Note: Please excuse any odd timing here as I started this post several weeks ago.

I sit in front of a yawningly black and empty computer screen at our two bedroom rented flat in the New District of Istanbul, Türkiye. As our month in the country winds to a close, I’m lost in thought about how I can summarize everything that the city evokes. As with any part of the globe, there are innumerable fine travel guides available that cover the major sights; there’s no use adding fuel to those fires. The question is, what does the city and our time here mean to us and how did it change us?

Although we’ve had some great weather during our month, it’s drizzling on this late-April morning and our third-floor walk-up apartment has taken on a distinct chill. Even if the sun were to break through the clouds, the old stone and brick building would stay chilly for days.

When Rhett, Sunny, and rented a one-bedroom apartment in Paris for a month in the fall of 2022, it was just the three of us and we didn’t venture outside the city. While that was great, we organized our month in Istanbul a bit differently. First, it was marginally more expensive to rent a two bedroom apartment. So we jumped for the second bedroom and invited Jack and Jess, our son and daughter-in-law, for the second week of the month and Sarah and Mike, some of our best friends, for the third week. Also, when Jack and Jess came, the four of us took a several day side trip to Cappadocia in central Türkiye. The second and third week timing of family and friends was excellent in that it gave Rhett and me a chance to settle in and get to know the city a bit prior to entertaining, and the last week alone gave us a chance to clean up a bit and see some off-the-beaten-track sights of the city.

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Prior to my month here, I never knew what to make of Istanbul. (Or is it Byzantium? Or Constantinople?). Is it European? Is it Asian? Is it predominantly Christian or Muslim? Just where did Türkiye come from anyway? And how do the Byzantine Empire and Ottoman Empire relate to Türkiye?

I’ll do my best to untangle a little bit of that here as well as describe how the city and its people changed Rhett and me during our month’s stay.

For starters, here’s brief but solid excerpt of Istanbul’s past 2,700 years:

For more than two millennia, Istanbul/Constantanople has been one of the world’s greatest cities:

1) The Greek city founded for its strategic location atop a hill surrounded on three sides by water (700 BC – AD 300)

2) The grand eastern capital of the Roman Empire (AD, 333 – 476)

3) Its thousand years as the greatest city in Byzantine Christendom (476 – 1453)

4) Its four hundred years as a Muslim capital of the vast Ottoman Empire (1453 – 1920)

5) The modern metropolis of today, encompassing Muslim, Christian, and secular residents (1920 – today)

Excerpted from Rick Steves’ Istanbul Guidebook

From a nomenclature perspective the city began as Byzantium (as it was founded around 700 BC by the Greek king Byzas). Around 333 AD the Roman Emperor Constantine moved the capital of the Roman Empire to the city and officially renamed it Nova Roma (“New Rome”) but everyone just called it Constantinople (“The City of Constantine”). That name more-or-less stuck for 1,600 years until finally being renamed Istanbul in the 1930s with the founding of the modern Turkish republic after World War I. (I say “more-or-less” as relates to “Constantinople,” as the Ottomans “Arabic-ified” it to a rough transliteration of Konstantiniyye or Qustantiniyyah.)

By the way, our adjective “Byzantine,” meaning something that is overly complex and unwieldy—especially a bureaucracy or government—derives from this history.

If, from reading all above, you’re now wondering (as I did), Why all the fuss and focus about this place? its worth going back for a quick read of our previous post—Autumn 2023: Planes, Ferries, and Automobiles—where we addressed thalassocracies (maritime empires), and specifically Venice’s thalassocracy. While the term “crossroads” is a bit overused in our parlance, it’s quite fitting for Istanbul. It truly sits at choke-point between East and West and between Europe and Asia.

At a macro level, while being at a crossroads of the trade of goods and ideas is important, it’s only half the equation of Istanbul. A sport’s analogy is helpful to understand the other side of the coin: “The best offense is a good defense.” Having everything means nothing if you can’t keep what you have and protect who you love. So, zooming in to the defensive micro level, Istanbul’s location is also ideal.

Given that Istanbul’s Old Town is surrounded on three sides by water (the Sea of Marmara to the south, Bosporus Strait to the east, and Golden Horn to the north), the west is the only unimpeded land route into the original city (more on that coming).

Also from the previous maps, note that while Istanbul’s Old Town is in Europe, a couple miles across the Bosporus lies Asia. Many Istanbulllus work in European Istanbul but live in Asian Istanbul, relying on ferries or the under-Bosporus metro tunnels for their daily intercontinental commute.

To close this chapter of the post, one charm of the city that everyone notices, especially sailors, it its seafaring feel. While great cities we’ve visited like London or Paris have much to be said for them and are situated on major rivers, they lack the maritime ambiance of a gateway to the world.

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It’s now a week later, early morning on our second-to-last full day in Istanbul and I know I’ve got to get something out the door and posted. I know this because as soon as we return to Athens in a few days, Rhett, Sunny, and I will be launched into Greek Orthodox Easter celebrations and then a quick land trip so some Greek monasteries and then (hopefully) to launching Hazel James and starting our 2024 sailing season. While it’s not now-or-never for a proper blog post about Istanbul and Türkiye, it’s probably now-or-November and by then the distinct edges of the impressions, feelings, and memories will be dissolved and eroded like a Classical Greek column in a modern metropolis.

On this morning, I’m woken around 4:30 a.m. by the call to prayer emanating from our local mosque down the street. I know that if I’m not sleeping, I should rouse myself and start writing but I can’t bring myself to it. The bed is too warm and comfortable and Rhett is next to me and Sunny is sleeping on a pillow above Rhett’s head. It’s a compromise we’ve worked out with Sunny. If Sunny totally had her way she’d be snuggled between us. I lightly scratch Rhett’s back which causes her to sigh and stir. Occasionally, I pause and do the same on the underside of Sunny’s ears (provoking an eerily similar response). I drift in and out of consciousness, half dreaming (I think of brewing Turkish coffee), half thinking about writing. I bask in the warmth of our bed. On one hand it’s effective as I’m in a partial dream-state and my ideas all seem larger than life; on the other I know my mind is playing tricks on me. My mind knows that the better my thoughts appear, the longer I’ll stay in bed.

As the muezzin’s call to prayer continues, I’m reminded of our first couple weeks in the city which was during the last weeks of the month of Ramadan. During Ramadan and in addition to the before-sunrise call to prayer, a lone drummer would trot down our street (and every street in our neighborhood) banging away to a frenetic rhythm. The cobbled streets and brick-and-stone facades of the apartment buildings effectively placed him at the bottom of a giant sound bowl and each boom of the base and splash of the snare was amplified as it reverberated up to our windows. Although not a percussion expert, I was in high school marching band and have a deep appreciation for the drum corps. The first time I was awoken by this cacophony I assumed it was three or four drummers at work. Not until several days later (after I had gotten to bed early the night before) and I “sprung from my bed to see what was the matter” like Clement C. Moore’s guy in the cap, I threw open the window sash and was shocked to find that the magnificent clatter was made by one clearly talented and clearly caffeinated percussionist. And it wasn’t until a few days ago when I attended a military band concert did I discover the drummer’s polyphonic secret. The drummer’s in the military marching band all had large drums strapped to their chest canted from left to right (as the drummer looks at his drum). The right side of the drum was the bass side and the drummer held a mallet and boomed out the rhythm. On the left side, the drummer had a much smaller and quicker drumstick. With his left hand he clamped this riding-crop-like stick to the upper rim of the left and treble side of the drum. I imagine that side also had snares across the drumhead to accentuate the crackling high frequency. While the bass boomed a cadence, the squad of four military percussionists (or one lone Ramadan drummer) rattled out the off-beats with the snare side of the drum.

Why all this pre-dawn clatter you ask? It’s a legacy from pre-ubiquitous-alarm-clock days reminding observant Muslims to wake and eat and drink their fill before sunrise and the start of the day’s Ramadan fast (that lasts until sunset during the month of Ramadan).

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Not only is Istanbul old, at a population of 15 million in the city proper, it’s also big. (As comparison New York City is 8.5 million in the city, 20 million including surrounding regions; Chicago is 3 million, 9 million total in the area; and Los Angeles is 4 million, 18 million total in the area.) All this is to say that there are a lot of people trying to get from one place to another—exacerbated by water, steep terrain, and ancient, narrow, cobbled streets.

While the city has some excellent public transport—busses, ferries, metros (subways), trams (streetcars or trolleys), and funiculars (an underground version of Pittsburgh’s “inclines”)—and we’ve used all of them in our month here, traffic in the city is nuts. It’s nothing like US-city traffic with wide segregated wheeled traffic streets and pedestrian sidewalks, but more a shaken cocktail with cars parked on sidewalks, motor scooters and motorbikes driving the opposite direction on one-way streets and on sidewalks whenever convenient, all while being ignored by pedestrians.

Istanbul city planners trying to stem the amount of wheeled traffic on sidewalks have installed iron posts and rounded concrete “tombstones” on curbs that would damage a car trying to drive or park on a sidewalk (of course the motor scooters and motor bikes just weave between them). It’s a nice touch but they’re a tripping hazard for pedestrians. Also, planners have installed one-way treadles to enforce one-way streets for cars (of course the two wheeled traffic just drives around them as well).

Within days of being in the city, Rhett and I had coined the term “Turkey trot” between us. The Turkey trot was that little stumble (hopefully just a little stumble) when one of us got careless and wasn’t looking down and caught a toe or heel on a tombstone or various other uneven steps and curbs.

When our two sets of guests arrived, we gave them the same “safety briefing.” While your eyes will naturally want to wander and take in sights, while you’re walking keep them down, anticipating the inevitable surprises that the next step will bring. When you want to admire the city, stop and do it from a fixed position. Always walk in a generally straight direction and at a constant speed. You can be on what you think is the most pedestrian-only thoroughfare in the city, only to have a motor scooter whiz past you from behind. Istanbul drivers will dodge the predicable pedestrian so the name of the game when walking and crossing streets is to be predictable.

It’s funny though, reflecting back as I write this post after a month of getting around the city, I didn’t see one traffic accident. Somehow it all works.

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One trend that Rhett and I noticed is that, in general, homeless cats in Istanbul seem to receive better treatment than homeless citizens receive in the US. Single-minded Sunny didn’t concern herself too much with socioeconomics or fairness and just enjoyed the stalking…until the tables were turned.

It reminded me of a similar situation with a Parisian crow in the fall of 2022.

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I spent a day walking the old city walls and another touring the Askeri Müze (Military Museum) and what I found most interesting is that the Christian city falling to the Muslims in 1453 marked not only the end of the Byzantine Empire (a.k.a., the Eastern Roman Empire), but also a fundamental change in siege warfare. Prior to the invading Ottoman’s victory, the name of the game for cities (and castles for that matter) was big walls, preferably with moats or natural water to make it more difficult for invaders to scale the walls. If the walls were big enough, and the few gates strong and well-defended a city with enough provisions could just wait out an invader’s attack.

Constantinople’s defensive walls were some of the finest in the world. Of the 13 miles of the city’s walled perimeter, about three miles stretched north-to-south across the land, from the Golden Horn to the north to the Sea of Marmara to the south. The remaining 10 miles of sea walls were smaller and not as heavily guarded as the water provided an additional defense. Although attacked many times, the walls were only breached once before 1453 and that was in 1204 (250 years prior) by the Fourth Crusade. If you’re wondering why the greatest Christian city in the world would be invaded and sacked by Christian Crusaders, and then the “Crusaders” stick around for 50 years of occupation, it’s a good question but beyond the scope of this post.

To take Constantinople, the Ottomans had built massive state-of-the-art cannons. The largest had a barrel diameter of 30 inches and could hurl a 1,200 pound granite ball a mile. After days of constant bombardment they were able to breach the walls and Ottoman troops flooded into the city.

One other thing if you look carefully in the above picture, you’ll see the cannons shoulder-to-shoulder with catapults. A juxtaposition reminiscent of a World War I battlefield with mounted cavalry and tanks on the same battlefield.

One closing note on the subject of siege warfare is that to outlast a siege, a city needs a lot of water. To that end, we toured the now-almost-empty Basilica Cistern the largest of several hundred underground water-storage cisterns that supplied the city’s then-population of 50,000-70,000 people. If 20 million gallons of capacity is hard to comprehend, how about 30 Olympic swimming pools? Or, over 300 columns? Or 150 yards long and 70 yards wide? Or—going to the darker side—the over 7,000 slaves who labored on building it?

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When I lived in Bangalore India in the mid-2000s, I noticed that in Bangalore, and in virtually every other city, town and village I visited, there was an “MG Road.” When I asked an Indian friend who had travelled in the US what it meant and why so common, he responded at two levels, “First, ‘MG’ is the initials of Mahatma Ghandi, the father of our nation. Second, our ‘MG Road’ is akin to your ‘Kennedy Avenue’ or ‘MLK Boulevard’ or ‘Washington Street,’ you’ve probably got one of those in every town in the US.” I had to admit that he had a point, and there’s nothing like a comparison to set something in your mind.

One other quick side-note on the subject of Ghandi that relates to our story is that “Mahatma Ghandi” was not born “Mahatma Ghandi.” While “Ghandi” was his family (and given to him at birth), “Mahatma” was bestowed upon him later in life by the Indian public as a title of respect. (Mahatma is Sanskrit for “great soul” or “noble soul.”)

The Atatürk Boulevard in our story refers to Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, who—like Mahatma Ghandi—was not born Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and is seen as the father of the modern Turkish state. Also—like the ubiquitous Matama Ghandi Road in India (or Kennedy, MLK, Washington in the US)—there are literally thousands of Atatürk Boulevards and Streets in Türkiye. However, I’ve got to say that after living in India for a year and being a native of the US and now having lived a month in Türkiye, Atatürk’s modern-day presence in his native land far out-shadows Ghandi’s or Kennedy’s or Martin Luther King’s or even Washington’s. That’s not a judgement call at all, just an observation of real-life presence of a historical figure in a society.

He was born in 1881 in Thessaloniki and given the name “Mustafa”…just Mustafa. Thessaloniki is on the northwest coast of the Aegean Sea and at the time was a part of the Ottoman Empire (today Thessaloniki is the second largest city in Greece with the capital Athens as largest). It’s worth noting that not only is Thessaloniki an intended port-of-call for Hazel James this during this summer’s cruise, it’s also the eponym for the Christian Bible books First and Second Thessalonians (a “Thessalonian” being someone who lives in Thessaloniki, just like a Corinthian is someone who lives in Corinth).

Mustafa was given the additional name Kemal by a military academy teacher (Arabic for excellence or perfection). During World War I the expansive Ottoman Empire (which was declining in power and influence in the world) joined the Central Powers which also included Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Bulgaria. Although an often outspoken critic of his superiors, Mustafa Kemal served in many key military leadership positions after the war. With the Allied Powers victorious in WWI and the Treaty of Versailles taking center stage (which outlined the terms of Germany’s surrender and reparations), the Ottoman Empire fell and its expansive territories carved into smaller countries (e.g., Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, etc.) leaving roughly the modern-day Türkiye as the “rump state.” Greece seized the opportunity and invaded the Turkish territory in hopes of reclaiming its historic lands (including Constantinople/Istanbul). The three-year bloody and atrocity-filled “Greco-Turkish War” or “Turkish War of Independence” ensued (the name depending on what side you were on, and atrocities committed by both). In this war when there was basically no functioning Turkish government Mustafa Kemal came into his own and led the ultimately victorious resistance. Like the US’s General George Washington being elected as the first president, Türkiye’s first National Assembly elected Mustafa Kemal as the country’s first president in 1923 and dubbed him Atatürk (father of the Turks) and he effectively led the country until his death in 1938 (at the age of 57).

In studying his life and works, he appears to me as an emblematic “benevolent dictator.” Sure, after-the-face you could question some of his actions or methods but at the time, Türkiye was in such a bad situation a deliberate and drawn out democratic process could have sent the country into a civil war and yet more strife. He brought a clear and compelling vision to the war-weary Turkish people which included:

• Aligning Türkiye with the West
• Separating religion and state
• Adopting the Western calendar
• Decreeing that Turks should have surnames (as is in Western custom)
• Changing the Turkish alphabet from Arabic to modified Roman letters
• Outlawed the fez and the veil
• Abolished polygamy
• Instituted women’s suffrage

The net-net of these “recent” accomplishments (“recent” in relation to the long-view of history in this part of the world) and the success of the modern Turkish state, is that “Atatürk” (as he’s generally referred to) is an obsession in the country. In Greece in most small mom-and-pop shops or tavernas (restaurants) somewhere up high and behind the cash register, you’ll see a small Orthodox Christian shrine complete with Byzantine-style icon of the Madonna and child, whereas in Türkiye most likely you’ll see a shrine but it will be to Atatürk. Town squares are adorned with Atatürk’s stern visage, alternating with Turkish flags. His signature is well-known as it’s a popular tattoo with the younger set.

