Greece 5 – Stephanie in Greece

Sure enough, we pull up to the docks of Corrinth and there was Stephanie. You can always tell a seasoned backpacker from a novice by the amount of weight they carry. Check out the photo and you will see she has a nice little pack – and no “front pack” or “side pack” that many of the kids riding ferries have. She arrived in Corrinth too late to get a hotel so had spent what was left of the night sleeping on a park bench by the water. As she said, it was a really nice bench, as benches go.

Having been on a tight budget for 8 months of travel, Stephanie had developed a system for rating restaurants in each country. In Greece, for example, she urged us to always check out the price of the standard Greek dish, Moussaka. If it’s less than 5 or 6 euros, the restaurant is a good place to eat. You don’t have to actually eat the Moussaki, but it’s a good barometer for the restaurant if you’re looking for “authentic Greek food” and not tourist food. If they don’t offer Moussaki on the menu, it means that somehow you got on the wrong ferry and you are no longer in Greece!

Hydra and the Charter Yachts

After going through the Corrinth Canal we headed for Hydra, about 25 miles southwest of Athens. It’s a town with a lot of character, meaning it’s jammed with tourists in high season. They don’t allow any cars on Hydra so everything moves via donkey. Donkeys line up when the ferries come in to haul everything from tourist luggage to bags of cement to their final destination on the island. The waterfront is lined with outdoor tavernas, each with different color tables and chairs. They have a system of curtains that they constantly move back and forth depending on where the sun is located to give some overhead shades from the hot afternoon sun. They even have side shades for the setting sun. There’s a constant adjustment being made to the shades to ensure the best view of the activities going on constantly in the harbor.

In addition to people and donkey watching, a main source of entertainment is supplied by the yachts practicing their med mooring techniques, which takes place in the circular harbor, front and center around all the tavernas. Because Hydra is the closest “known” island from the charter sailboat bases in Athens, it’s the first island the new charter boats come to. This means the skills of the captains of the charter boats might not be to the level you would expect, thereby adding to the entertainment of the folks drinking in the tavernas!

In the rest of Europe, when you come into a harbor, you tie your boat to the dock. In Greek, the method of anchoring requires you to drop you anchor a ways from the dock and back the sailboat straight back towards the cement wall. Then, you quickly bring in the slack on the anchor and tie the boat onto the wall before it hits the wall. As you can see, this is a 2 person operation. The captain lines the back of the boat up with the available slip. He then tells his mate when to start letting the anchor down. She is usually in the bow of the boat doing this. When enough chain has been laid out, the mate then goes to the stern of the boat and gets the lines ready to tie onto the bulkhead. In an ideal situation, there are no winds blowing the sailboat off its backwards course, the neighboring boats are not too close nor are their owners on deck ready to protect their possessions. It’s always nice if there are qualified people on the dock waiting to help tie the boat’s lines. But, as you can see, there are a lot of variables coming into play. Many of the people that are looking on are not capable of handling your boat’s lines. Most just came off the last ferry and have never even been on a sailboat. If they are on a sailboat and you’re in Hydra like we were, chances are they just flew in from Kansas and have chartered a boat for a week and know absolutely nothing about sailing or med mooring.

We had been getting pretty good at “med mooring” but the problem with this harbor was that the boats were stacked in so tight that chains were being crossed. When this happens, your precisely laid anchor can be pulled loose by others causing you to smash into the wall when your anchor rode becomes loose.

Once the harbor at Hydra was filled to capacity,  we quickly realized that the “second tier” of boats were about to begin their round of med mooring and they wanted to tie off on our bow (after dropping their anchor on top of our anchor and dragging through about 10 other boat’s anchors.). Let’s just say it was not a relaxing experience and we felt like we couldn’t really leave the boat because of all the problems in the harbor.

We had paid for 3 nights in Hydra, but after a day and a half there, we decided we had had way too much fun smashing into the cement wall and decided to head off for lesser known Greek Islands.

