Break out the sails

After our land based sojourn to consult the oracle at Delphi, we are back on the boat; taking on Poseidon as we follow Jason across the Cyclades in our quest for Turkey's golden fleece.

We are heading south and west: so far Kea, Serifos, Sifnos, Naxos. 

The Cyclades have rescued the term "Sailing" from irrelevance in our annals: the iron horse had many a day's outing in the sultry airless Pelopennese, but now finally in the Agean, Familia is fulfilling her destiny, because we have arrived in the Agean at the wrong time.  The Meltimi is the relentless north wind of the Agean high summer - shunned by knowing sailors with choices, who venture here only in spring or autumn. Hour after hour, day after day, the wind blows relentlessly between 25 and 35 ++ kts, fraying sails, mooring lines, and tempers in equal measure. 

Sifnos

"Sheltering" in a bay is often a misnomer - the hot arid land heats and destablises the wind, adding to it's fury as the gusts stampede down the valleys and across the anchorages.  Luckily our anchoring skills have improved, although one must admit to some residual nervousness when the bullets are screaming through the rigging at 2 AM.  

On the upside, Familia does enjoy a bit of a blow. Broad reaching in 25kts with a reefed sails is a breeze and it is only the confluence of a big gust and a few swells on the stern quarter that she rises up on her ear in protest, to be inevitably echoed by the crew. Post 30 kt winds have now become more of a chore or even a challenge, rather than an outright safety concern: most recently Cathe successfully used a difficult tail wind and swell combo as an opportunity to practise her helming, steering us into the safety of Naxos.

After cleaning the herb garden off the cabin sole and picking up the cutlery drawer again we have overcome our complacency and installed restraining cord around the place to ensure things stay where they are put on board. Indeed, on the odd day when the meltimi fails to kick, it seems a fair swap could be made if the sweaty airlessness above and below decks could be traded for the white knuckle and set jaw of too much wind, be it at anchor or on the high seas.

Kids schoolwork continues to be problematic and the wind conspires with parental teaching fatigue and the boy's own wheedling sneakiness to render study on passage difficult at best; we are developing strategies for keeping them at the books even as Familia buckets through the wind and swell, but shipping whitecaps over the side is one impediment that  is impossible to ignore.

A series of videos follows, illustrating on-board priorities as the Meltimi builds throughout the day.

In other news, the saga of the outboard motor continues: the problematic Yamaha 2hp, which met a hot and smoky end after a number of trips to the workshop, has been replaced by a new, internet bought Chinese 5hp via Italy. Alas, the early promise is marred by a slow oil (and maybe petrol) leak which manifests itself as an unsightly splatter on Familia's stern. Cant these bloody things just work? The post-purchase cognitive dissonance compounds the growing disenfranchisement of being locked up 24/7 with one's nearest and dearest....only partly medicated by the fine Kitron liqueur of Naxos. Who would have thought the 1/2 litre bottle would have proved so inadequate so quickly?

The solution is the one beloved of backpackers throughout the decades: head for a new country.

Turkey by the end of the week.

Classical side

Quite here now at 2 am. We have a rolling sea driven by a fickle wind so the boat, at anchor, is moving in wide yawning swings. I can’t sleep with one ear perpetually cocked to check the anchor dragging and alert to the anchor alarm which has already sounded once. The bay we are in is along from Hydra town and I can hear a man singing softly on the shore. I think he may be a Filippino guard from the estate that bounds the beach. We are all intrigued by it – is it owned by a wealthy foreigner who swept in with the EU and bought up the whole bay? Could it be Leonard Cohen who the guide book states bought here in the 70’s? If we run aground on their beach will either get a mojito or a shove off at gunpoint. 

We left Athens with mixed feelings, a mangled city in some ways, kept alive through the astonishing beauty of the civilisations built 2500 years ago. Modern Athens is a sprawling condensed flurry of  6 storey apartment blocks (the height restriction is a blessing), grimy pavements, unkept parks and trendy cafes + bars. Going to the Acropolis redeems all that. Truly breathtaking to walk along paths and imagine the people who walked them on their way to haggle at the Agora (market/social place) or to the Parthenon to honour Athena (goddess of wisdom, daughter of Zeus – cut from his brain apparently by her brother Hephaistos and naturally, a virgin).