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The final thing that must be said about Türkiye is…the people. While we’ve found every country we’ve visited just full of good people, the Turks are over-the-top. To a person we found them open, friendly, always willing to help, and honest (sure, no price is ever fixed and they expect you to bargain). Although we were out at most all times and in all places, and walking and riding public transit, we never felt uncomfortable or threatened in any way.

I’ll finish with a vignette that illustrates the people: We cleared out of our apartment on May 1, what we didn’t realize was that the first of May is International Workers’ Day in Türkiye. While it’s roughly akin to our Labor Day, the Turks take this day seriously. So seriously that all public transit is shut down and, to minimize public demonstrations, the police prohibit any traffic (including taxis) from entering the downtown areas of Istanbul (long story there). What was pertinent to our story is that it was nine in the morning, we had all our luggage and Sunny and expected to easily catch a cab for the 45-minute trip to the airport. Instead, we were met with streets that were so empty, if they’d been in a cowboy western movie, there would have been tumbleweeds rolling down them. We were were starting to despair about getting to the airport and wondering if we could delay our flight to Athens and stay in our apartment another night, when a policeman flags down a private car, says a few words to the two guys in the car, then turns to us and says, “These are my friends, they will take you to the airport for 1,000 lyra (the same price as a taxi).” The next thing we know, we’re speeding though deserted city streets doing our best to communicate with two new friends.

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Fair winds and following seas!

“Oh great…so now the rest of my life is going to be nothing but watching Ted Lasso reruns in Florida.”

That was my choice snide and snippy comment to Rhett as the 2023 summer sailing season was winding down. At least the choicest one I can remember; I’m sure there were others.

While I can’t recall the precipitating events, the oath was most certainly uttered when it felt like life had ganged up on me: the wind wasn’t cooperating, Hazel wasn’t cooperating, the crew wasn’t cooperating and—most importantly—my head wasn’t cooperating.

Of all of Rhett’s positive traits, her ability to not overreact to the occasional Ahabian antics of her captain is somewhere in the top-five. She’s the oil on my oft-troubled sea.

In these situations, my mind—under self-inflicted threat—enters a zero-sum survival mode. It’s all or nothing. If I can’t sail all the time, I might as well not sail at all. It’s a dark place.

On that specific day the logical conclusion I drew is that if I’m not sailing 24x7x365 I’ll just run out the clock couch-bound with a blank stare, a remote, and the hilarity surrounding a pupal American-football coach surrounded by the chrysalis of a proper English football club.

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That was my brooding six months ago as I sat like Rodin’s The Thinker, staring at the chessboard of my life. By my own free will, move by move, I had put myself in check. We were leaving Hazel and coming home.

On one hand today (in the spring of 2024) it’s the same. On the other, it’s diametrically opposite. Yes I’m still staring down at the board contemplating both the universe and my next move within it, but I’m now sitting on the other side of the table.

Last fall, when I saw I had no other moves possible that would lead to a different outcome, I toppled my king, accepted “defeat” somewhat gracefully and came home. Now that we’ve got less than 48-hours until the wheels are in the well of our flight back to Athens and Hazel (and everything that I thought I wanted)—I realize that, for the most part, I throughly enjoyed my winter shore leave: a bed that doesn’t move, no risk of the anchor alarm sounding at 2:00 a.m. notifying us that “the hook” is dragging, hot water without end, clean clothes…and—lo and behold—occasionally I sat still on the couch. As the closing credits of a Ted Lasso episode that I had seen before rolled across the screen, I had an odd feeling that I actually enjoyed the experience. The coach, sidekicks, and team felt like old friends. Over the winter I even had short-lived glimpses of a mental detente, an epiphany if you will: With an open frame of mind, all of life can be painted a voyage. The question becomes if it physical voyaging across the land and sea, or virtual voyaging in the mind, or some self-augmenting combination.

Of course, as the days count down to our throwing off the bow lines and sailing away from safe harbor, my imposter syndrome kicks-in and I’m a bit nervous getting back on the water. Will I remember how to sail? (Note to self: It’s probably best to not share imposter syndrome self-doubts with the crew. As I always say, some things are better left unsaid.)

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While the term “gearing up” is a nice turn of phrase, it’s typically interchangeable with “getting ready” or “preparing.” However, for Rhett and me “gear” has meaning. We’re each checking two bags to Athens, one with clothes and personal items, the other with gear. While both of our second suitcases are full of items hard to find in Greece, mine is haphazardly stuffed with boat parts specific to Hazel James while Rhett’s is carefully organized with day to day items that make cramped life on a small boat easier.

In the early 2000s when our family of four lived in India for a year, friends back home wanted to send us a care package and emailed asking what we wanted most from the US. Instead of an expected request of exotic goods, they received Colleen’s laconic reply: Ziploc bags. While ostensibly available in India, we tried them and they were different—thinner, the zip seal lasted once or twice, and they often leaked right out of the box. Sure, I guess it helps to be open minded when traveling but sometimes you just need a bag you can trust. Fast forward 20 years and when I peer in Rhett’s gear suitcase I see…Ziploc-brand Ziploc bags. They made the list last summer after a couple failures of Grecian knockoffs in Hazel’s refrigerator led to messy clean ups compounded by limited fresh or hot water with which to do the cleaning. Perhaps the little things in life really don’t change.

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Years ago, a colleague of mine and his wife took a sabbatical that included a monthlong apartment rental in Paris. When he returned and we were catching up, I was smitten by his descriptions of the two of them not just visiting Paris but, for a short time, becoming threads in the fabric of the city. As he talked, my mind painted fantastical scenes on that canvas. While the Louvre, Versailles, Arc de Triomphe, and other must-see destinations were in my frame, they were in the dappled, Impressionistic background. The foreground, in crisp Realism, was a workaday café, a boulangerie with fresh baguettes, and a fromagerie with the essence of every French cheese imaginable wafting onto the street.

Early in our relationship, I had told Rhett of this dream. She, being an all-in sucker for romance, latched on to the idea like Sunny on a bone. Long story short, in the fall of 2022 she made that dream real for us and that month of our lives together was magical.

This spring our itinerary echoes our Parisian fall. After several days in Athens to check on Hazel James, we’re off to Istanbul, Türkiye for the month of April. As opposed to our one-bedroom in Paris, we’ve now got an extra bedroom for visiting family and friends.

Why Istanbul? Why not? Like Paris, it’s a place neither of us have been. And, as highlighted in our last post, as we gotten to know Venetian and Grecian history better, Istanbul calls to us as a gateway to the East.

Our plan after that is to return to Athens and experience Greek Orthodox Easter in early-May with our fr-amily (portmanteau of friends who are family), then splash Hazel James and start sailing. While we had considered heading west this summer, laying in an ultimate course towards the Caribbean’s Windward Islands, when we looked at our last summer’s track in the Aegean Sea, we realized how much we haven’t seen. Rhett and I both turn 60 this year and know that when we eventually turn west, we’ll never be here again…at least not in our own boat.

So now the current summer sailing plan is to complete a clockwise circuit of the Aegean, beginning and ending in the Athens area—8:00 on the clock face. We’ll first make our way northwards past Mount Olympus towards Greece’s second largest city of Thessaloniki (namesake of The Bible book Thessalonians), then east along the north coast of the Aegean and into Turkish waters. Near Ancient Troy, we will turn south along the Turkish coast and finally back west returning to Athens in the fall.

Happy is the man, I thought, who, before dying, has the good fortune to sail the Aegean sea.

Nikos Kazantzakis, Zorba the Greek

…That’s the plan anyway. However, as it’s said, “Man plans and God laughs.” Or, as a nod to the ancient Greeks, “Man plans and the gods laugh.”

Thanks for reading and please stay tuned for all things Istanbul coming in future posts.

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Corrections and clarifications on our last post:

Research and proofreading are Achilles’ heels for me. While I let Rhett review all draft blog post’s pictures prior to publication (it’s a southern sensibility thing, darlin’), she doesn’t read the text before posting. After reading our previous post, she astutely pointed out that I mistakenly referred to Brad Pitt’s character in the movie Troy as Hercules when it was really Achilles. Paris’ arrow stings.

Rhett also commented, that in my picture of art imitating life or life imitating art, some readers might not understand that the “woman” I’m sitting next to is a wax figure. (I was originally going so say “…is a wax ‘dummy.’”, but that would just dig my hole deeper.) Rhett pointed this out because she first noticed the art as she was checking in to the hotel. It took her several furtive glances to discern that “she” wasn’t real.

If you’re paying attention to our tracker on the HJ Sailing homepage, please disregard the long great circle hop from Athens to Delray Beach, Florida that I inadvertently added. While we were back in the US, I acquired a new communications device for Hazel and of course brought it to Greece in my gear suitcase. It uses cellular connections to automatically update the tracker map and saves the substantial monthly cost of a satellite connection when coastal sailing. In doing the shore-based set-up of the unit and connecting it with our tracking page back in Florida, I found it worked so well that it automatically updated the tracker to our location. I’ll get it corrected at some point.

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Perhaps you’ve been wondering what Sunny, Rhett, and Dan have been up to—particularly since our last post was over five months ago. Or, perhaps I flatter myself with self-importance and you’ve moved on and forgotten all about us. Or—most likely—you have given us the grace of time. Regardless, I’m happy to report that we are here (here being South Florida) and we’re gearing up and packing for our 2024 travel and cruising season. More on the future in our next post; for now, let’s agree to be stuck in the past—the past of October, 2023…

As I collect myself and put pen to paper, in an attempts to describe our geographical, cultural, historical—and just plain fun—land-voyaging this past fall, my mind drifts astern even further, to our 2022 terra firma travels. On one hand, the two autumnal land voyages were so similar—on the other hand, they couldn’t have been more different.

The impetus for the travel was the same. Hazel was safe and secure (last year in the water in Greta, Italy; this year “on the hard” in Lavrion, Greece). We were already in Europe and we were curious to see more—especially destinations that for various reasons were difficult or impossible to reach in our sailing.

Our fall 2022 travel was an international three-course feast featuring the Italian antipasto-cities of Rome, Sienna, and Milan, our plat principal of a month in Paris, and pudding-sweep through Ireland, Scotland, Wales, and England.

While last year’s Dickensian Christmas in London was magical— complete with fireplaces, wood smoke, Yorkshire pudding, snow, and traditional carols—this year we yearned to be home for the holidays. Therefore, for our fall 2023 travels we embraced the Greek culinary spirit and opted for simpler and lighter fare that would get us home in time for American Thanksgiving and Christmas. As far as we can tell, the Greek epicurean ethos is to start with the best ingredients and “don’t mess ‘em up” (and when in doubt, wrap it in phyllo, bake it, drizzle honey on it, and finish with crumbled feta).

As the pages turned and the book grew thin on our 2023 sailing season both Rhett’s and my thinking was united on our upcoming fall travel. While we had one vision, the two of us had vastly different but complimentary foci. I was consumed by all things Hazel—what we needed to do to winterize her, the professional work we’d have done on her over the winter, etc. Rhett turned her turrets towards planning our autumnal travel. Given the bookends of Hazel’s early October haul-out and our early November flights home we had a month to work with. After much banter, we decided on Athens for a base of operations with excursions to Venice, the Grecian islands of Hydra and Venice, and a driving circumnavigation of the Peloponnese Peninsula.

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Venice made the list for several reasons. In addition to its unabashed romance, there’s the real possibility that “The Floating City” might sink before Rhett had had a chance to see it. An additional, and wholly unexpected, rationale was that throughout our summer 2023 sailing in Ionian and Aegean Greek waters, we had tasted an unmistakable Italianate influence on the Greek islands—from architecture, to food, to street names. This piqued our curiosity and as we read and researched we discovered that all roads do not necessarily lead to Rome. Many lead to Venice. Perhaps as a foreshadow, instead of “…roads…,” I should say “…all maritime trade routes…” but I’d lose the turn of phrase. We wanted to experience the source.

In our historical digging we had unearthed a gem of a vocabulary word, “thalassocracy”—a colonizing state that concerns itself with coastal territories and has little or no interest in adjacent, landlocked interiors.

During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Republic of Venice’s thalassocracy stretched from its namesake city at the northernmost extreme of the Adriatic Sea, southeast down the Adriatic and Ionian Seas and eastward into the Aegean Sea linking it with Asia.

While the Venetian merchants of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance were brilliant businessmen (in the 1400s Venice was the richest city in Europe), Venetian trade dominance was largely due to its strategic location and that location was picked for life-and-death survival, not trade. While many factors contributed to the fall of the Roman Empire, the precipitating “straw that broke the camel’s back” was the invasion of Germanic tribes in 400-500 AD. In an effort to escape these Barbarian Invasions a local people known as the Veneti fled the mainland and sheltered in the backwater islands of a shallow swampy lagoon in the at the head of the Adriatic Sea. Centuries later, this defensive gambit gave the Venetians a city-state ideally situated to bridge trade between east and west. To the northwest of Venice were inland connections to wealthy European cities—cities with gold and silver, and eager for exotic goods from the East. To the southeast was a stepping-stone path of islands, coastlines, and harbors leading to the Silk Road and Persia, India, and China. Thus, the Venetian thalassocracy and resulting Italianate influence in Greece.

A thought to ponder about this trade route is that, while it looks obvious and neat-and-tidy on a modern map, it’s still a 1,300 nautical mile (~1,500 land mile) one-way voyage from Venice to Constantinople (today’s Istanbul and the capital of both the Byzantine and Ottoman Empires). While European Atlantic mariners had a much longer voyage from Western Europe to the New World (about 3,500 nautical miles), they had the benefit of reliable seasonal winds and powerful ocean currents. On the other hand, Venetians sailors, with fickle Mediterranean zephyrs and no currents, primarily rowed. Yes their galley’s were outfitted with auxiliary sails but the sails were only used when the wind was favorable and even then the rowing would continue and sails merely gave an added boost (akin to a modern sailing yacht motor-sailing).

In addition, while there’s the trope of the “galley slave” literally slaving away at the oars with some brawny, whip-wielding sadist for motivation, Venetian rowers were generally freemen and considered professional sailors. Venice had a well-developed system for recruiting and training rowers and it was a skilled and respected profession.

While I had thought that our sailing in the Mediterranean was challenging, it’s boggling to me to think of rowing a large craft thousands of miles—not only the physicality of the act but also the logistics. A transatlantic merchant vessel of the day would have a total crew of 30-100 sailors to sail, navigate, and keep the boat maintained. By comparison, in addition to a similar complement of officers, sailors, and soldiers a Venetian galley would have 200-400 rowers. I know what it takes to provision Hazel for two and a half people (two people and a dog), and I have the benefits of a propane stove, refrigeration, grocery stores dotting the coast, a water maker, a global supply chain of food, and a plethora of canned and dried options. It’s crazy to imagine how Venetian merchants and captains kept hundreds of free sailors fed and hydrated when they’re spending hour per day on the oar. From this line of thought, it’s clear that Venice’s thalassocracy—its stepping stones to Asia—were not just ports of refuge in case of storms. They were vital “refueling” points (the fuel being food and water for hundreds of sailors).

Our travel to Venice was all we hoped it would be, and more. The sights, the food, the people, and the history—but soon we were winging our way back to our Athenian “base camp.” As our plane lifted off from the Marco Polo airport (yes, Marco Polo was Venetian), we looked out the window a long time as the lagoon that encircles Venice disappeared astern. If we thought getting to the airport, through security, and on to our two-hour flight was exhausting, we contemplated the effort required to row the entire Adriatic, around the Peloponnese Peninsula to Athens.

Post cards from Venice…

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After several restful days at our Athenian base camp, we were off via ferry to the islands of Hydra and Crete. “Hydra,” pronounced EEE-dra, with an ever so slight rolling of the “r;” and the Anglicized “Crete” silencing the second “e” so the word rhymes with “feet.” (With “Crete,” Greeks will pronounce both vowels and often spell it “Kriti” in our Latin alphabet. Similar to Hydra, they’ll also give a slight roll to the “r.”)

At this point in the blog post, an astute reader may be thinking, OK, if Dan and Rhett are such avid sailors, why are they taking ferries to these islands and not sailing there? It’s a fair question, with a couple answers. First, Hydra—being peaceful, picturesque, and only 35 nautical miles south of Athens—is an exceedingly popular port-of-call for Athens-based charter yachts. While there’s nothing wrong with “popular,” on Hydra there are few anchorages or safe harbors and thus in the high-season yachts are usually tied up three and four deep on the town quay. While we could have dealt with all of that, we also wanted to be able to explore the island and with our crew of two that would mean leaving Hazel unattended which didn’t seem like a good idea. Therefore we opted for our visit via ferry and in the shoulder-season of October when the weather was still good but the crowds had thinned out. (Think of it as taking a taxi downtown, rather than having to look for parking for your own car.)

