Our Cadogan guide says that Portocheli (Porto Heli) “has as much personality as a doorknob”. Now, I’ve seen some interesting doorknobs on our travels, but I’m not sure that that was meant as a compliment. By contrast the same guide says that Nafplio is “a rarity in the Peloponnese: a beautiful city”.
It was difficult to disagree with that summary. We only ever took the Setsail flotilla into Port Heli (PH) once, and that was simply to avoid some high winds that were forecast to blow through. The large, shallow bay with its constricted, panhandle entrance is known as a local hurricane hole in which to seek shelter.
And yet we never took the flotilla to Nafplio. It is a bit out of the way, and the quay used to have a reputation for suffering the niff of a sewage outfall. (It still does, unfortunately, which is not great when you are serving drinks and canapes in the cockpit to your newly-found guests.)
Eighteen years later on and we were seeking a hurricane hole again, as 30+ knot winds were forecast. There is now a marina in Porto Heli and Alix booked Missy Bear in for a couple of days. It’s got space for 150 boats, all with lazy lines and a very helpful and attentive staff. Ilios, in particular, cut and sealed a rope for me with his hot knife, and also inflated our fenders, some of which were sagging like underfed chickens. We felt so pleased with our plump ‘side-balloons’ that we decided to buy blue fender socks for them. They look like trendy, nautical woollen pullovers, and our fenders are now better dressed than we are. This also means that I won’t be cleaning grime off our white fenders quite as often.
Not that we needed fenders in this case: we had parked Missy Bear up alongside a new pontoon and the staff had handed us two lazy lines, one each for the bow and stern. I pulled these tight and they kept the whole yacht off the pontoon despite the high winds doing their worst.
Alix and I also felt that PH had scrubbed up well recently. The shops are much nicer and there are some inviting looking cafes, bars and restaurants. There is also a very friendly and helpful chandler, and a chandlery is the one shop that I don’t mind spending time in. For some reason, it is the only type of shop from which Alix seems keen to leave, pronto?
Walking along the town quay reminded us of one particular Dutch yacht, back in 2004, whose owners insisted in putting long spring lines from their midship cleats 45 degrees to shore. The obstreperous couple didn’t need these lines to keep their yacht in position (in our opinion) but to guard a big chunk of quay so that they could place their huge TV satellite dish on the quayside. With their springs attached another yacht couldn’t get within 20 feet of them.
They had rigged up this way previously in Plaka, and they were very displeased when I asked them to shift their lines as we had a flotilla of yachts approaching and needed the space. I somehow managed to park our lead boat ‘Evensong’ as close to the Dutchies as possible making sure our mast was in direct line of his TV dish. Polite words were exchanged. I find that simply smiling can reduce the tension. But I did advise him that if he didn’t calm down, he might give himself a heart attack. We did get the flotilla in. Perhaps our continental cousins had to read a good book that evening instead?
After the high winds had passed by, we slipped Missy Bear’s lines and exited south-south-westwards out of the bay. Spetses island was dead ahead across the straits and we turned hard to starboard and sailed downwind into the head of the Argolic Gulf using the afternoon, south-easterly, sea breeze.
We spent a peaceful evening swinging on the hook in the pretty, sheltered bay of Vouvari. We launched Ursa Minor and the electric motor whirred almost silently across the short distance to the beach, where we dragged her out of the water. We strolled up and down the beach-front and took our pick of the four or five water-side tavernas. I settled on one where the head waiter knew his ouzos, and recommended one of his favourites made in Nafplio.
Which is where we headed the next day.
Alix and I always have a little debate around these parts regarding our planned time of departure. First Mate prefers an early start, in order to get tied up in good time at our destination. I prefer a lazier departure allowing sufficient time for the afternoon sea-breezes to kick in. And this offers more of a sail, albeit it also means that we are parking up in windier and busier conditions. Life is a compromise.
We swam and breakfasted, and then lifted the hook at noon. We managed to get another super, downwind sail to Nafplio, often goose-winged (where the wind is almost dead behind the yacht with the genoa and main sail out on opposite sides.) As well as steering to a set compass bearing, our B&G autohelm also has a ‘Wind’ setting, which steers the yacht to a fixed wind direction relative to the boat. This means we can sail dead downwind on autohelm without much fear of accidently gybing. In relatively flat seas that is. Which we had.
I’m certain that First Mate was aching to get to Nafplio, not for the chic boutique shops and fine dining, but because of its three forts [Alix - oh, be still my fluttering heart]. One of which is atop a massive crag that Skipper would definitely want to scale. I lie of course - when she discovered that Nafplio is a fort mecca, she sighed very audibly.
The first fort that appears from the sea is the acronafplio, because it commands the promontory that juts out into the head of the gulf, and shelters the ancient harbour behind it to the north. The acronafplio is itself actually three forts in one: The Franks (Villehardouin) added to the Byzantine bits, which in turn had been built onto the ancient Greek effort. And then the Venetians bought the fort and messed with it a bit as well. And they included - to our delight - a couple of Lions of St Mark to add to our collection! One was above the entrance gate.