The Stoa of Attalos within the Agora was rebuilt with funds by Rockefeller through the U.S Archaelogical Society and completed in the mid 90’S. The purity of form, ingenuity of design and skill in materials combine to make a building of such beauty that it’s a really moving experience to be within it as well as give the sense of what all the other buildings + temples within the Agora and Acropolis would have been like in their heyday.

The National Archealogical Museum needs days to absorb. Again it’s the quality and refinement that the Ancient Greeks achieved which left us all gaping. Steve thankfully took the boys at a brisk pace leaving me to ogle the intricate fine gold jewellery, exquisite pots + vessels and so many wonderful marble sculptures that my eyes grew sore. Finding a live turtle in the cafe courtyard and providing the entertainment enacting battle scenes amongst ancient marble statues of warriors and gods was the highlight for the boys.

Hydra (pronounced ee-dra) is a town of great beauty – no cars allowed, lots of steep winding marble paths past white houses with blue shutters , bouganvillia, eucalypts (these are throughout Greece making us homesick) and an azure sea. The boys could have spent weeks jumping and diving off the 3 metre high rock: We could have spent weeks dining at this nicely sited restaurant. The solitary evening without the kids gave us the strength to continue on for a few more days.

We had to go back to Athens to pick up a new dinghy + motor so decided to hire a car and drive to Delphi for a night. It’s a great place set high in the mountains, with panoramic views through the valley down to the sea - a site that emphasizes the power of the Oracle and the Sanctuary of Apollo.

Now it has a restful serenity to it, but looking at the model and artefacts in the superb museum made it evident that this place of pilgrimage had a grandeur and solemnity in keeping with honouring the gods.

The boys enjoyed the visit but a saturation point was obviously reached: Sailing out of Athens Sholto had just one request - "Can we look at something new soon?"

Dirty Old Town

Navpaktos was so charming we stayed another night which enabled us to host our two sets of neighbours for a few drinks. It was fun to meet some other cruisers and see how people came to be parked next to us. 

Anna and Robin are retired poms and seasoned cruisers who do 3 months a year in Greece, sailing a 30 ft ex-charter boat they bought for a song and refurbished 7 years ago. One had the sense of a tightly controlled budget for everything except laughter: this they both dispensed freely.    

Dick and Brigitte are a Dutch pair sailing a 26 ft traditional Dutch steel fishing smack (complete with leeboards) who arrived from Holland (with Inja the dog - to Sholto's delight) via 18 months in the canals and the Black Sea. Their budget looked even tighter, but of course as we gearheads hate to admit, everyone was in the same place, waking up to the same view, and having the same great experiences. The size of the boat and associated accoutrements are really minor details in the washup, although if we swapped the dog for two kids one suspects their quality of life would have taken a hit.

After a bleary goodbye the next day we had a couple of long days motoring eastwards up the Gulf of Corinth, including anchoring in the Alkionidhes off a small island resembling nothing more than Alice Springs or Cooper Pedy, complete with shimmering heat, deserted adobe farmhouse, baking red sand, and stunted eucalypts. An unlikely reminder of home and a timely one to get some additional sun protection sorted out for the boat. Maybe those poms know something after all. 

We set off early toward the Corinth Canal, the gateway to the Agean.  It is a bit like a mini Suez, hewn from the limestone, with sheer walls rising up to 50 m above the boat. At the eastern end we bumped into an Aussie family going the other way - Steve, Karen and their two kids on a 42 ft catamaran. We hastily exchanged notes on schooling, places to go and the trials of life aboard - great to hear an Aussie accent again before we set off on the last leg towards Athens, cradle of western civilisation. 

 

We are now staying in the dirty, feotid, airless Zeas Marina, surrounded by superyachts and floating turds (at times indistinguishable), but centrally located next to the main port of Athens.

Athens is 3 million people living in a kind of Refern by the sea. The town planning seems to permit any type of building as long as it is between 4 and 5 stories tall, no exceptions, right up to the city limits. This is at times charming, except the effect is spoiled: whatever the Greeks were wasting their public purse on to land in the financial morass they appear to be in, it certainly wasn't garbage disposal.  A cheap shot, but yes it seems not much advanced since Homer had a whinge about the bins not getting collected.