With Crete, while the conclusion to visit via ferry was the same, the rationale was different. Crete is 5 times further south of Athens than Hydra (150 nautical miles vs. 30) and while sailing there in Hazel James would have been a lot of fun with the Aegean’s prevailing north wind, it would have been an arduous beat back upwind after the visit. (If a modern sailor tells you they “sailed” from Crete back to the Greek mainland, question them carefully. What they probably really are saying is that the motored upwind for 24 hours…something we avoid like the plague.)

So, on an azure autumn Mediterranean morning, we boarded a fast ferry in Athens’ bustling port city of Piraeus and just an hour later we were entering Hydra-Town’s compact harbor from the west. The approach reminded us of an ancient Greek theater, with the harbor’s water as the stage and the town acting as rows of seats radiating up and away from the harbor.

As the captain of the Flying Cat 5 eased to the pier, mates tossed lines to the dockhands and the dockhands warped her the final few feet. As we disembarked the gangway became our magical time machine. Earlier that morning we had embarked in the gritty port city of Piraeus, its waterways gunwale-to-gunwale with container ships, tankers, cruise ships and ferries. Like Athens, Piraeus’ avenues are choked with cars, busses, motorbikes, and ubiquitous scooters—the busses belching clouds of diesel soot, older scooters burping puffs of blue two-stroke smoke. The contrast of Hydra was a literal breath of fresh air as the entire island is blissfully motor vehicle free.

Dockside, our first sight was of porters with specially adapted long-handled, pneumatic wheeled carts competing with muleteers to transport luggage to hotels.

Hydra’s freedom from internal combustion, is a happy coincidence of history, geography, and culture. Historically, Hydra’s high water mark occurred during the 1821-1830 Greek War of Independence when Hydriot merchants and sailors fought the Ottoman Navy and played a crucial role in securing Greek independence. (As background, Greece was under Ottoman domination for four centuries, from the mid-15th century until the Greek War of Independence.)

The ragtag Greek “Navy” was largely a collection of cargo vessels donated by wealthy Greek merchants and woefully outnumbered and outgunned by the Ottoman mariners. As a 19th century “David,” challenging their Goliath overlords, Hydriot sailors perfected the “fireship” technique. First they’d load a decrepit merchant vessel to the gunwales with flammable materials such as tar and pitch. Then, a small crew would sail her right at an Ottoman warship. When in close range, the skilled Greek sailors would light their ship ablaze and—only when collision was imminent—attempt to escape on a lifeboat. As you might imagine, Ottoman sailors would panic at the sight of floating inferno bearing down on them. Even if the fireship didn’t successfully collide with an Ottoman ship and burn it to the waterline, it would often force the larger Ottoman fleet to break ranks in an effort to dodge the floating conflagration, thus making their fleet much easier to attack via conventional maritime tactics. It’s such a poignant David-and-Davy story of ingenuity, resourcefulness, and skill—a “David” delivering the Goliath of brute-strength to Davy Jones’ Locker (sailor parlance for the bottom of the sea).

Back to automobile-free Hydra, this maritime focus of the Hydriots resulted in the few harbors of the island being well developed while the interior of the island laid fallow. Who needs roads when you’ve got the sea?

Geographically, the island doesn’t lend itself to the wheel. What roads and streets there are, are punctuated with cobblestone steps to traverse the steep-to gradient. Sure-footed mules and donkeys put the automobile to shame in Hydra.

Finally—and culturally—as automobile use exploded on mainland Greece, Hydriot’s understood what a gem they held in their hands and decided to instantiate their freedom from the internal combustion engine in their island’s laws.

After several blissful days of non-mechanized Sabbath on Hydra, we were off to Crete. Given the distance we had to cover, we took a slower night-ferry that departed in the evening and arrived in Crete the next morning.

While, Rhett has hours of “sea time” as a passenger on cruise ships, I was a newbie to the equivalent of leaving the driving to someone else. It made me nervous so as we settled into our modest cabin for the night I took no chances.

Coming from Hydra what we first noticed about Crete is its size. On 11-mile long Hydra, you never forget that you’re on an island. Conversely, by area, Crete is the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean (behind Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica). With its 140 miles east-to-west, Crete feels like and is a land unto itself. It’s a fitting paradigm as culturally and historically it’s distinctive from the mainland. While mainland Greece overthrew the Ottomans in the aforementioned Greek War of Independence (1821-1830), Crete did not win its independence until 1913, nearly 100 years later and just 10 years before the fall of the Ottoman Empire.

One highlight of our trip to Crete was a daylong hike down the Samaria Gorge, the longest gorge in Europe. It began with a predawn coach (bus) pick-up from our hotel. The coach took us to the top of the gorge where we enjoyed a rustic breakfast before hitting the trail. It was then quite literally “all downhill from there”—a rugged 10 miles and a descent of 4,000 feet to the Mediterranean Sea.

Another highlight of our time in Crete was a visit the now-tranquil Arkadi Monastery, the site of the bloody Arkadi Holocaust. The monastery was likely founded during the Byzantine period in the 5th or 6th century AD and has been a beacon of the Orthodox Christian faith through the centuries.

The Arkadi Holocaust happened in 1866. As a reminder, the rest of Greece had won its independence from the Ottomans in 1830 while Crete would not overthrow the Ottomans until 1913. Although the Ottomans knew the military and commercial strategic value of Crete (especially after the stinging insult of losing mainland Greece) their brutal vice-grip on the island did not quell the Cretan spirit and skirmishes and minor rebellions were frequent. By the mid-1800s the Ottoman overlords had had enough of the Cretan misbehavior and the Arkadi Monastery embodied the island’s and Orthodox Christian spirit and resistance. In 1866 the Turks attacked the monastery and the Cretans who had taken shelter there, the result is best described by Victor Hugo…

We know that name, Arkadi, but we know little of the event. Here are the precise and largely unknown details. At the Arkadi Monastery, on Mount Ida, which was founded by Heraclius (Hercules), 16,000 Turks, attack 197 men, 343 women, and children. The Turks have 26 cannons and two howitzers. The Greeks 240 rifles. The battle lasts two days and two nights; the monastery is riddled with 1,200 bullets; a wall collapses, the Turks enter, the Greeks continue fighting, 150 rifles are disabled, the fighting goes on for six hours in the cells and stairwells, and there are 2,000 corpses in the courtyard. Finally, the last resistance is suppressed; the victorious Turks swarm the monastery. Only one room, the gunpowder magazine, remains barricaded, and in this room, near an altar, at the center of the group of children and mothers, a man of 80 years, a priest, Abbott Gabriel, is praying. Outside the fathers and husbands are being killed, but not to be killed, will be the miserable fate of these women and children, who are promised to two harems. The door, battered with an ax, will give in and fall. The old man takes a candle from the altar, looks at these children in these women, tips, the candle into the gunpowder, and saves them. A terrible action, an explosion, rescues the vanquished, the agony becomes a triumph, and this heroic monastery, which fought like a fortress, dies like a volcano.

Victor Hugo, Correspondence. Published in “Kleio” newspaper in Trieste, Italy, March 1867.

Although Victor Hugo started writing the fictional Les Miserables in the 1840s and published it in 1862 (five years before his factual account of the Arkadi Holocaust) parallel themes—and even word choices, like “barricade” and “miserable”—ring through both works. Today, as I peck away on my keyboard, I read and reread Hugo’s line, “…this heroic monastery, which fought like a fortress, dies like a volcano.” and am jealous. Someday, maybe someday, I’ll reach that concise perfection of word.

While the Cretans may have lost the battle, it was a decisive inflection-point in their eventual winning of the war. European newspapers picked up the story and the event drew international attention to the Cretan cause (although it would take another 46 years to secure their full independence from the Ottoman Empire).

As Rhett, Sunny, and I leisurely strolled through the stone archways and heavy wooden doors, bathed in the autumnal afternoon Mediterranean sunlight, we were overwhelmed with gratitude for our “brand” of travel. Prior to setting foot on the monastery grounds, we had no idea of this history. Candidly, we’d just heard that there were “great monasteries” on Crete worth visiting. We quickly researched a few and picked Arkadi. Our lack of planning and spontaneity was rewarded by a memory and a myth of the human condition of struggle, resistance, perseverance, and ultimate victory that we will carry forever.

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After another recharge in Athens (courtesy of our good friend Panos, and his gracious family), we were off on a 12-day, 750 mile driving tour of the southern Greek mainland and the Peloponnese Peninsula.

As we set forth (breathing a sigh of relief when we escaped Athenian traffic with our rental car unscathed) I’d characterize our mood as satisfied we were on a circuit of the Peloponnese but not thrilled at the prospects. Kind of like sitting down to a nice big bowl of broccoli: I know this is going to be good for me, but I’d really rather be eating something else. Besides, we’d been feasting on Venice, Hydra, and Crete for the last several weeks. We weren’t particularly hungry for more travel. However, if my mom had taught me anything, it was to finish everything on my plate. Of our own free will, we had served ourselves up a heaping, 750-mile portion of the Peloponnese and we were going to finish it…the die had been cast.

Throughout our summer of sailing in Greece, new local friends we often comment, “If you’ve only been to Athens, you haven’t been to Greece.” While we found that advice true, we had thought it was only applicable to the iconic islands with their shimmering turquoise water, whitewashed houses, and blue-domed churches. We anticipated this mainland driving tour to be character-building, we’d learn a lot, we’d like it but we wouldn’t love it.

Our first stop was Delphi and its eponymous Oracle, the most famous of the ancient oracles. For all its power and mystery in the ancient world, we found it most interesting that an oracle’s predictions, at least the few that survive today, are obtuse, veiled, and can be interpreted in different ways by the person posing the question to the oracle.

As an example of the ambiguity, Croesus, king of Lydia (part of modern-day Turkey) who ruled from 560 to 546 BC asked the Oracle of Delphi if he should invade Persia and the Oracle’s response was:

If you make war on the Persians, you will destroy a great empire.

You’ve got to understand that not only was Croesus a king, at the time he was also one of the richest men on earth and carried the conceit that accompanies great wealth (some things never change). With the Oracle’s prophecy in-hand he promptly invaded Persia, overstretched his army, and was soundly defeated. Only then did he realize that the “great empire,” of which the Oracle foretold, might just have been his own.

It’s important to note that ambiguity wasn’t endemic to the Oracle of Delphi. Oracular legend has it that a general consulted another oracle about his army’s prospects in an upcoming battle and received the oblique answer (roughly translated):

You will go you will return never in war you will perish.

…which could be read as, “You will go, you will return, never in war you will perish.” or “You will go, you will return never, in war you will perish.” Perhaps—in Wheel of Fortune style—the general should have bought a couple commas.

Today, the term “Delphic ambiguity” is often used to describe how economists couch predictions of inflation, economic growth, and monetary policy. Former US Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, famously said, “If you think you understand what I am saying you do not understand what I am saying.”

As a final note on the Oracle of Delphi and oracles in general, it’s important to remember that the rich and famous who posed the questions lavished huge tributes of gold, jewels, statues, and temples and other structures to the oracles. Thus, the oracles were incentivized to not be totally wrong, and to keep the peace and prosperity between city-states and empires so the rich deep-pocketed would continue to be able to pay tributes. “One hand washes the other.” It’s a story as old as the hills.

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After our tour of the Delphi site and its archeological museum, we were off toward the Rion Bridge and Olympia. The Rion Bridge spans the relatively narrow channel at the Gulf of Corinth’s western end. I was curious to see it in the daylight as the last time I had witnessed its bulk was from Hazel James’ deck as I attempted to sail beneath it at 2:00 a.m. on a gusty foreboding night…under spinnaker. Not my best nautical move but I lived to tell the tale, in another blog post someday.

The bridge opened in 2004 and, at the time, was the longest cable-stayed bridge in the world. At 2,250 meters (nearly a mile an a half), it spans the only natural entrance to the Gulf of Corinth. At the other end of the Gulf (the eastern end) is the manmade Corinth Canal that joins the Gulf with the Aegean Sea.

Several hours after paying our bridge-toll and crossing the Gulf of Corinth from north-to-south via the Rion Bridge, we rolled into the town of Olympia, checked into a character-laden mom-and-pop hotel and settled in for a good rest before our next day’s tour or Ancient Olympia.

When I watch the quadrennial games on TV, inevitably the voiceover during the majestic trumpeting theme music introduces the spectacle as the “Modern Olympics.” Although a pleasant turn of phrase, I had never really thought about what it really meant. In addition, I always thought it a bit hollow when the made-for-TV commentators (straight out of central casting) pontificate about how the Olympics unite the world in friendly amateur competition. To me it seemed like “one world” and “amateur” are drowned in a sea of money, advertising, blood doping, geopolitics, and scandal. For someone who often feels he was born too late, my logical assumption was that the Ancient Olympics—in those halcyon days of yore—must have been pure, unadulterated, and totally different than our games.

As it is so often the case, it turns out that things weren’t that simple. Yes, the ancient games were dedicated to Zeus, and yes the coming together of the ancient games did help smooth tensions across the known-world of Greece.

As an aside, it’s important to remember that during much of the Ancient Olympic competitions, Greece was not Greece. It was a loose collection of city-states or poleis (plural of “polis”)—sometimes allies and sometimes adversaries…and of course, “the enemy of my enemy is my friend,” was as true then as it is today. Alliances and pacts were made and broken in a gristly Grecian Game of Thrones. (An interesting side fact—and linking back to our Delphi visit—while Delphi was a polis like Athens or Sparta, because of the importance of its oracle Delphi was collectively granted a special independent and neutral status, somewhat like a Switzerland in the 20th century.)

However, and like our Modern Olympics, cheaters cheated and when caught were dealt with severely. Sure, there was the garden-variety fraud (like paying off other competitors to lose, bribing judges, etc.), then there was the interesting stuff—like performance enhancing substances. It’s believed that the most common banned substance was animal blood. And just how—you might ask—would one test for banned substances 2,500 years ago? Simple…official urine tasters supposedly could detect if banned animal blood had been drunk by an athlete. If you’re now wondering how one develops the skill to be a urine tester, I’ll leave that to your creativity (WARNING: Some things once imagined can never be unimagined).

Perhaps though the accuracy of an ancient urine tester was less important than the sentinel effect of the testing itself. To that end, it was clear that public shame was a primary deterrent to cheating. While a winning athlete could expect the adoration of his polis, if an athlete was caught cheating couldn’t come up with the cash himself, it was levied on his entire hometown and the polis collectively felt the pain, shame, and humiliation. The revenue from a cheater’s fine was then used to erect a bronze statue of Zeus and on the pedestal of the statue was inscribed the athlete’s name, hometown, and nature of the offense. As another sentinel effect, these statues were strategically positioned along the path that the athletes took on their way into the main stadium.

As a closing note to this chapter and a reminder of how brief our time on this earth is, consider that our Modern Olympics (revived in 1896) have existed for roughly one-tenth of the duration of the Ancient Olympics (776 BC to 393 AD).

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After a some pampering in Pylos and Kardamyli, and a stop in Kalamata, we found ourselves on a day-long drive of the stunning Mani Peninsula. If you ascribe to form following function, then it’s an easy hop to imagining how the peninsula’s rugged geography instilled a fierce tribal and clannish independence into the Maniots (the people of the Mani Peninsula). While the rest of Greece fell to the Ottoman Empire in the mid-15th century AD and would remain subjugated for four centuries, the Mani Peninsula remained the “wild west” of Greece and was never conquered by the Turks.

The chieftain Petros Mavromichalis (1765-1848) embodied the Mani spirit. After he rebuked the Ottoman’s offer to buy his loyalty, Mavromichalis hoisted the banner of rebellion in Kalamata in 1821. The tales of his and the Maniot’s resistance to the Ottomans inspired the rest of the nascent Greek nation in a widespread uprising that eventually threw out the Ottoman overlords and paved the way for an independent Greek state.

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After our days of westward and southward exploration to the fin du monde of the Mani, we headed in the opposite directions to complete our Peloponnese circuit.

In our driving south we had noticed that the olive trees were laden and day-by-day the fruit was ripening. As we turned northward, we witnessed the beginning of the harvest.

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Our next stop (now on the western coast of the Peloponnese Peninsula) was the town and island of Monemvasia. While long Greek names are intimidating (especially when written in Greek script), the good news is that the language is very phonetic and most every letter gets a sound. Perhaps that’s why when we check into Greek hotels, clerks generally read Mr. and Mrs. Coate on the reservation (silent “e”), and then address us as “Mr. and Mrs. co-AHH-tay” (in France, we often got “Monsieur et Madame co-TAY”). The same goes for Monemvasia…don’t be scared to sound it out: moh-nehm-VAH-see-ah. If you’ve studied any Latin and squint at it, you may be able to see the Greek portmanteau within the name: Mone being single or sole, and emvasia being entrance or passage. One bird’s eye view is all that’s needed to understand the name.