The second fort that appears as you round the promontory is the tiny, childlike, sand-castle island fort of Bourtzi, built by the Venetians in 1427 to guard the sea approaches.
But as you approach the town quay to moor up, you soon appreciate that the third fort is indeed the most magnificent. This castle of Palamidi forms the spectacular backdrop to the old town. And it was up this precipitous cliff to the Venetian bastions and ramparts that I was determined to drag First Mate tomorrow morning. [Alix: maybe Richard has forgotten, but we did scale this magnificent erection back in 2004].
Apparently, this edifice is the finest piece of extant Venetian military architecture and was going to repel the Ottomans once and for all! However, after biding their time and waiting patiently until the Venetians had done all the hard work (by 1711), the Ottomans captured this ‘state-of-the-art’ masterpiece four years later. (The Venetians, whose empire had been in decline for a while, could only afford to muster 80 soldiers to defend it.) Our Cadogan Guide states that the castle of Palamidi was in fact the last major construction of the Venetian empire overseas.
[P.S. In terms of remaining Ottoman buildings - and I'm sure that many of the fine old townhouses are Ottoman as well as Venetian - there is an Ottoman mosque in old Nafplio - no minaret left standing, of course - but it has been turned into a theatre]
Even First Mate was impressed by the fine panoramic views from the top over the gulf and the flat plain of Argos to the north, hemmed in by mountains. She had been less impressed by the 999 steps it took to climb there (and she had counted them!).
Given that Nafplio is tucked away at the head of the Argolic Gulf and some way off the main maritime route between Venice and the Black Sea, I am not totally sure why it was so strategically important, in the same manner that Methoni and Koroni were. I suppose the flat fertile and irrigated plain (amid what is basically a totally mountainous Peloponnese) would have provided a rich source of land to produce oranges, lemons, peaches, apricots, olives and almonds.
[We previously mentioned the ancient Nafplio in last season’s blog about the Aeolian Islands off Sicily ('The World’s First Lighthouse'), where Mycenaean pottery had been found. I wondered whether the Mycenaean-era merchants would have travelled west via Corinth in the northern Peloponnese. The scholars state, however, that the port of Mycenae and Argos was Nafplio so sailors would have departed from there. This means that traders would have had to sail west around the bottom of the Peloponnese, which seems a bit of a long way around. Trust me.
But I suppose that it was Nafplio’s role during the Greek War of Independence for which it is most famous.
A Greek fur-trader called Staikopoulos, from the island of Hydra (not far from Spetses) raised his own company of troops in 1821. He travelled via Argos and then besieged and took the fortress of Palamidi. For his efforts he has a statue outside the Venetian gate to the acronafplio, showing him in traditional Greek military dress.
But an even greater heroine, who didn’t get a statue as far as I am aware, is the formidable Laskarina Boubelina. She was born in an Ottoman prison in Constantinople. After her father died there her mother return to their island home of Hydra. The family moved to Spetses where Boubelina was married and widowed twice, inheriting a large fortune and some ships (Hydra and Spetses used to be big shipbuilding operations). Like Staikopoulos, she became part of a secret Greek independence movement ‘Filiki Eteria'.
Boubelina had built her famous ship – the Agamemnon – larger than the Ottomans allowed, by bribing Ottoman officials. It was then fitted with 18 cannons and was the largest Greek ship used in the upcoming war. She used it in the naval blockade of Nafplio. Local sources maintain that her most daring deed of the blockade was to sail fire ships into the Ottoman fleet thus destroying it. That feat is commemorated each September on Spetses with a regatta, a burning caïque and a noisy firework display. Alix and I didn’t see those celebrations in 2004, because it fell on a Thursday when we had sailed 'Evensong' back to Poros for our one day off.
But it is an ex-kleft Greek general called Kolokotronis who is credited with capturing Nafplio from the Ottomans in 1822. He didn’t trust the politicians, who were trying to form a new Greek national government. Nor did he trust his fellow warlords, some of those independent Maniot hardmen, for example. So, he kept hold of the town for several years. In typical Greek fashion, the Greek parties only came together in the face of fresh Ottoman attacks.
In the end, Nafplio was named the capital of new Greek capital in 1828. Another useful pub quiz answer for you?
As we mentioned in the blog, ‘The Maniots’, a Greek exile called Kapodistrias was named the first president of this fledgling state. He didn’t trust the Maniots and he imprisoned the famous ‘Petrobey’, who had held a lot of power under Ottoman rule. When a Maniot party sued for Petrobey's release, Kapodistrias had them imprisoned as well. So, in true Maniot style, members of the Mavromichalis family met Kapodistrias at the entrance to the church of St Spyridon in Nafplio, on September 27, 1831. He thought that they were there to greet him, but they cut him down and shot him. I took Alix to see bullet hole in the church’s Venetian doorway created when he died!!
But it is not this assassination to which this blog’s title refers. Oh no, the Greeks can easily better that. Our heroine, Laskarina Bouboulina, had several sons one of whom eloped with a daughter of the Koutsis family. The family came to ‘question’ her about her son, but ended up shooting her instead!
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