Memorable Moment – French Lesson #1 – I’m sure all three of us will always remember one particular day in Greece: We were on the island of Serifos, the island we visited after Hydra. The harbor had been small and pretty full, so we decided to anchor out for the night because the winds were picking up, We picked a spot close to shore so the hills would “protect us” from the winds.. This was our first time of the season for using the dingy so it took awhile to get everything together – blowing up the dingy, finding all the things that go in the dingy and heading for shore. As luck would have it, we didn’t have it quite right. When we threw out the anchor to keep the dingy off the pier wall, we found the line had come untied from the anchor and we were now “anchorless.” We tried to get a fisherman to help us, but you could tell he would only take the anchor for himself once we gave up trying to retrieve it. We spotted a yacht with an English flag so went over to them to see if they had a long pole to help us retrieve our anchor. No luck - but, they did have a son about 20 who was in swimming shorts and he dove in to retrieve the anchor. Life was good once again. We chatted with them awhile then agreed to meet for dinner later in a taverna. Seems they had had a bad experience the prior evening when the boat they were chartering had run out of gas as they neared some rocks and, to make a long story short, their youngest son saved them all by flashing SOS on his flashlight and sending off flares. Turns out they ended up meeting almost the entire town that night when the police boat came out to rescue them. It seems they hadn’t checked that their gas tanks were full when they picked up their charter boat. They won’t make that mistake again!

We spent the afternoon touring the town and visiting their wonderful Chora – the “town above the town.”

Next morning we woke to big winds. Many boats were dragging their anchors and had to reset them. We spent the entire day on the boat, watching the winds increase. Our anchor was holding well but we decided to set a second anchor, using the dingy to haul it out and set it. As we were discussing how to do this, we looked back and the Meltemi winds had just capsized our dingy. The motor and all the contents on the dingy were now upside down in the saltwater.(A Meltemi is the name given to really strong winds that seem to blow in the certain parts of the Greek Islands in July and August. They come up suddenly and can last for a few hours – or a few days.)

As we watched the dingy – the winds flipped it over again – now it was right side up – but minus everything that wasn’t tied on. That included the dingy oars and the dingy lock. (We didn’t lose the dingy anchor because now it was tied on to the boat very well.) We retrieved the waterlogged engine and gas tank. Steve spent the rest of the day seeing if he could get the dingy engine to run again.

The next morning a 60 foot motoryacht that had been anchored by us took off early in the morning. We watched him leave and wondered if the seas were ok once outside the protection of the harbor. We got our answer as he came back in about 2 hours later and again anchored near us. So we spent the rest of that day as well waiting for the winds to die down.

Now, I’m sure some of you are really wondering how this is all going to come together and what this has to do with the French. Ok, get ready: Later that day it looked like things were breaking so we decided to go ashore in the dingy, powered by our newly cleaned motor. On the way back to the boat that evening, the dingy motor fails. We start drifting away from shore. Stephanie and I were wondering if we were on our way to Turkey. As we passed a French boat at anchor – Stephanie and I are waving pretty hard, telling the man we have a problem with the motor and need help. We’re sure he waves back and says he will come help us. But, alas, no help comes. Fortunately for us, instead of drifting all the way to Turkey, this island has a long breakwall and we end up hitting the breakwall. When we get there, it’s now dark and no, there is no harbor guy there to help us. We ended up “carrying” the dingy 500 feet down the long quay, then going back to haul the motor the same distance. We did this leapfrog exercise for the entire distance back into the main part of the harbor. Anyways, we finally get the dingy and the motor back onto the lighted pier (where we had our anchor episode earlier the prior day). After working on the engine a bit more, Steve finally gets the engine going and we hustle back to the safety of our boat.

Lesson learned – don’t think anyone else is going to save you, especially if they are flying a French flag.

In spite of our Meltemi experience and dingy adventures, we did enjoy Serifos and its Chora (white-washed town high above the regular town.) We had pears in wine in a very picturesque Taverna – probably the cutest one we’ve been in yet, the kind you could easily find a poet to write about. We then loved the walk back down to the regular town.

We also walked up to the monastery built into the face of the cliff. It used to have many monks there but now, its basically a tourist site.