The couple hundred yard causeway was originally constructed in the 6th century AD during the Byzantine Era and technically made the island a peninsula. Down through the ages its location and fortifications were vital to the powers that-be, from the Byzantines, to the Franks and Venetians (yes, Monemvasia was part of the Venetian Thalassocracy), to the Ottoman Empire, and eventually the Greeks. In the modern age—between the unified and relatively peaceful Greek state (established in 1821) and long-range shipping not dependent on frequent ports of call for provisions, water, and fuel—the town has lost its strategic importance and the area’s economy is almost exclusively tourist based. The good news is that that has kept the narrow cobblestone streets and Byzantine and Venetian architecture largely intact.

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Our next and final overnight stop on the journey was a “three’fer” of Nafplio, Epidaurus, and Mycenae (OK here’s a test of your Greek phonetic pronunciations: naf-LEO, epi-DAV-ros, my-SEE-nay).

Interestingly, at the end of the Greek War of Independence, Nafplio was the named the provisional capital of the newly formed Greek nation. (In 1843 and by democratic vote the Greeks moved their capital to Athens.) Nafplio was initially chosen because of its central location, port access, and fortifications (in case those pesky Turks tried any funny business). To me, the best thing about the forts that surrounded the city were the murder holes.

No no no, I know what you’re thinking and a “murder hole” is neither the newest Nafplian dance club nor the entrance to a communal living bird house for crows. A murder hole is an ominous opening directly above a fortified gate. In the off-chance that invaders reach a fort’s gate, they’ve got to contend with the murder hole. If the defenders are prepared, they’ll had cauldrons of boiling water, scalding oil, or even molten lead, waiting to “welcome” the raiding army.

Perhaps it’s borderline macabre (or maybe not even borderline) that I like to pause directly under murder holes and ponder what might have happened in that very spot. The heavens open and fire and brimstone rain upon the marauding vanguard. I get a chill, and move on.

We used our Nafplian local-base of operations to launch day trips to Mycenae and Epidaurus. A week earlier, when on the island of Crete, we had toured the ruined palace of Knossos, the center of the ancient-ancient Minoan civilization (approximately 2,600 to 1,400 BC). As the Minoan civilization declined the Mycenaeans rose to prominence as the next great early Greek civilization. The Mycenaeans’ capital was Mycenae and if you ever saw the movie Troy (with a buff Brad Pitt as Hercules) or read Homer’s Iliad, the Mycenaeans, led by their King Agamemnon, organize an alliance of ancient empires and city-states to attack Troy. As side notes, Odysseus was the king of Ithaca, was persuaded to join with Agamemnon in the siege of Troy, and Homer’s Odyssey is the story of Odysseus’ arduous odyssey home to Ithaca from Troy. The island of Ithaca is in the Ionian Sea (west of mainland Greece) and I documented our visit there in this previous post (see sub-title “The Odyssey to Odysseus’ Home”). Also, the besieged city of Troy is on the eastern Aegean Sea and we plan to sail there this summer…stay tuned.

Over the summer Rhett and I had both read Irving Stone’s excellent biographical novel The Greek Treasure which chronicles Sophia and Henry Schliemann (she Greek and he German), and their discoveries and excavations of both Troy and Mycenae. With the story freshly embossed on our minds, us seeing Mycenae in person was a special thrill (especially knowing that Troy was in our future). Sunny didn’t get nearly as much out of the visit as she had just skimmed the book’s Cliff’s Notes (lazy dog).

Early the next morning we were off to tour the ancient city of Epidaurus. Although known in ancient times as a center for healing with its Sanctuary of Asclepius (son of Apollo and the god of healing and medicine), today Epidaurus is known for having the best preserved ancient theater in the world. Seeing the 15,000 seats in the morning mist was breathtaking, as was its acoustics as demonstrated below.

As yet one more—and final—aside, as he was the god of healing and medicine Asclepius is depicted as a wise, bearded man with a staff. A serpent is coiled around his staff. Given that snakes disappear into the ground for long periods of time and then reemerge (we would say to hibernate, ancient Greeks would say to visit the underworld), snakes in ancient Greece were associated with wisdom, rebirth, and transformation—and thus—medicine and Asclepius. The modern caduceus (our symbol of medicine) with its snakes wrapped around a staff is a descendent of Asclepius’ imagery. It’s fascinating to think also that, thanks to the Greeks, we have both the ancient mythology of medicine and the Father of Medicine. It was the man (not god) Hippocrates who revolutionized the practice of medicine by emphasizing observation, clinical experience, and ethical principles.

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Upon departing Nafplio we pointed our trusty rental car north and across the Isthmus of Corinth and back to Athens. On the isthmus we made a quick stop in Ancient Corinth. The city is the namesake of The Bible books First and Second Corinthians, and Paul’s Letters to the Corinthians. In Paul’s day, Corinth was a rough-and-tumble sailor’s town and the apostle did his best to encourage the Corinthians to chart a more wholesome course.

While on the road from Corinth to Athens, it occurred to us that this was the final few hours of our final journey of the season. Our excited conversation bounced back and forth like a tennis volley from the immediate past to the imminent future. Behind us was a collage of indelible images of the Peloponnese and how it had far exceeded our expectations, and launched itself to the front of the pack as our favorite place in Greece. Ahead of us was was a vision of our transatlantic flight and, reunification with family and friends. While it felt good to know that home was still there, and we’d soon sleep in our own bed—it felt even better to know that when we got there, we’d be changed. Different people from when we had set forth. Indelibly enriched for all we had seen, learned, and experienced.

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This post is dangerously close to its Plimsoll line so I’ll end it here and not even broach the topic of what comes next (aside from the few teasers above). Thanks as always for reading. Your support means the world to us as we traverse it. Please keep your eye out for our next post describing our plans for the 2024 season.

Odyssey
1 : a long wandering or voyage usually marked by many changes of fortune
2 : an intellectual or spiritual wandering or quest

Last winter, as Rhett and I were poring over Grecian charts and pilot books planning our cruising for the summer, we thought of the Ionian Islands (those west of the Greek mainland and in the Ionian Sea) merely as stepping stones to our dream destination: the “real” Greek islands of the Aegean. However, early in our Ionian sailing, on a still and sultry night moored in a marina next to a busy pedestrian thoroughfare, a 20-something English mariner and dreamer stopped to admire Hazel James. Although not an ancient mariner, he was a mariner. Sailors worth their salt can tell a long-haul ocean cruiser from a Mediterranean island-hopper in an instant. It’s half the design of the boat, and half how she’s rigged and the equipment she carries on deck (or lack thereof). Although young, he clearly had some sea miles and quickly asked if “we crossed” in her (crossed the Atlantic). When I said I did so last year, his English-accented reply: “Brilliant!” He was working on a crewed charter boat in the Ionian (as opposed to a un-crewed “bare boat”). As he told us about some of his favorite anchorages, islands, and villages in the Ionian, Rhett and I jotted furiously in our notebooks as there’s nothing like local intelligence from a like-mind. When he finished his enumeration and asked of our plans, we replied that our goal was to get to the Corinth Canal quickly and into the Aegean, his reply and counsel: “Don’t rush the Ionian.”

Frankly, when he offered his thoughts on that night, we listened but took his recommendation with a grain of salt as we thought he was (understandably) showing pride for his adopted cruising grounds. However, now that we’re into the Aegean and reflecting on our stern wake and our odyssey through the Ionian, we realize the wisdom of his advice.

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Historical and Mythical Context

As form follows function, much of history follows geography. Zooming out the aperture for one moment, the strategic location of the Ionian Greek islands becomes clear.

The Ionian derives its name from the goddess Io. Io was a priestess of Zeus’s wife Hera and for a for a short time a mistress to Zeus. Inevitably there was conflict when Hera discovered Zeus was deceiving her and, fearing what Hera in her wrath might do, he changed Io into a white cow. Not to be outdone, Hera sent a gadfly [horsefly] to torment the unfortunate Io, who plunged into the sea to rid herself of the stinging pest—hence the Ionian Sea.

Rod and Lucinda Heikell, Greek Waters Pilot

Located at the gateway to the Adriatic Sea (to the north), control of the Heptanese was key to controlling trade in the Eastern Mediterranean. Thus, since the 1400s, the Heptanese have been under the control of the Normans, Genoese, Italy (the Republic of Venice), French, and English, before joining Greece in 1864. Given that background, the Ionian Islands have much of an Italianate feel and architecture, as compared to Mainland and Eastern Greece.

The Ionian doesn’t look like sun-baked rock and whitewashed houses of Greek travel brochures, they focus on the Aegean for their pictures. While still mountainous, the Heptanese are much more green, lush, and wooded—set against a dramatic backdrop of the barren mountains of Albania and Mainland Greece.

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Taverna Culture

After our nine-day passage from Gaeta, Italy and a quiet night at anchor on the north end of Corfu, we entered Benitses Marina, about midway down the sickle-shaped island of Corfu. It was a pleasant little marina with a family atmosphere and the nicest staff who would do anything for you.

Also—and critical for someone whose been at sea for a week plus—the town of Benitses was lined with tavernas. I suppose you could be crass and just say “restaurant,” but that would lose the essence. There’s something unique about the ambiance of the ubiquitous Greek taverna: the umbrellas, the shady trees, the stringed lights, the cats rubbing against your legs (Sunny’s favorite part), the waitstaff so interested in where you’re from and how you got here, and—regardless of whether you are there for a coffee or a full meal—the food, the food, the food.

Rhett’s best friend, the “Rhett and Dan Whisperer” Maria is full-blooded Italian. She’s got something like 50 first-cousins and was amazed when she brought Rhett to a family holiday years ago and the family accepted her. (Hey, who needs friends when you have 50 cousins?) Long story short, although of German descent, Rhett classifies herself as “adopted Italian.” So one night in Benitses while capping off a meal with baklava, I offhandedly said that I preferred the Greek food to the Italian food. Rhett looked at me like I had taken the Lord’s name in vain and was going straight to hell. After much discussion, we finally agreed that it’s not a competition and there’s no right answer. The Greek food is so simple and there’s very little variety in the menu from one taverna to the other. However, it’s the flavors and the spices that make the simplicity so special.

Also in Benitses, Rhett celebrated a birthday!

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Albania (it is a country you know)

In all honesty, if you would have told me something about Albania a year ago I would have given you a vague nod and scratched my chin with my thumb and forefinger to make it look like I understood you. Meanwhile, I would have been thinking, Is it a country? A region of several countries? A state within a country? If you would have then called my bluff and pulled out an unlabeled globe and asked me to point to Albania, I’d be lost. However, for us not only was the major port city of Sarande, Albania an easy 15 mile sail from Corfu, Albania is also outside the European Union and visiting there, and stamping out and back into the EU, would give us a chance to reset some immigration and customs particulars.

We went in to the country with very few expectations and came away with a high regard. The communist dictator Enver Hoxha (pronounced ho-JA) ruled the country with an iron fist from World War II until his death in 1985. It’s a complicated history…

Under Hoxha’s 41-year rule, Albania became a one-party communist state. His government rebuilt the country, which was left in ruins after World War II, building Albania’s first railway line, raising the adult literacy rate from 5–15% to more than 90%, wiping out epidemics, electrifying the country and leading Albania towards agricultural independence. To implement his radical program Hoxha used brutal tactics. His government outlawed travelling abroad and private proprietorship. He implemented state atheism and closed or converted to secular uses all of Albania’s religious facilities. His government imprisoned, executed, or exiled thousands of landowners, rural clan leaders, Muslim and Christian clerics, peasants who resisted collectivization, and disloyal party officials.

Wikipedia

…yes, increasing literacy rates from 10 to 90%, but at what cost?

In addition Hoxha was paranoid of a capitalist invasion and oversaw the building of innumerable bunkers across the landscape as defense. There are communist-era stories of all able-bodied adults having compulsory military service (a month a year), and spending that time sitting in a bunker with a rifle.

The highlight of our Albanian visit was a day excursion with our hired guide Demir. In addition to being a guide, he was a teacher and took such pride in his country. We booked Demir through an Albanian agent we used to help us with entry formalities into the country. Although our agent Agim was excellent and assured us that Demir was the best, as we prepared for the day, we had no idea what to expect. However, when Demir pulled up in his black Mercedes and we poured ourselves into its plush leather seats and reveled in the air conditioning, we knew it was going to be a great day (and that communism had truly fallen). Demir first took us to a castle overlooking the city of Sarande to get our bearings and squint and try to see our girl Hazel.

As we looked across the strait to Corfu, I asked Demir about defections during the communist era. To me, it didn’t look that far to Corfu. Swimmable by a strong swimmer so motivated, easy in a small boat. While Demir was a young boy when communism fell, he knew lots of stories from his elders. He said that not only did the strait bristle with searchlights and boats guarding against defection, it was made clear by the government that if you did defect, your entire family remaining in Albania would be immediately and severely punished for your actions.

Demir, then took us to the Blue Eye, a spring that literally springs from the ground at a rate of 4,800 gallons per second (a typical home swimming pool is 10,000-20,000 gallons).

After lunch at a friend’s restaurant, Demir took us to the ruins of the city of Butrint. According to classical mythology, the city was founded by exiles from Troy after Troy fell at the end of the Trojan War (as chronicled in Homer’s Iliad). The ruins were amazing and the lack of crowds (as compared with Pompeii for instance) gave the site an unmistakeable reverence.

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Deeper into the Ionian

From Albania, we made an overnight sail southward to the town of Preveza, Greece and re-entered the EU. In addition to the amazing marina at Preveza (whose bathrooms and showers rivaled a hotel’s) our tour of Nikopolis and its museum was the highlight. Julius Caesar was assassinated by Roman senators in 44 BC for fear that he was becoming too powerful, too imperious and threatening the Roman republic (as memorialized in Shakespeare’s classic tragedy). However, instead of a return to stability after the assassination, the republic was plunged into a decade of intermittent civil war. Finally, in 31 BC Octavian’s naval forces met Mark Antony and Cleopatra’s in the waters off Preveza. After Octavian routed Mark Antony and Cleopatra, he founded the city of Nikopolis to commentate his victory. Ironically, although Julius Caesar’s assassination was meant to preclude the Roman republic becoming an empire (ruled by one emperor), after Antony and Cleopatra’s defeat, Octavian (a.k.a., Caesar Augustus) founded the Roman Empire and reigned as it’s first emperor.

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It’s (Still Mostly) Greek to Me

Although French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, German, etc. can be a challenge for us monolingual English speakers, at least we’re all using the same 26 letter alphabet. However Greek is a whole different story. Most mornings I’ve been trying to spend 10 minutes or so learning my 24 Greek letters and pronunciations of each. While I’ve gotten pretty good with the capital letters, the small letters give me fits—especially when, in real-life scenarios, they are in different fonts. Why do this, you ask? Well, for starters, our word “Alphabet” comes from the first two letters of the Greek alphabet: Alpha and Beta—that’s reason enough for me.

While trying to sound out a Greek word in Greek script is a bit of a fool’s errand (since you just end up with a rough pronunciation of a foreign word that you do not know), I find that when walking town docks and marinas, it’s fun to try to sound out boat names. It’s a thrill when I figure one out…

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The Sailing in the Ionian

In advance of entering Greek waters we had heard that the sailing in the Ionian was quite mild whereas it blows hard in the Aegean (especially in July and August). These forewarnings have borne themselves out for us. In the Ionian, we found ourselves having to motor more than we’d like (which for me is motoring at all). However, as I write this post about the Ionian while in the Aegean, I’m hunkered in Hazel’s saloon while she rides to anchor in a protected anchorages with the winds gusting to 25 knots.

Here are some good videos of the sailing and mooring in the Ionian…

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Brotherhood of Creepy Loners

By this point in our Ionian voyaging Rhett had departed for the US and it was just Sunny and me aboard Hazel.

While anchored off the tiny and uninhabited island of Formíkoula, I finally met someone who didn’t think I was a creepy loner. That was the good news. The not so good news is that he himself was a creepy loner. The “he” being my now good friend Antonio aboard Creuza de mä (Genoese local dialect for “Path to the sea”).

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A Microcosm

While the entire subject of this post is journeys and destinations, here’s that broader theme condensed into a morning.