Kicking cans aside, yesterday we set off to the Parthenon and associated wonders. It really is a marvel that these buildings were planned and executed by a civilisation not that much advanced from the stone age. That is until you contemplate that it was probably all done by slaves in appalling conditions while Athenians slapped each other on the back and contemplated their next bloodthirsty foray to gather even more slaves. This is not an aspect of ancient life one reads about in the guide books, it seems we are to imagine a peace loving hippie commune given to passionate rhetoric about philosophy, equal rights and stone columns. 

Tomorrow we will collect our new boom tent and set sail (read - motor) again, for a short tour of the Pelopponese, before returning in a weeks time to collect our new internet-bought dinghy and motor. Along the way I might swap the front dunny pipes over, bodgy up a wire for the dead battery drill, allowing me to complete installing the lee cloths, put up the clothes hooks, finally order the Epirb, attempt to fix the air con, and re-install the man overboard alarm.  Ahh home improvements, some people just cant help themselves.  

Navpaktos, Greece

From Sivota we sailed down to Fiskardho, the setting for Captain Corelli's Mandolin. An old Venetian lighthouse on the northern headland greets you as you enter the little bay on the north east of Kefalonia. The quay wraps around the bay and the little historic town wraps in turn around the quay.

What a busy little tourist port: the circling and jockeying for position exceeded even the worst of the monkeying you would witness at Bondi Beach car park on a nippers morning. And like Bondi, once it's full you can forget it. We ended up spending about 2 hours trying to get an anchor biting into the shale bottom and a line ashore further out near the lighthouse. Whilst stressful at the time, this then gave us a license to snicker at the later boats having the same struggle while we had a swim and a beer. With 25 kts on the side we needed it solid so we stayed there two days to get the return on our investment.

After that we took advantage of the morning changeover to grab one of the spots on the pontoon. This permitted a few meals out in the town including one lunch at a particularly romantic restaurant on the beach. However, once again the relentless 24/7 presence of kids was felt keenly, a bit like having a neighbour endlessly play the Banana Splits theme while one attempts to listen to Moonlight Sonata.


A bushwalk walk out to the old lighthouse with a view of the ridiculous superyachts created a bit of perspective. Realistically Fiskardho is a fantastic sleepy tourist town that somehow seems to retain it's original charms, and one could easily spend a week or two there recharging the batteries. However, after 4 days in one spot the feet were itchy and so it was time to move on to less populated climes.


Once again we found a deserted white pebble beach and decided to stay so as to better advance the cause of nude skindiving in the Ionian. The weather had settled and in the lee of Odysseus' Island of Ithaca it was all pretty satisfactory and warranted a second night. The wind sprung up though and for the second time our inadequacies with the setting the pick were exposed, with Familia making an unauthorised midnight sojourn, dragging 35m of chain and the CQR out into the deep blue. Watch out for the weedy bottoms. Happily the next set took OK but the rest of the evening was not restful.


The next day it was out with the manual and back to basics for a refresher class in anchor setting while we set sail (motor) for our first taste of the Greek mainland. Missalongion was an underwhelming reminder that not all of Greece can get a gig on a postcard, but we followed this up by taking a chance to see if we could get a spot in the impossibly small port of Navpaktos.

Navpaktos is apparently one of the few old fortified ports in the Med and we were lucky to get one of only 3 available spots behind the eastern battlements. Apparently Cervantes swapped his pen for a sword here in 1571 to help fight off the Turks, so his statue is now flourishing his blade in our direction. Once again, nothing this gorgeous could escape the weight of tourism and hence we are surrounded by groovy cafes and bars which all overlook us and the old port. While sleepy during the day and perfect for enjoying a sundowner looking over the boat, it's all doof after 9pm. We are getting used to this though: after a few nights anchored in the heart of party towns the music now tends to play a part in the dreams rather than disturb them.

We are heading in the direction of the Canal of Corinth and Athens before tackling the Agean, home of the cheerless meltimi wind, hot and strong. Beyond that, Turkey beckons. We are wondering whether there is anything in the rumours of listless and joyless middle eastern heat, or if this is just the product of pommy whingeing.

Only one way to find out for sure.