right to me, a little east of south, correct for the time of day in the Aegean.

Fascinating stuff. I really enjoyed matching your photo and clues with the charts on CPM.

I have looked through my own photographs to baffle you with but I don't have any. The only seascape ones were obviously from Preveza and you could probably pin-point the Taverna and chair I was sitting in without any effort. I will keep a look out for future puzzles this summer. Don't hold your breath though, next winter is a long time away. Thanks for entertainment.

EDIT; Just remembered why I needed the sun tables. I thought that the sun should be North around noon on the 19th August. I forgot about the tropic of Cancer/Capricorn thing. Time to put away the GPS and get the books out before everything gets forgotten.

 

[Steve C Cronin]

Bob, I can understand that you can have ferocious gusting winds on the lee side from the mountains. Amorgos does not seem really to have any anchorages on the south side, but the other islands - are the lee sides really that bad?

There are several places in the central Ionian with that same problem. Then there is The Gulf!