On what would be my last morning at Formíkoula, Sunny and I went for a sunrise circumnavigation of the tiny island in Lil’ Dinghy (about 20 minutes of earnest rowing, we took an hour or so poking into little bays and caves). As we rowed along, I noticed that the wind was uncharacteristically brisk for early morning in the Ionian when it is typically dead calm. As we neared Hazel at the completion of our row, I resolved to get sailing as soon as possible and try to capitalize on that wind for the short 5-10 mile sail to One House Bay on Atikos Island. Now typically whatever wind there is in Ionian doesn’t start blowing until midday so my tactic was a little risky, but all I was risking was a becalm and potentially motoring for a bit. I prepped Hazel for sail, made some granola and dried fruit that I’d eat while sailing, pulled the anchor and, on our way out of the anchorage, sailed by Creuza de mä and bade caio! and Fair Winds and Following Seas to Antonio.

While the sail started well enough, soon enough we were becalmed. I was a bit hacked off at myself for departing into what had the good chance of being a becalm and was seriously thinking of throwing in the towel motoring the rest of the way to Atikos Island, when I looked down and beheld the most beautiful manta ray. Clearly something I never would have seen had I just been motoring along. The manta spent 15 minutes or so circumscribing lazy circles around Hazel. Now that I think of it, if I would have had wind and been sailing along, perhaps I would have caught a glimpse of the manta but it would have been a much shorter encounter.

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One House Bay

I had heard rumored that, although stunning, One House Bay was a popular destination for charter sailors and I shouldn’t expect much privacy or solitude. While that advice was correct, I happily noted that a lot of the boats visited the somewhat exposed bay for the day but in late afternoon departed for more secure overnight anchorages, leaving much more room for the rest of us who overnighted there.

Sunny and I discovered some trails behind the one house of One House Bay and the strenuous uphill hiking rewarded us with some excellent views of the party scene below.

Further on, on our hike we saw some interesting things…

If you’re like me you spend a lot of your waking hours thinking about how life is just a series of “Far Side” cartoons. I loved the depth that Gary Larson could plumb in one single panel. Years ago Colleen gave me the four-volume complete works of Gary Larson for Christmas. An ever so thoughtful present and it occupied a prized scatological place in our home for years.

So, when hiking on the narrow seldom-used path and we happened upon a spider web literally blocking the way, and the spider wrapping its prize of all prizes…

…I was immediately reminded of this Gary Larson panel…

We carefully walked around the deserving spider and I hope that he or she ate like a king for days.

As we passed the spider and I was chuckling about the image of The Far Side cartoon in my head, I started thinking about my thinking, which got me thinking about my recent, rather dark, post My Worst Self Living My Best Life, and this thinking brought me back to another Far Side image…

At the top of the trail (and top of the mountain) we found a ruined homestead complete with a disused well. It was amazing to think that there’d be enough hydrostatic pressure high above sea level to keep a well filled in arid Greece.

Of course this got me wondering that if I put Sunny down for safekeeping and peered deep into the well, lost my balance and fell in, would Sunny run back to the bay to find the nearest humans and bark excitedly at them? If so, would the humans reply to Sunny, “Τι είναι το Sunny; Έχει πέσει ο κύριός σας σε πηγάδι και χρειάζεται βοήθεια;” (which transliterates into English as, “What is it Sunny? Has your master fallen down a well and needs help?”

Back aboard Hazel in One House Bay, I had another interesting sighting. Or, should I go with the plural and say interesting sightings? After our hike and a swim, Sunny and I were both cooled down and ready for a well-deserved nap. It was also midafternoon and the bay was packed, mostly with charter boats but there were a few of us private cruisers scattered around. Before lying down on the saloon berth, I gave one last look through the portlights to make sure no other boats were drifting too close. I noticed a new private sailing cruiser charging into the bay “French style” (that is, coming in at speed and clearly ready to bump a few elbows to make room to anchor). It appeared to be a husband and wife on board, or maybe male/female partners. He was at the helm and she on the foredeck ready to lower the anchor—a typical configuration for a crew of two preparing to anchor. However, what to my prudish American eyes should appear, but she looks to be topless. The boat was aways off so I chalked this up to a misperception from tired eyes. I busied myself with something else for a minute and looked again at the approaching yacht. Yup, as expected, French ensign flying off the transom. I looked to the boat’s foredeck and did a double-take (or, should I say, a double-take of a double-take). Yup, she was riding proud on the bow like a nautical Lady Godiva.

I decided if she could do that midday in a crowded anchorage I no choice but to partially embrace my creepy loner-ness. I grabbed my good camera and snapped on its telephoto lens. I call it my “good” camera to differentiate it from my phone’s camera (obviously, the “good” is not any commentary on the ethicality of the pictures taken with it).

In retrospect, it wasn’t my most crisp picture. I took the photo surreptitiously from below decks. (A full embrace of my creepy loner-ness would have freed me to take the picture from above decks but, surprisingly, even I have my limits.) Taking the photo through Hazel’s open portlight meant that I was shooting through both the fly screen of the portlight and the lifeline netting around her gunwales. That’s OK though, I think a little fuzzy and blurry adds some art to the shot. (Think about it: there’d be no mystique in a crystal-clear picture of bigfoot.)

There’s a funny PS to this story…

If you note, the boat has a rather distinctive blue stripe. Rhett and I often comment that when cruising, you just sort of keep running into some boats in different anchorages. To wit, just the other day I was in the Aegean (weeks after my aforementioned sighting and a hundred-plus miles from One House Bay) enjoying a quiet anchorage when a very similar looking boat starts—once again—charging in. Hmmmm, woman on deck, blue stripe at the top of the hull, looks like a guy at the helm, French tricolor flying off the transom—could it be? Too far off to tell what she was (or wasn’t) wearing north of the equator. As the boat hove closer, my initial hopes of a double-exposure were dashed. (Or, should I say a double, double-exposure?) It was the same boat alright, and same crew, but she was clothed. (Perhaps too much sun in tender areas?) However, as they slid past us and deeper into the anchorage and I got a good look at the helmsman, I saw all of him. Yup, naked as the eyes of a clown. While he was at the ship’s wheel, his tiller was plainly visible. I started to reach for the camera, but my better angels prevailed—even I have my limits.

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The Odyssey to Odysseus’ Home

In talking to a Greek couple on the beach at One House Bay, they kept talking about an island that sounded to my ear like “eh-THA-ka” (clearly three syllables). While intrigued with their description of the beautiful island, I finally had to stop them and ask about the name because I had never “heard” of it. After a bit of back and forth, I said, “Oh! Ithaca” (pronouncing it “ITH-ahka” in one long syllable as an American would pronounce Ithaca, New York). Of course when I said “Ithaca” they looked at me like I had two heads and had no idea what I was saying.

Odysseus, a key figure in Homer’s Iliad and the eponym of Homer’s Odyssey (let’s call it the sequel to the Iliad), ruled the Kingdom of Ithaca. While that all sounds neat and tidy—a Kingdom of Ithaca and an island of Ithaca—it isn’t. Assuming Odysseus was a real person (likely but not totally positive), he would have lived in the Mycenaean Era, 1550-1200 BC (a long time ago) and while there’s some pretty good evidence that the Kingdom of Ithaca comprised several islands and Odysseus’ castle and home was on today’s Ithaca, it’s not totally proven. From learning more, I also get the sense there’s a lot of local pride with amateur and professional archeologists searching for evidence that “their” island is the real home of Odysseus.

Anyway, I’m sticking with Ithaca and was excited when I made landfall there. My first night was in a rather remote anchorage and the next morning I motored four miles in a dead calm to the town of Vathi.

In researching Vathi I discovered that there was a trail starting in the town to the supposed cave of the nymphs described in the Odyssey:

and at the head of the harbor is a slender-leaved olive
and near by it a lovely and murky cave
sacred to the nymphs called Naiads.
Within are kraters and amphoras
of stone, where bees lay up stores of honey.
Inside, too, are massive stone looms and there the nymphs
weave sea-purple cloth, a wonder to see.
The water flows unceasingly. The cave has two gates,
the one from the north, a path for men to descend,
while the other, toward the south, is divine. Men do not
enter by this one, but it is rather a path for immortals.

The Odyssey, Book 13, Homer

I wanted to learn more about Homer and Odysseus and so connected with a guide, teacher, and archeologist Spyros Couvaras. I called Spyros on a Sunday morning and, since it was in the middle of the big Greek heat wave, agreed to meet at the “Homer’s School” at 6 o’clock that evening. I would arrive via taxi (about 20 minutes from Vathi, he would come on his scooter). As we hung up I thought, Hmmm Homer’s School, I wonder what it is? Immediately I pictured…

That evening while the light was still good but the day’s heat was mitigating, the taxi dropped me off at some ruins in the middle of nowhere and sped off. After a few desolate minutes, wondering if I was in the right place and if I might have my own odyssey trying to get back to Hazel, a cheery guy drives up in an old scooter and says, “Are you Dahniel?”

Spyros dismounted, shook my hand and patted Sunny’s head. He was wearing a light blue linen collared shirt and plaid shorts. His hair was cut short but thick—the classic black, and salt and pepper of the 50-something Greek. Although he occasionally smoked, he carefully saved his cigarette butts rather than sullying this hallowed ground with them. He wore sturdy walking shoes and his legs were curiously and recently scratched. (I’d learn later from thorned bushes that tend to grow at archeological sites.) He asked me a few introductory questions to understand what I wanted to learn from our time together and was thrilled when I told him I had read the Iliad and Odyssey. I was quick to point out though that I only understood portions of them—he chuckled. Spyros motioned to a picnic table with benches and we sat and he started with a little talk. To aid his descriptions he pulled out a well-used timeline that I found immensely helpful.

The stories of the Iliad (i.e., the Trojan War, “Ilium” is another name for the city-state of Troy) and the Odyssey took place during the Mycenaean period (1550-1200 BC). From 1200 to 800 BC there was a Greek Dark Age of which we know very little. Homer is guessed to have lived around 600 BC (the early Archaic period) but the Iliad and Odyssey were not written down until later in the Archaic period (around 600 BC).

Spyros then walked me around Homer’s School which is thought by many to have been Odysseus’ castle. After the ten year Trojan War, Odysseus spent another ten years trying to get back here. (Why so long? You ask. Spoiler alert: Poseidon was royally pissed that Odysseus blinded his son Polyphemus, a cyclops.) Even if this site wasn’t Odysseus’ home, there’s pretty good evidence that Homer used the location when composing the Odyssey as the descriptions from the epic poem and archeologists’ interpretations of the ruins closely match.

Also, there’s legend that when Homer was orally teaching his works to other poets, he did so at this location (thus Homer’s School).

Having Spyros as my guide was invaluable. While I would have stumbled around thinking, Well these big rocks are interesting. Spyros told the stories about what was likely located where and how it all fit together. He also didn’t shy away from the mystery surrounding the location, the controversies, and what we still don’t know.

After touring the ruins, we sat again at the picnic table and Spyros pulled out the timeline once again and proceeded to tell me about the, “Problems with Homer.” I thought to myself, Well that’s easy: drinks too much Duff beer, overweight, bad husband and father, gets in trouble with his boss Mr. Burns—and the list goes on. No, what Spyros meant were the the mysteries surrounding Homer.

First, in almost all art forms, the art evolves over generations and generations. Spyros told me to think of simple cave paintings evolving to two-dimensional Egyptian drawings and Medieval paintings, then finally to the three-dimensional realistic perspective of the Renaissance. However, while Homer is recognized as one of the most revered and influential authors in history, we don’t have evidence any any substantive authors preceded him. Did they exist and Homer learned from them but their oral works were lost? Was Homer just that far advanced and that much of an genius? What a beautiful mystery.

Second, between the Iliad and Odyssey, there are nearly 30,000 lines. As comparison, a Shakespeare play has 2,000 to 4,000 lines (of course memorization of these lines are shared by multiple actors). How is it then that a Homer could compose and memorize and transmit to others the rough quantity of ten Shakespeare plays. The enigma heightens the intrigue.

The sun was now well below the horizon and it was getting dark. As a last stop, Spyros wanted to take me to the little museum in the nearby village of Stavros where I could also get a good taverna dinner and a taxi back to the town of Vathi and Hazel. Spyros motioned to the back of his scooter for Sunny and me and said, “We better keep moving, the lights on my scooter don’t work.”

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Cephalonia and Departing the Ionian

From the east coast of Ithaca, Sunny and I then made a 10-15 mile day sail south, down the east coast of Ithaca and then west to the island of Cephalonia. In my previous post I had recommended the book and movie Corelli’s Mandolin/Captain Corelli’s Mandolin as further reading/watching for those interested in Ionian Greece recent history. The plot takes place on the island of Cephalonia.

Sunny and I rented a car for a day on Cephalonia and had a grand time exploring the island.

When I’m in a cave, it’s fascinating to think about how slowly stalactites (the ones that descend from the ceiling) and stalagmites (ascending from the floor) grow. The average stalactite grows at a rate of a tenth of a millimeter per year (the fastest at 3 millimeters per year). The size of this cave and the length of its stalactites and stalagmites, combined with those growth rates, puts the age of this cave—and our brief time on earth—all in perspective.

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From Cephalonia we had a 100+ nautical mile sail to the city of Corinth and the Corinth Canal, our gateway to the Aegean Sea. (I’ll highlight that sail in a subsequent post.) After a couple days on Cephalonia I noted that the weather forecasts showed an upcoming westerly blow (blowing from the west to the east), perfect for a downwind “sleigh ride” through the Gulf of Corinth. We set sail from Cephalonia in the afternoon, trying to time our arrival in Corinth for the next afternoon (sailing nonstop through the night).

As we exited the Ionian Sea and entered the Gulf of Patras on our way toward the Gulf of Corinth, I looked back at the sun setting into the Ionian islands and felt a pang of loss but smiled through the mourning. I was sad about this period of my life in this place being over. Our friend’s words echoed in my head, Whatever you do, don’t rush this Ionian. How right he was.

Would I ever return, or is the last time I’ll ever see the Heptanese? Sure, sometime in the future I might fly over them and high above look down as if a god; I might “sail” on a fast-ferry through them, covering our two months here in two hours; but would I ever return to sail its waters on our boat on our terms? I smiled about what I had expierenced. At sea level, I’d learned about the history and people of this part of the world. Far below the sunny surface, I’d learned a deeper lesson that the odyssey is the destination.

Fair winds and following seas!

Καλημέρα! (Good morning! Transliterated from Greek to English as “Kaliméra.” Pronounced just as it looks with the emphasis on the accented syllable.)

All is well with Sunny, Hazel, and me; Rhett is making progress on the home front back in Florida. I’m currently anchored in the harbor of Agia Effimia (“Agia” translates to Saint) on the island of Kefalonia (sometimes transliterated to “Cephalonia.”). As an aside, if you’re looking for a great summer read, a 20th century historical fiction/romance novel of the area, I highly reccomend Captain Corelli’s Mandolin (sometimes released as Corelli’s Mandolin) by Louis Bernières. The film, starring Nicolas Cage, Penèlope Cruz, and John Hurt, is a shallower dive but good nonetheless. I’ve heard it described well as a novel by an English author with a French name about Italians and Nazi Germans in Albania and Greece—‘nuff said.

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On to the updates…

First, thanks for all the well-wishes about the fires here in Greece. Fortunately we haven’t been affected, not even a noticeable change in the air quality, or sunrises or sunsets. My heart goes out to those suffering though. Crazy that some of the island of Corfu has burned and we were there just a month ago. Also for us, fortunately Rhett got out when she did (she departed from the Corfu airport). With so many people on holiday being impacted, now it’s probably impossible to find a flight with the fire evacuees.

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Secondly, for those of you who track Hazel’s location on our home page, you may have noticed a degradation of quality and timeliness of the updates, including a whacky magic carpet ride to Turkey and back. No the satellites are working fine, it’s due to the erratic nature of the captain (no surprise there, given my last post). When we were sailing the open water, far far from a land-based a cellular signal, I had a monthly satellite communications package that included hourly updates on our position. While the tracking was great, it cost the amount of a fairly rich cable/internet bundle at home so I discontinued it and am just making manual updates when we are in new ports (thus the straight lines over terra firma). Also, manual entry of latitude and longitude are subject to user error, so—after one update when I got messages from friends asking, “Did you fly to Turkey?”—I discovered that I can’t delete a position update, just make a correction with a new update.

Besides, if I had really flown to Turkey on some “Midnight Express” drug run, do you think I’d be so naive as to post it on the internet?

BTW, if anyone’s looking for some killer hash, hit me up on Telegram when I’m back stateside.

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Finally, I’m typing this out in a self-serve laundromat in Agia Effimia doing some wash before sailing. As a solo sailor, I thought my clothes smelled fine. Sunny however, with the nose of a hound, begged to differ. As a tiebreaker, I asked my sailing clothes what they thought since they had a vested interest (‘nuck, ‘nuck…pun intended). My shorts and shirts silently answered by slinking their way up the companionway steps onto the bridge deck, into the cockpit. From there, they dropped themselves into Lil’ Dinghy with a plop. I’d been overruled so I’m doing laundry.