Memorable Moment #2 – Again the French

Soon the Meltemi ended and we headed off to explore a different island. We were in Sifnos trying to find a spot to anchor for the night. We tried one spot and the anchor slipped so pulled it back in and went back to set it again, trying to land the anchor on sandy spots and not on weeds. Then, next thing we see, a French boat with 2 couples on it comes up on our port side, goes in front of us, and drops their anchor 3 feet from us - in the spot we were ready to drop in. It was very obvious we were in the process of anchoring. Steve starts yelling at them in French, but to no avail. They have just taken our anchoring spot! Rather than start an international crises, we decided that we would go on to the next bay for the night. It was a much bigger bay and surely, the holding would be better. A few minutes after we had arrived and set our anchor, we were surprised to see the same French boat coming in to anchor near us again. Guess they couldn’t get their anchor to hold in the first bay either.

Memorable Moment #3 – Saving the French

As we’re getting ready to head for shore, we look over at the French and see that they are in their dingy, the winds are really blowing hard and they can’t get their motor started. Now the French that are in their dingy are definitely on their way to Turkey. We face this moment of truth: we could let them drift off toward Turkey or we could be considerate and go rescue them. So, after all the hassles they gave us, we decide to come to their rescue. Then, after they are rescued and safely tied back onto their sailboat again, they didn’t thank us for our efforts or even offer us a bottle of wine..

Lesson learned – if you save anyone, don’t expect they will be thankful – even the French.

We spent about two weeks with Stephanie cruising the Greek Islands. Because of our Meltemi experience, we were planning routes that had safe harbors on the southeast side of the islands as the winds came from the northwest. We visited some of the lesser known islands where The Lonely Planet said the inhabitants were primarily “lost yachties.” It was nice to be off the main tourist path. A favorite island turned out to be Simi, with colorful houses and great views. We found the perfect bar perched out on a little pier and decided to order “USA type” drinks - Margaritas and Pina Coladas. Every time we try that, it never seems to work. Same results this time. The view and the moment were memorable, but the drinks were not quite up to par. We should stick with Greek beer. We keep forgetting we are in Greece. To quote one sign we saw in the Ionian Islands, “Black Russians” in Greece are made with “Kahula, Vodka and Coke.”

Before heading over to Turkey, we decided we had time for a quick trip to Rhodes, a large Greek island just off the Turkish coast. After spending so much time on the smaller Greek islands, it was a bit of a culture shock to arrive in Rhodes. The marina was very large and the town was overfilled with tour boats whose operators were hawking trips to wherever you might want to go.

It didn’t take us long to get into the “tourist” mode. There were an incredible amount of tourist stores selling everything we had seen along the way: beautiful handmade needlepoint bedding and tablecloths, woven rugs, lots of stores selling these hanging candle lights that I had fallen in love with – plus an incredible number of other stores selling T shirts, bathing suits, shirts and general tourist junk. There is also the great castle at Rhodes and the fabulous mosaic floors. Stephanie had seen this “Luminaire” show in other cities so we decided to go see it. It’s a bit of a history lesson of what’s happened in Rhodes as seen through the eyes of the knights – and it’s all done by lights shining on the castle. Another night we were in the park and we stumbled upon a kid’s piano recital so we stayed to listen. That was really great. Some of the kids were fabulous; some might be at a later date.

One of the things that we found for sale at several of the Greek islands are pillows with “typical” Greek scenes woven into them. At Rhodes, they had a great collection of the various pillows so we decided to get some “throw pillows” for the boat. It turns out that the actual scenes on the pillows come from some of the more famous Greek Islands that we haven’t seen yet, but when we get there, we’ll be ready! We did find a really special hanging candle lamp to hang from our boom so we could have very romantic meals when we eat at our outside table on the boat. The candle lamp is hand blown glass so now we have to have a very secure place to store it during normal passages on the boat.

One thing none of us will forget about Rhodes is the great ice cream and fresh squeezed juice stands. It’s so hot in this part of the world that it’s great to find these so plentiful in Rhodes.

After a few days visit, we decided it was time to make the quick passage over to our final destination, Turkey!