The main reason that I’m doing it today though is that this afternoon and through the night, we’re supposed to get a fresh breeze (about 20 knots) out of the northwest. Assuming the forecasts are directionally correct (a 50/50 proposition in the Med), I’m going to to take the opportunity for a long sail into the Gulf of Patras, then into the Gulf of Corinth and maybe all the way to the ancient city of Corinth. (I may stop halfway in the Gulf of Corinth to tour the Oracle of Delphi, we’ll see.) All the way to Corinth would be about 120 nautical miles. Say 24 hours or so of sailing. Not all that long in the grand scheme of things but a lot longer than the 5-20 mile jaunts we’ve been doing lately on our island hops. It’s also night sailing, solo, in congested waters close to shore with other yachts, commercial traffic, and fishing vessels so I’ll have to keep my wits about me.

Also, depending on the strength of the gradient wind (caused by differentials in air pressure gradient) it may get a bit breezy around Patras as the converging land masses funnel and accelerate the gradient wind. It shouldn’t be too crazy though and the seas should be pretty flat. We’ve also got a waxing moon, between first quarter and full. That should give some nice light for night sailing.

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If all goes according to plan, this evening I’ll exit the Ionian Sea. When sailing together, Rhett and I comment that we’re both a bit sad when we leave a beautiful island, a good marina with new friends we’ve met, a good town anchorage, or an entire sea. Who knows when or if we will ever return? But, with that being said, I’m looking forward to transiting the Corinth Canal that will take us from the Gulf of Corinth to the Aegean Sea!

I’ll keep you updated and also am working on my travelogue post for the Ionian. Fair winds and following seas!

Divining between correlation and causation is always a challenge, and sometimes a fool’s errand. Two variables seem to consistently change in a pattern but is it “α” that causes “β”, or β that causes α? Or is there no causality between the two and they are merely correlated? (Perhaps some other, as yet unknown, variable causes both α and β to occur simultaneously?) Or, is it just random noise and we as humans—evolutionarily programmed to search for reason, meaning, and connection—concoct some cockamamie story in an attempt to make sense of it all.

However, all that high falutin logic-talk doesn’t change the fact that I can be a real ass…a real ass to the people that I care about the most.

For argument’s sake, let’s assign the Greek letter α (alpha) to how exotic, dreamy, and once-in-a-lifetime the surroundings in which Rhett, Sunny, Hazel James, and I find ourselves in at any given moment. I’m sure you’ve already guessed that β (beta) is how much of an ass I am at the time.

What I’ve noticed is that often α and β vary in a pattern. The more absolutely amazing a place we’re in, the more we’re surrounded by nature, the more that how we got to that place was an achievement of a lifetime, seems like the time I should also be the most grateful for being alive and being able to do what so few others have a chance to do (and to do it in the way of my choosing). I should be in a state of sublime oneness with the universe, approaching self-actualization. But no, I’m angry, I’m petty, I fixate on the little bits that are going wrong and not the grand scheme that’s going so right. I look to place blame and find the one I love the most. Why?

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I was 50 when my sister Amy died at the age of 54. Being with her as she faded away started me thinking about alternative ways to live the remainder of my life. Four years later I had just outlived my sister when my late-wife Colleen died at the age of 50. If Amy gently took me by the hand, led me forward and urged me to peer over the edge, Colleen snuck up behind me while I was transfixed by the abyss and gave me a firm but loving push between my shoulder blades. I was off balance and there was no turning back.

Colleen died August 21, 2019 and my birthday was just weeks after. Now, in this summer of 2023, I’m staring down the double-barrel of Colleen’s death anniversary and my 59th birthday. Almost exactly four years ago today, Colleen celebrated one-year of sobriety, an amazing milestone and a testament to her commitment and effort. She was asked to speak and share her story at an open AA meeting and our son Jack and I attended. It was moving, it was inspiring. At that point, Jack, Emma, and I allowed ourselves cautious optimism—a feeling we hadn’t experienced in a long time. A month later, she was gone.

Between then and now has been a dizzying four years. In early 2020, as a creepy loner (a.k.a., single-handed sailor), Hazel and I sailed to The Bahamas and Caribbean and ended up locked down in the British Virgin Islands during the pandemic. In 2021 Hazel and I shanghaied Rhett as crew and we sailed to The Bahamas and up and down the US East Coast all the way to Maine. In early 2022, Sunny signed up as lowly ship’s mascot but was quickly promoted to Rear Admiral of the fleet and our growing but ever-motley crew sailed back to The Bahamas. Just over a year ago (spring and summer of 2022), I sailed across the Atlantic as a creepy loner and Rhett and the Rear Admiral joined me in Lisbon and we sailed south through the Strait of Gibraltar and into the Mediterranean. After sailing Spain’s Balearic Islands and Italy’s Sardinia, Hazel enjoyed a peaceful winter on the west coast of the Boot of Italy. We woke her up this spring and sailed her to Ionian Greece where I now sit by myself pecking away on a keyboard in Hazel’s dimly lit saloon. Although it’s a quarter ‘til ten in the evening, the faint glow of the sun is still in the sky. We’re anchored in the lee of the remote and uninhabited Nisos Formíkoula (Nisos is Greek for Island). The diurnal Ionian northwest prevailing wind is settling down and Hazel’s bouncing around is easing. The sky above is as clear as the water below and tonight is the New Moon. With no city or town lights to be seen and only a couple other boats in the anchorage light pollution is at a minimum and in a couple hours the stargazing should be amazing.

Several days ago, I gave myself the newly minted designation of mitigated creepy loner. Rhett is traveling to Florida to take care of some things that we tried so hard to deal with remotely but in the end decided together it would be best for her to get home for a month. Although I’m a single-handed sailor again, I have the mitigating factor of Sunny on board. I see it so clearly in other sailors’ eyes when we say hello boat-to-boat, or meeting in a marina or on a beach, He’s a single-handler and he certainly looks creepy enough with that long hair and old boat. But, how weird can a guy be who sails with a miniature dachshund?

The point is that while Amy and Colleen may be giving me heavenly high-fives for learning from their demises, and me—borderline frenetically—not squandering a second of my time, a more objective and less generous person could rightfully say that I’m just a little boy running away, scared to face the demons that might catch him if he stops in one place for long enough. A little boy running away from his responsibilities (I’ve run so far and for so long I don’t even know what those responsibilities are—perhaps that proves the point.), running away from his checkered past, running away from pain, running away from memories.

While these past four years have honed my skills as a first-class escape artist, it’s now dawning on me that the only thing I can’t escape from—is me. I run, I run, I run. I sail, I sail, I sail. I can evade anything and everything…everything except my shadow.

As I reflect on my recent adventures it also occurs to me that it’s easier to sail across an ocean solo than it is to change yourself.

Sure, someone who knows me well might think, But Dan, you have changed so much the past four years. You used to have a job, a house, short hair, and deadlines and commitments…the works. Now you’ve got none of that. While that’s all true, deep down I’m still me. Popeye (another sailor man) often said in his gravely salt-stained voice, “I am what I am.” Maybe his wisdom was accepting who he was (and Olive Oil loved him for it)—I, on the other hand, have not. I know I can be a better self, to me and to others. The question is how? Do I try harder? Should I be easier on my self, try less and just let it happen? Maybe I do something radical—like try to communicate more effectively?

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On the subject of not being my best self, I also wasn’t my best self the months and years before Colleen died. Maybe I was good, maybe I was even above average in the situation, but I could have been better. That fact haunts me on a daily basis. Sure, there are a lot of excuses that I could make for what happened and how it happened, and I could produce a litany of good things that I did for Colleen as she struggled—but still, Colleen and I were married, we were supposedly soulmates when she died. I can’t help feeling like I was at the helm when the beautiful yacht Colleen was lost.

I guess the sailing and “at the helm” analogy implies that I had some kind of control over the situation (many addiction treatment professionals would argue that I didn’t). I do believe in those last days Colleen and I had lost “steerage way” (when a boat is moving so slowly through the water that the rudder has no effect on its direction, like turning a car’s steering wheel when the car isn’t moving). However, in the big picture a good captain isn’t concerned with loss of steerage way moments before a disaster, his concern is with not getting his ship, his crew and passengers, and himself in a potentially disastrous situation in the first place. In the weeks and months prior to August 21, 2019, the warning signs where there. In retrospect, the forecasts were ominous and although I heeded them, I didn’t heed them enough. I guess I figured that the yacht Colleen had weathered a lot of storms and could take care of herself through this one. Little did I know, this last time would be different.

When Colleen, and all of us close to her, were trapped in a seemingly endless wash-rinse-repeat cycle of relapse, remorse, and months of treatment followed almost immediately by another relapse, I’d often ask myself, When will this ever end? I should have been more careful about what I wished for and the tacit implications of my wish. Back then I never dreamed that it could end like it ended.

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When Rhett left for the airport a day ago with a circuitous routing home (from Corfu Greece into one London airport and out of the other London airport to Dallas-Fort Worth and then to Ft. Lauderdale), her departure wasn’t because of my behaviors. However, we both agreed that the past couple weeks had been tough and that “a little space and time apart” would be healthy for both of us. Although there’s a lot of magic in what we’re doing, the day-to-day realities of extended sailing during the Greek summer in a Europe-wide heat wave and us together 24×7 on a 31-foot boat (of course with no air conditioning), piled on top of the other things demanding Rhett’s attention back home had been challenging. Given the situation and what Rhett needs to do at home, “a little space and time” has turned into 5,700 miles and a month. Now, just a couple days into that month, I miss her terribly. Again, one should always be careful of what they wish for.

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Prior to leaving, Rhett had shared some of our travails with her best friend Maria. (Maria is the “Rhett whisperer.” Or, maybe more accurately, “the Rhett and Dan whisperer.”) She’s is ever-generous when it comes to me, what I’m going through and my healing process. While Rhett unfailingly sees the good in my soul, having a wise friend with a wider aperture is essential. As I understand Maria’s analysis (through Rhett’s translation to me), I’m recovering, I’m grieving, I’m processing all that’s gone on in these past years—I take steps forward and I take steps backward. It sounds so simple when it’s said and when I read what I have just written, but it’s so hard for me to remember, to truly internalize. It’s so hard for me to accept that maybe I’m not as strong and independent as I think I am. That we all need grace.

I guess the paramount questions for me at the outset of my month of mitigated creepy loner sailing in paradise, is how I learn, how I grow, how I process the sultry summer of 2023 and the searing summer memories of 2019?

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With “a bit more time on my hands” I’ll try to follow-up in the next couple days with an (I promise) lighter post about our adventures in Greece, and Albania.

Until then, fair winds and following seas. Thank you so much for your non-judgmental reading and following along. It’s funny, being alone in the middle of the ocean is so similar to being “alone” in crowded anchorages, packed-full with charter boats in high season. In solitude, my thoughts so often return to friends and family at home, how I miss them and how I wish they were with me to share the good times.

Given all that’s happened aboard Hazel James recently, I think it best to organize and annotate, illustrate, and “video-ate” our recent 543 nautical mile (625 land-based mile) passage from Gaeta, Italy to the harbor and town of Benitses on the island of Corfu, Greece.

While the overall distance we “sailed” (i.e., sailed, motored, and—yes—floated) was 543 nautical miles, the as-the-crow-flies distance is only 300nm between Gaeta and Corfu, and—if we were to sail directly with perfect wind and weather, and no deviations—the distance would have been 470nm. Also, even with some steaming (motoring) our average speed was a pokey 2.5 knots (nautical-miles per hour). As reference, in my Atlantic crossing last year, with no motoring and some becalms, my average speed was 4.5 knots.

Oh well, that’s the name of the game of our brand of cruising and exploring. We made the most of the time and it turned out being a very deep experience for Rhett and me.

If you were following along on my more-or-less daily satellite posts from the passage, you’ll probably recognize them below in italics. After each of these missives I’ve added some additional content and context, including pictures and videos that I can’t do via satellite.

One other note is that our 10-day passage was by far Rhett and Sunny’s longest in duration. Previously Rhett’s longest passage had been 6 days from Beaufort, North Carolina to Hyannis, Massachusetts. Although that passage was a bit longer distance, this was a good endurance test for her.

Hope you enjoy!…

And they’re off!

Day 1, Tue May 23, 2023, 1224 ship’s time
40° 41’N, 014° 07’E – Between Gaeta and Naples
43 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

Good start to the passage. We slipped HJ’s moorings at 0800 local and departed Base Nautica Flavio Gioia marina. If you’re looking for a diversion, Google the mariner Flavio Gioia. It’s an interesting story. There’s lots of local pride that he’s the inventor of the magnetic compass but that’s suspect…more likely a Chinese invention. It seems though that Flavio may have invented the compass card (the flat disk that reads north, south, etc.) and also dampening the movement of the card by suspending it in oil.

It’s going on noon local as I write this and after a slow start with light and variable winds we’ve now got 5-10 knots of wind south-southwest under almost cloudless skies and 20° C (68° F). We’re on a starboard tack close reach and making 4.0 knots with a COG (Course Over Ground) of 150° True. The sea state is a virtual millpond. All in all, a beautiful day to start the passage.

Napoli (Naples) is off our bow at a range of 25 nm. We’re hoping to pass between mainland Italy/Naploli and Isola d’Ischia late afternoon and then make Isola d’Capri around sunset. That’s the plan but we’ll see how it plays out.

Onboard, all systems are working well. Rhett and Sunny just woke from a nap, we’ll have a midday meal soon then I’ll try to “turn flukes” and get some shut-eye. While this coastal sailing is interesting and beautiful (as compared with offshore sailing), we’ll need to keep more vigilant watches—especially around the Port of Napoli and Capri. There’s lots of commercial and cruise ship traffic and the potential for small fishing boats not running AIS.

Thanks to all who are keeping track of our progress. I was telling Rhett this morning that while on my solo transatlantic sail, it was so comforting to know that others were checking in on me and curious as to how we were doing. FWFS. Hazel James out!

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The last day or two before embarking on a passage tend to be crazy. I always tell myself I should slow down and sleep a lot and prepare mentally but that never happens. We always seem to be running around the town to provision Hazel and consumed by last-minute boat projects. It’s even more so when your crossing between countries and have to deal with customs and immigration exit formalities.

The couple days before departure from Gaeta were no different—actually accentuated because we’d stripped HJ bare of food in the fall and she hadn’t been sailing since. When you get right down to it, you never quite feel like you’re ready to slip the moorings but at some point you’ve got to say that it’s good enough and just go.

The night before we slept fitfully given the excitement of the passage and we were up before the sun to unbag the sails, cover the forepeak berth (V-berth) where we sleep when not sailing, and perform other prepatory chores. As we worked away, Rhett and Sunny below decks and me above, the light in the east grew and blossomed into a glorious sunrise that bode well for our embarkation.

In addition to the picture above, here’s a nice video that Rhett took of our departure. In the video you’ll note the nearby joint Italian and US military base. While the USS Mount Whitney was berthed there when we arrived in Gaeta several weeks ago, one morning we found the Mount Whitney gone and several days later the troop carrier in the video showed up (for obvious reasons, military ships don’t announce their arrivals and departures). In the video, if you listen carefully to “Ox” our auxiliary diesel engine chugging away you’ll hear the cooling seawater being returned to the sea (that intermittent whooshing sound). Remember it because it foreshadows an upcoming incident on our passage.

When I was a sailing instructor during my college summers (trust me…a good gig if you can get it), my sailing buddies and I joked about “boat bites,” those mysterious cuts and bruises that show up when you spend a lot of time banging around on small boats. When Rhett joined me aboard, we resurrected the term as it’s as applicable for 15-25 foot lake sailboats of my youth as it is for ocean sailing yachts.

As an adult, I’ve come to realize that alcohol and boat bites have a funny relationship. While today I use alcohol (isopropyl alcohol) to help heal boat bites, back in my halcyon sailing instructors days, alcohol (ethyl alcohol that is) was often the culprit. Yes, some were honestly obtained in the light of day, while other boat bites just sort of showed up mysteriously the morning after a “major rager.”

Regarding adult boat bites, in Hazel’s saloon Rhett and I found that the initial step going up the companionway was exactly at shin height and also the source of 80% of our boat bites. While individually none of the bruises were bad, as the Ionian Greeks say, “Bean by bean the sack fills.” The problem was that each bruise happened at the same place on the shin and, while each was minor, they’d add up until blood was spilled. Finally, before my transatlantic sail, I installed some padding (“gunnel guard” for you yachties out there) to cushion our inevitable clashes with Hazel’s saloon step.

I say all of this about boat bites because although it’s easy enough to pad one place below decks, above decks is a veritable minefield of sharp objects—all just waiting to pounce and take a little nip. In addition, whenever possible I like to sail barefooted. I have a better feel for the boat and for any lines underfoot. Now when I’m totally in sync with Hazel, I’m pretty good at avoiding those pesky on-deck “ankle biters.” However, on our first days out of Gaeta and having not sailed for six months my muscle memory of all things on Hazel’s deck had slipped…and I paid the price.

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Paring mode

Day 2, Wed May 24 2023, 2234 (10:34 p.m.) ship’s time
40° 10’N, 014° 27’E – Between Naples and Island of Capri
82 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

“It is true the longest drouth (sic) will end in rain,
The longest peace in China will end in strife.”
—Robert Frost, On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations

Frost penned that poem in 1923. Today he probably would have chosen a different country to make his point, but I’m sure you get the gist. It’s 10:45 p.m. here and 20 hours ago I was thinking about those lines of poetry as we waited for wind. The thing is that I knew the lines, knew the context—be patient, and the longest calm will be punctuated by wind—but I couldn’t remember the Frost poem that contained the couplet. Fortunately we were close enough to land the next morning for internet access, and a quick search gave me the poem’s title and I could then look it up in my dad’s well-worn book of Robert Frost poems that I keep onboard. Ah the bouquet as it’s spine cracked open, a mix of bookbinder’s glue, ever so slightly moldy paper and ink. The olfactory bookmark of my childhood home and memories of weekend trout fishing trips with my dad, driving the backroads of Pennsylvania in his 1970s Chevy Chevette, listening to cassette tapes of Robert Frost reading his own poetry.

When Rhett and I decommissioned Hazel last fall and prepared her for winter, we began to think long and hard about what we didn’t need aboard our 31 by 9-foot home. Anything that hadn’t been used last cruising season was an obvious target for our paring. Also the prodigious amounts of food we kept onboard (enough to make a prepper envious) had to go. Fortunately, all that was unopened could be donated. This spring, as we recommissioned Hazel we continued the paring process. We ended up mailing a box of things home, some keepsakes, and clothes and books that we weren’t wearing or reading but couldn’t part with. I seriously considered mailing my dad’s Frost book home but just couldn’t do it. As the book’s index guided me to page 268 and read On Looking Up By Chance At The Constellations in its entirety, I was happy about my choices. It’s good to give up some material things and move forward, it’s also good to protect the core and remember.

The Mediterranean wind tends to be diurnal. The nights and mornings are very calm and late-morning the day’s wind starts to build. While that pattern is great for daysailing from harbor to harbor, it’s a challenge for the multi-day passages we like to do. Fortunately last night was calm enough that when the evening wind died, we just dropped all sails, set AIS and radar guards and alarms as our electronic eyes, and went to sleep letting Hazel bob around all night. Tonight looks like it will be the same. When I started writing we were ghosting south with the moo; illuminating our wake in light airs under spinnaker. Midway through this post the wind dumped out totally so I doused the chute and here we sit. Last night we were about 10 nm north of Isola di Capri. Tonight, Capri is about 30 nm north and astern of us. Besides the tempting sacrilege of firing up the diesel and motoring, there’s nothing to be done but be patient and know that the longest calm will end in wind.

Fair winds and following seas. Hazel James out.

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It’s funny, in rereading my post above I talk a bit about food. If anything on this passage I wish we would have had more food. If we had chosen not to steam (motor) at all we just might have run out on the passage. It was an odd thing to be worried about and made me think about how, in general and in my life, how lucky I am to not worry about where my next meal is coming from.

Around the time of this post we passed Naples and Mount Vesuvius (that blew its top in AD 79 and inundated Pompeii). Interesting etymology we learned about Naples from our land voyaging there: “Naples” is our Americanization of the Italian “Napoli” and Napoli was originally a Greek settlement (a “polis”). Given it was on the outskirts of Greek expansion (on the Greek frontier if you will) it was the “new city” or, in Greek, Neopolis—eventually shortened to Napoli.

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First watch

Day 4, Fri May 26 2023, 0034 (12:34 a.m.) ship’s time
39° 01’N, 015° 00’E – Between Islands of Capri and Stromboli
169 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

We’re coming up to eight bells, first watch aboard Hazel James. First watch being the four-hour sailor’s shift from 8:00 p.m. to midnight, and eight bells being the end of the watch. Hazel has a bronze ship’s bell and when we’re both awake and we remember at the top and bottom of the hour, we have fun keeping track of the time with the bell. A traditional watch starts at the top of an hour with eight bells (signifying the end of the preceding watch). At the bottom of the hour of the first hour of the watch, one bell is rung. At the top of the second hour two bells are rung, and so on until eight-bells is reached at the top of the last hour of the watch. At midnight (now in 11 minutes) we’ll be into the middle watch (since it’s through the middle of the night, from midnight to 4:00 a.m.) Rhett and Sunny are fast asleep below decks so I’ll refrain from sounding the bell.

As if at the end of a giant Aeolian exhale, the mild breeze that had allowed us to make a couple knots under spinnaker, dumps out and the chute collapses I try a couple techniques to re-inflate it but no luck. It’s flat line, there just isn’t enough wind. I make my way to Hazel’s foredeck to snuff the chute (pull the spinnaker sock down and over the spinnaker and bring the whole thing down). We’ve been sailing south toward the Strait of Messina and the first quarter moon is low in the west, off the starboard beam. It will set in an hour or so. For now it’s giving me plenty of light to do what I need to do on Hazel’s bow. As I finish up my work and turn to head back to the cockpit, a dark shape on the coachroof in the dim moonlight catches my eye. It’s roughly the size and shape of a crumpled hand towel. “What’s that?” I think. A tidy boat is important as little things out of place can be clues to bigger problems brewing. It’s not like me to leave a random hank of rope or rag on deck. If it were silvery and we were in the Atlantic I’d think it was a flying fish that stranded itself on deck (a common occurrence), but I’ve never seen a flying fish in the Mediterranean and this shape is dark. I pick it up assuming inanimacy and I’m startled when it moves, sluggishly. Instinctually I drop whatever it is I’m holding and it falls on the deck with a soft thud, a thud muffled by feathers. It’s a bird and it’s long overlapped wings indicate he night jar family—aerial fly catchers, definitely not a sea bird. We’re 30 miles offshore, it must have gotten disoriented, wandered from land, and—running on fumes—pulled off a night time “carrier landing” on HJ’s deck. It’s black eyes are tiny and alert, but passive. Hey look like two drops of balsamic vinegar floating in olive oil. Being too weak to fight, it’s resigned to whatever comes next.

All I can do is keep it warm through the night and hope it’s strong enough to fly to shore in the morning, or maybe it will stay on board with us until we reach Messina, 95 miles off our bow. That is assuming she makes it through the night. I find a dry towel, wrap her gently and tuck her under Hazel’s dodger.

Funny, I started writing this post not sure what I would write about. I had a couple ideas but nothing firm. Then, as I’m writing this avian avatar drops on our deck and he beginning of a story emerges. Who knows if the ending will entail a sunrise flight, a stowaway to Messina, a burial at sea, or something else.

Stay tuned…and so will I. The wind is still dumped out, there’s no use trying to sail, the Moon has set, and the lack of moonlight lets the stars shine. The Milky Way is a ribbon, wrapping this gift of night. I’m headed to the warm saloon and a couple hours of warm sleep, hopefully I’ll wake to wind. As I climb down the companionway steps and into the warm saloon, I pass our feathered friend, insulated by the towel and (I hope) sleeping.

Fair winds and following seas.

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Passing the Isle of Capri was a thrill. The pilot books rightfully listed it as the most famous island in Italy. While we had originally intended to thread the needle between Punta Campanella on the mainland (near Sorrento) and the east end of Capri, we “called an audible” and elected to leave Capri to port and pass west of it. Given the light westerly winds we thought it best to avoid the wind shadow that would be downwind of Capri (i.e., the island blocking the wind).

All three of us (Rhett, Sunny, and me) knew that after we cleared Capri we’d be venturing offshore for about 100nm. Our next landfall would be as we approached the Isle of Stromboli and the Strait of Messina.

While Rhett and I were OK with this, Sunny was not so sure. While she loves the sailing, she’s not a big fan of the pee-pee-pad for “doing her business.” It’s a couple foot square piece of astroturf where she’s got to position herself and then cast all modesty to the winds.

As an aside, before sailing with Sunny I had always thought the term “astroturf” came from the Houston Astros baseball team and their pioneering use of artificial turf (kind of like the University of Florida Gators football team and their eponymous sports drink). However, after a couple voyages with Sunny aboard, I now believe the etymology of “astroturf” comes from the Jetson’s dog Astro (or, a jowly Rast-roh as he called himself). Over its 24 episodes, we never learned where in the world Astro did his business. Think about it—around that crazy floating apartment where George, Jane, Judy, and Elroy lived there was no grass.

While Sunny had been OK with the coastal sailing so far on the passage and had gotten in the swing of number-1 on the pad. Number-2 is a much bigger deal and she had been holding out hoping we’d return to land in time. However, as we put Capri astern and headed offshore Sunny plaintively sniffed the sea air with its fading traces of land and knew she had to take action—for her, it was now or never.

Suddenly, with a furtive sidelong glance, Sunny attempted the unthinkable—a mutiny on the high seas. She leapt from her bed, grabbed Hazel’s wheel and threw it hard to port in a desperate attempt for one last colon cleanse on terra firma. While the captain wrestled the helm from her, he ordered the ship’s sargent-at-arms to clamp her in irons. It was a close call but eventually order was restored aboard Hazel James.

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Fly on Little Wing

Day 6, Sun May 28 2023, 2035 (8:35 p.m.) ship’s time
37° 55’N, 016° 03’E – Transited Strait of Messina
275 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

Some quick context:
1) We’ve been listening to a lot of Jimi Hendrix on this passage.
2) Rhett is a crazy animal person. “How crazy?” you ask? So crazy that she doesn’t like killing mosquitoes…not even in Maine—‘nuff said.

(Continuing from our previous post) after I put our crash-landed bird to bed under the dodger, in the folds of a towel, I turn flukes and get some sleep while our becalm continues. However, around 3:00 a.m. I wake to enough wind for sailing and don my foul weather bottoms, sea boots, and watch cap and fisherman’s sweater to fight back the nighttime chill. While the waterproof bib overalls were a bit of overkill for the temperature, they’d let me sit on the dewy cockpit cushions with impunity. As for the well worn, well loved, and ‘oft mended sweater, my parents gave it to me when I was in high school and they made a trip to Ireland. It’s now an old friend from the late 70s and one of my favorite possessions on Hazel.

Consumed with restarting my brain in the middle of the night, wind angles, and sail choices, I totally forget about our stowaway until I pass her on my way up the companionway steps. She doesn’t move…”Either sleeping or dead,” I think, “Regardless, there’s nothing more I can do now. If alive, resting is best.” After I get Hazel moving in the mild breeze, curiosity gets the better of me and I gently peel the towel off the bird’s back and folded wings. As an aerial flycatcher, I marvel at how long her wings are in relation to her body—so long that they cross at the base of her tail and her wingtips extend we’ll past her tail feathers. I see no whiskers around her beak as a nightjar should have (to guide insects down the gullet) so I revise my identification to some kind of European swift (related to our North American chimney swift). There’s no struggle, no movement, her eyelids remain closed. Finally, after an eternity, beneath her charcoal feathers I can see her back arch as she breathes. I breathe too, a sigh of relief.

Half an hour later I’m at the base of the mast coiling the halyards by moonlight and Rhett (who has been sleeping and has no idea about the bird on board) pops her head above the dodger from the cockpit and gives me a cheery “how are you doing?“ My sotto reply, “Good but keep quiet, and don’t make any fast moves.“ This, of course, confuses the half-asleep crew as we are miles from land and why in the world does it matter how loud she is or how she moves? To give her groggy brain one more disjointed statement to process I add, “Go get your reading glasses so you can see better up close and meet me on the companionway steps.” Five minutes later I’ve shown her the bird and recounted the whole story. While Rhett is immediately immersed in pity and compassion for this creature, we both agree there’s nothing more we can do but help it conserve its body heat and let it rest.

Rhett returns to her sleep as it’s my watch and I have time to think as the emerging crepuscular light heralds the sun. It occurs to me that “the bird” needs a name. Pretty quickly I’m reminded of the Hendrix tune “Little Wing” and when Rhett’s up for sunrise and her first question is, “How is the bird doing?” I report, “Little Wing hasn’t moved. That’s either a good thing or a bad thing.” Rhett immediately picks up on the nomenclature and the reference but we both agreed that an affectionate name implies emotional connection and that—miles from land with the shin of the boot of Italy just barely to the east—we were far from “out of the woods” with our little stowaway.

Over coffee we decided that water would be the next item on Little Wing’s hierarchy of needs. A land based bird straying 30 miles out to sea just had to be parched. I put some freshwater in a jar lid and we roused her. With some effort she opened her eyes but otherwise made no attempt to move. I thought to myself, “Not good. If this bird dies on our watch, Rhett will be crushed. Maybe I should have just left it on deck to fend for itself and hoped it was gone in the morning. Either flown away or washed off the deck it wouldn’t be my problem.” But I didn’t and now I had this bird on my hands that was too weak to stand or perch and a sailing partner beside herself and lamenting, “After I went back to bed I couldn’t sleep. All I could do was worry about and pray for the bir…” she stopped herself “I mean Little Wing. She’ll be OK, won’t she?” With that interrogation, my life was rewound 25 years to being the father of small nature-loving children and those children finding some abandoned springtime baby animal in the yard and asking the same question. There was no one best answer then and there’s still no good answer today. “Sure.” I reassured her, but the quaver in my voice belied my trepidation.

Although Little Wings eyes were open, she didn’t seem to notice the jar lid of water just under her beak. Rhett and I looked at each other and silently agreed that desperate times call for desperate measures. Without a lot of hope (I’m sure Rhett had enough hope for both of us) I gently pushed the back of her head forward and down so her beak would be in the water, careful to keep her nares above water so she could breathe. Unbelievably Little Wing startled, settled, and then her throat undulating as she drank. I was astonished; Rhett knew it all along as the answer to a prayer. Little Wing paused and then drank a few more times before losing interest. Perhaps her tiny belly was saited.

I know it’s threatening to birds and other animals if you approach them from above (the way a hawk or falcon would attack) so I nestled my cupped hands on either side of her and gently wriggled my pinkies between her and the towel. Instinctively her tiny toe claws gripped into my skin. Rhett had positioned herself on a cockpit seat in the sun and protected from the wind. As I transferred Little Wing from my hands to Rhett’s hands I was reminded of the hand blessing that our friend and officiant Lisa performed on our wedding day. Although the blessing was as poignant as it was exhaustive (these are the hands that will caress, etc. these are the hands that will offer comfort, etc. these are the hands that will…—you get the idea), I’m pretty sure the hand blessing was silent on, “These are the hands that will care for a lost and exhausted bird, 20 miles from shore in the Mediterranean Sea.”

Although the sun was well up by this time and the dodger was acting as a comfortably warm greenhouse, Little Wing began to shiver. My first thought, “Oh great, clearly the death shakes. It figures, after a little victory with the hydration and a ray of hope we’re going to lose her.” Still though maybe she was just chilled all the way to her little bird bones. I rigged a perch under the dodger with a dowel hoping she’d be more comfortable but she was still too weak to perch. Finally I suggested to Rhett, “Why don’t you hold her in your hands in the sun? Maybe the combination of your body heat and the direct sun will help her.”

As Rhett cooed and gushed that Little Wing was the most precious thing she had ever seen, I went below decks to make some oatmeal for breakfast. As I salted and heated the milk I thought, “Oh well, there are are worse ways to go than to be warm and being held by another living creature.” I was stirring oats into the white simmering mixture when I heard the startled cry from topsides…”She’s gone! She’s gone!” My first reaction…just as I had expected. I popped my head up through the hatch to find Rhett standing on the cockpit seat and thrusting her index finger in the general direction of land exclaiming, “There she is! She’s flying!” Through her ebullition, Rhett explained that Little Wing all the sudden just seemed to wake up in her hands. Little Wing looked around, looked at Rhett, took a wingbeat and landed clumsily on the edge of the cockpit. Rhett thought she was going to fall in the water so tried to grab her and she just took off, out over the water. Dumbfounded I asked, “Where?” Rhett pointed again and we both saw her dark shape silhouetted against the brilliant blue sky. Her wing beats and heartbeats propelling her east, into the morning sun and toward land. Her grace on the wing was breathtaking. While some species have evolved to do a lot of things passably well (a duck can fly, swim, dive, and walk), they are avian Jack’s-of-all-trades. As a swift however, Little Wing had evolved do to one thing, and to excel in that one thing, to fly. It was unbelievable that a being that couldn’t or wouldn’t stand minutes ago and appeared contented, nestled in Rhett’s warm hands, was now soaring as if the night before had all been a bizarre bird dream.

The whole rest of the day, Rhett had the biggest smile I have ever seen. Fly on Little Wing. Hazel James out.

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While I had discovered “Little Wing” after my last post. The whole cliffhanger about her story was not contrived in the least. We had no idea what was going to happen to her. It was a bit of a challenge to try to convey what was going on onboard—how it looked and felt—without pictures (and while trying to sail a boat). It’s fun to now be able to fall back on some photographic evidence.

Here’s a video of Little Wing drinking. If you look carefully, you can see her throat working.

If you’ve become a complete Little Wing junkie by this point here’s another video of her.

While Little Wing was our most delicate avian visitor, she wasn’t our only. We were probably that “baby bear’s porridge” distance away from land much of the time and that made us attractive to wayward land birds. We were close enough to land that birds were in range and far enough from land that, if they did fly by, they wanted a rest. We had 5-10 other birds that we knew of stop in for a quick breather (who knows how many visited in the middle of the night that we were never aware of). Whenever possible we gave them water as well.

One afternoon we were in the cockpit and one landed on Hazel’s steering wheel, flitted around a bit and then flew into the saloon to check things out. We wondered if it thought, “It’s like a bird house in here but for people!”

Here’s a video with Ox’s hatch raised (more foreshadowing) and an avian visitor getting a drink.

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Uncle!

Day 9, Wed May 31 2023, 0109 (1:09 a.m.) ship’s time
38° 25’N, 017° 02’E – Between the Toe and the Boot of Italy
352 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

OK, I’m a good person, but I’m not made of stone and there’s only so much I can take. At midnight local (an hour ago) after sitting becalmed the better part of the day and evening, and the rest of the night showing no respite in the forecasts, I decided to fire up “Ox” (our diesel engine) and start steaming toward our destination of Corfu, Greece at a range of 160 nautical miles. It’s well known that Aeolus, god of the winds, was kind enough to tie up all of Odysseus’ contrary winds in a bag and give them to Odysseus to ease his passage to Ithaca (Ithaca is about 80 nm south of Corfu, both islands are in Ionian Greece). Unfortunately, Odysseus’ crew became convinced that Odysseus was hiding treasure from them in the bag so they opened it and their ship was blown off course by the released contrary winds, further delaying their return home (our word “odyssey” comes from the name “Odysseus”). I say all this because I’m convinced that Aeolus tied up ALL our winds in a bag, not just the contrary ones. Oh well, it looks like if we can get to the Heel of the Boot of Italy the prevailing north winds that blow down the Adriatic Sea may give us a beam reach the final 60 or so miles to Corfu.

Some cool things we’ve seen the last couple days:
In the middle of the night, we sailed past the Island of Stromboli, about 35 nm north-northwest of the Strait of Messina. We’re running a bit low on food and we were hoping the island “delivered” its eponymous treat (perhaps some kind of Uber Eats for boats?). Unfortunately, no such luck. However, the island was billed as the first lighthouse in the world which seemed to us like a rather aggrandizing claim…until we were 10 miles out from it and saw the glow and the eruptions from the 3,000-foot peak of the active volcano! Unlike Vesuvius that obliterated Pompeii with a cataclysmic blast, Stromboli clearly sees its therapist regularly and releases its pressure gradually and continuously. Every 10 minutes or so, the pulsing orange glow from its peak would be punctuated by a spray of fire complete with red-hot cinder shooting high into the air. It was crazy to sail through the night past it and ponder what lies below the thin crust of Earth that we live upon. Crazy also that people live upon the island. Perhaps there’s something to the, “Better out than in” adage.

While I’m not sure if pigs can fly (swine flu not withstanding), the next morning and still near Stromboli we discovered that rocks can float. Every five minutes of sailing we come upon a cluster of white pumice stones just bobbing around in the Mediterranean. They ranged in size from a pea to a golf ball. The captain risked his life to collect as many as possible for stocking stuffers. Rhett saved a few for her next pedicure.

Next up was the Strait of Messina, once feared and much chronicled in The Odyssey. Today, the most important things for a small low-power boat like Hazel is to keep clear of the constant shipping traffic and to time the transit carefully. Although the open water tides in the Mediterranean are very mild, the Strait is a choke point between two seas, the Tyrrhenian to the north and the Ionian to the south, so during “the race” (the fastest flowing of the tides) the current can reach 4 knots (close to Hazel’s maximum steaming speed). In addition, there are numerous whirlpools and eddies, not unlike the East River in New York City, so care must be taken. Also, like the East River there are tons of ferries that run 24×7 between mainland Italy and Sicily. Fortunately given some favorable wind our timing when we reached the northern entrance to the Strait was excellent, at slack tide with the current just beginning to turn in our favor. The not so good news is that we reached the Strait at 3:00 a.m. and we transited in the dark. With Rhett at the helm, Ox pushing Hazel along, me with binoculars checking charts, AIS, and radar, and Rear Admiral Sunny sniffing longingly for the sweet smells of land, we were successful and at the other end, treated to a sunrise view of the snow capped, 11,000 foot Mount Etna on Sicily’s eastern coast. With that we were now in the Ionian Sea!

Sailing along the Sole of the Boot of Italy was gorgeous and we were hopeful that the morning’s perfect winds were a harbinger for what we’d find throughout the Ionian. Unfortunately, that has not panned out.

To the good, in the Ionian we have been treated to frequent turtle sightings and a couple big pods of dolphins.

Thanks for following along. We’re hoping that Ox’s rumble wakes Aeolus up and he bestows us with fair winds and following seas. Or, maybe he hid that bag of wind somewhere on Hazel and we just need to find and untie it. Hazel James out.

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I’m generally circumspect about superlatives—the biggest, the best, the first, etc.—I think it stems from being so let down by the “largest ball of twine in the world” on a 1970s family road trip. So, when our pilot books said that the Island of Stromboli was perhaps the first lighthouse in the world, I scoffed. However, the consistent glow and every-10-minutes-or-so mini eruptions were just amazing. We were so fortunate to have approached it at night. During the day we would have just seen a puff of smoke hanging around the summit. It’s too bad that we couldn’t have gotten a picture of it at night. We were sailing slowly so the sun rose by the time we were very close to Stromboli.

Again on the subject of exaggeration, we thought our pilot book was stretching the truth when it said to keep a sharp lookout for floating pumice stones around the volcanic Stromboli. But then, with Stromboli astern, we began to see a lot of “bubbles” on the surface of the water that—upon closer inspection—were not bubbles. They were pumice…floating rocks. We got to wondering how in the world it was formed and found out later on Wikipedia:

Pumice is created when super-heated, highly pressurized rock is rapidly ejected from a volcano. The unusual foamy configuration of pumice happens because of simultaneous rapid cooling and rapid depressurization. The depressurization creates bubbles by lowering the solubility of gases (including water and CO2) that are dissolved in the lava, causing the gases to rapidly exsolve (like the bubbles of CO2 that appear when a carbonated drink is opened). The simultaneous cooling and depressurization freeze the bubbles in a matrix. Eruptions under water are rapidly cooled and the large volume of pumice created can be a shipping hazard for cargo ships.

Like any good tourist, I had to get some for souvenirs.

While you might think it dangerous to hang overboard in the middle of the sea, the captain took every precaution and—because were talking about foot care—the risk was worth the reward.

Transiting the Strait of Messina was another thrill..

As you can imagine, the Strait of Messina is also a very busy commercial waterway. As we were exiting southbound we passed the northbound container ship Al Jasrah. It’s hard to imagine how big these behemoths are. Our AIS reported Al Jasrah as 368 meters in length (1,200 feet, almost a quarter of a mile) with a 51 meter beam (167 feet, five Hazel Jameses could easily fit end-to-end across Al Jasrah’s width), and a 15 meter draft (needs 50 feet of water just to float, deeper water than we’d ever anchor Hazel in).

It was also fun to pass Mount Etna on Sicily. Although Sicily is as far south as you can get in Italy, Etna was snow capped in late-May.

Approaching and transiting the Strait was rather intense and meant that I was up the better part of the night. So that day, I made sure to get some good napping in. Sunny is always happy to help with that task.

While it’s hard to explain just how calm things can be at sea, this video is a good start. I tried blowing the conch at sunset to plead with Aeolus to send wind with no avail.

We were treated to several pods of dolphins which was heartwarming.

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Denouement?

Day 10, Thu Jun 01 2023, 0409 (4:09 a.m.) ship’s time
39° 34’N, 018° 17’E – Near the Heel of the Boot of Italy
445 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

It’s 3:30 a.m. local (Italy) time and we’re just clearing the Heel of the Boot with our intended landfall and arrival island of Corfu, Greece somewhere off our starboard bow. The gentle 10 knot breeze is from the north and we’re making 3-4 knots on a port tack close reach under full fore ‘n aft sails (the traditional “white sails,” not the spinnaker). It’s a chilly night…likely our last full night on passage. I’m in thermal underwear, my trusty Irish fisherman’s sweater, foulie bottoms, and an orange knit watch cap (just like my childhood hero Jacques Cousteau used to wear). We’re sailing east-northeast and I’m wedged behind the dodger looking west, admiring the burnt orange waxing gibbous moon that has just set in the ocean behind us.

This afternoon, motoring through appetizers another becalm, the sea was so glassy that the reflections of the clouds were clearly visible in it. It was like a giant funhouse mirror had been laid on the ground in front of us. Now, with a bit of wind and without the protection of the Boot (and with several hundred miles of open Adriatic Sea to the north and upwind of us, giving the wind plenty of “fetch” over the water) the sea state is a bit lumpy. Still, I’ll take lumpy with wind over a becalm any day.

The shore lights of the Heel are visible off our port beam as is the comforting flash of the Santa Maria di Leuca lighthouse that makes the Heel of the Boot for mariners. With the moon’s glow fading, the stars that have had to play second fiddle to the moonlight all night come into their own. I love the perspective gained by gazing at the whitewash stripe of the Milky Way, then training our ship’s binoculars at it and being reminded that the “milk” is comprised of countless stars—and that’s just our galaxy, there are countless other galaxies beyond our Milky Way.

I think we’re past the climax of this play we call a sailing passage and into the denouement, where the loose ends are tied up and the meaning of the work is reflected and summarized. If I had to pick a moment of climax, it would be when we had engine troubles this afternoon requiring a deep dive into the spares locker and some grease under the fingernails. I suppose no one reaches Greece without some grease (that’s my Grecian Formula and I’m sticking to it). I think the meaning of the whole passage is that it’s been Rhett’s and my “stealthymoon,” that is a honeymoon—in the truest sense—that we never planned on, that just snuck up on us. Perhaps the third time really is a charm. On our first honeymoon, our couple day “minimoon” to the Florida Keys, I got COVID (and Rhett didn’t, go figure). On our second attempt, our “Amalfimoon,” we had. Great time but it was challenging to be in a place like the Amalfi Coast with day after day of rain. Now, as we can almost taste the fresh feta, we realize how special the week or so of pure solitude—just us—has been.

Of course we’ve got 65 nm of open water to go and a number of little Greek island to navigate around once we make landfall. Who knows what other plot twists that Poseidon may have in store for us.

Fair winds and following seas. Hazel James out.

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A bit more on our “deep dive into the spares kit” from the post. When I started ocean sailing in Florida with daysails, I’d motor out of the intracoastal and into the ocean, shut off Ox and sail for a couple hours before returning home. After a couple times, I realized that the, “best sound of the day,” was no sound—that is, the unadulterated sounds of sailing that emerge when Ox rumbles to a halt. All that’s heard is the wind on the sails and the water on the hull.

When Rhett started sailing with me I told her that story and she loved it. Ever since, our tradition is that when either of us shuts down Ox, we say “Are you ready for the best sound of the day?” Well…in this case it wasn’t quite the best sound of the day. It was around noon and we were becalmed somewhere around the Heel of the Boot and steaming along under Ox’s power, when Rhett said, “Does the engine sound different to you?” I was up on deck attending to something and cocked my head, “No, sounds OK to me…I think.” A minute later I’m back in the cockpit and notice that—yes—Ox does sound different. Good heads-up call by Rhett to notice those little things. We took a glance over the transom at Ox’s exhaust pipe and grimaced. Seawater was not exiting as it should, thus causing the perceptible change in Ox’s rumble. If we didn’t shut Ox down, in another minute or two we’d hear the warning buzzer that he was overheating. To preempt that, I jumped into the companionway and pulled the knob to shut off the fuel supply and thus shut him down. Rumble, rumble, slower rumble, slower and slower rumble, finally…silence. What was normally the best sound of the day, in this case was definitely not the best sound of the day.

When he’s working as he should, Ox takes in seawater via a pump (the raw water pump), pumps it through a heat exchanger (like a car’s radiator). In the heat exchanger, the hot antifreeze solution (aka, freshwater) that circulates throughout the engine block is cooled by the seawater. The seawater then cools the exhaust and exits via the exhaust pipe on the transom. Something was wrong with the raw water system.

I lifted Ox’s hatch and pretty quickly realized that the entire raw water pump had failed. This could be really bad news as at times its just an impeller that has gone bad and is a minor problem to fix. Fortunately though I had an entire spare raw water pump on board so we could fix things relatively easily.

The “stealthymoon” that I talked about in the post was a fascinating occurrence. On passage, Rhett and I did a good job just letting things happen and not getting hung up about how fast we were moving (or, in some cases, not moving!). Going into the passage we didn’t think about it like a honeymoon but, in the hours and days of seclusion, the honeymoon-concept snuck up on us and gently enveloped us. We laughed, we joked, we were together—just us. After our “minimoon” in the Florida Keys (interrupted by COVID), our “Amalfimoon” (with its challenging weather and us surrounded by other people), this “stealthymoon” was just what we needed—the third-time really was a charm.

A beautiful thing about a passage is the focus required. The three rules I’ve come up with for passage-making are: 1) take care of yourself, 2) take care of the boat, 3) keep the boat moving in, generally, the right direction. Oh…and by the way…rule zero (the most important), don’t freak out. Everything else is secondary and takes a backseat, or gets thrown in the trunk not to be bothered with until back on land. With this in mind, the end of a passage is always bittersweet. While dry land, hot showers, and fresh food are alluring—along with those pleasures comes everything else: bills, emails, immigration and customs, phone calls. As Three Dog Night sung so eloquently…

If I were the king of the world
Tell you what I’d do
I’d throw away the cars and the bars and the war
Make sweet love to you (Sing it now)
Joy to the world
All the boys and girls
Joy to the fishes in the deep blue sea
Joy to you and me

Three Dog Night, “Joy to the World,” 1970

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The End / The Beginning

Day 10, Thu Jun 01 2023, 2213 (10:13 p.m.) ship’s time
39° 47’N, 019° 56’E – Anchored in Vourlais, Corfu
527 of 543nm to Corfu, Greece

More to follow after we get some rest but a fantastic last day of the passage today. Although we chose to motor a couple times through some calms, Aeolus rewarded us with an honest breeze to deliver us to Corfu under spinnaker, stay’syl, and main. Ere anchored out tonight on the north end of the island, and will make our way to the marina tomorrow.

Must sleep. FWFS. HJ out.

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It was fantastic that our last day before Grecian landfall was an excellent sailing day. We had a north wind with about 8-11 knots on the beam. We could sail with full canvas on Hazel (mains’l, stays’l, and spinnaker). It’s a lot of sail to carry and you have to watch carefully lest the wind build overpower Hazel. From a range of about 25 nm we started seeing Greek Islands. The first was Othonoi, the westernmost point in Greece. That first sighting of land is always so exciting, even more so when it’s a new country that you’ve never sailed to before. Interestingly, the mainland east of Othonoi (behind Othonoi in our case) is not Greece, it’s the country of Albania (that we’ll be visiting soon).

A good video of our final day’s sail here. You get a sense of the power of the spinnaker, mains’l, stays’l combo in mild winds by looking at HJ’s speed and the way she’s moving.

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Later that evening we anchored in a small bay in North Corfu and the next morning (a very still morning) we ended up motoring the final 15 nm to Benitses Marina and the village of Beniteses.

We steamed down the east side of Corfu, between the island of Corfu and the mainland (Albania and Greece). As we did we passed the “big city” of Corfu Town. It was funny because on our passage, our friends Donna and Steve emailed us about their sailing in Greece and how the hydrofoils kind of freaked them out. As we approached Corfu Town, we saw a boat approaching…fast…I looked at the AIS and it said the vessel was moving at 30 knots and it was a vessel type I’d never seen before. As it approached we realized it was indeed a hydrofoil. Crazy…

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Fair winds, following seas, and Happy Birthday to Rhett! on this June 10th.