The crew members walked down the aisle passing out additional sick bags to the several peaky-looking passengers. The woman in front was gripping tightly onto the seat-back in front of her in a tissue-filled clench. The top of the thin and curly-haired pate of her partner, directly in front of me, was sweating profusely in the manner of someone in some anxiety or distress. The general buzzy background noise of chattering guests slowly quietened as each of them in turn stopped talking and started instead to gaze intently out of the window at the frothy sea outside. There was an occasional tennis crowd-like “aaggh!” or “ooooh!” as the boat seemed to gain air as it launched off another wave and crashed back in with a shaking judder. Waves of spray washed over the topsides. The atmosphere became tense.
Alix and I were reminded of our worst-ever ferry crossing, many years ago, on the catamaran from Boulogne to Dover. The weather had been so borderline that we feared the crossing would be cancelled. But it went ahead and the motion of the boat was a bit rock-and-roll; from starboard bow to port stern and then port bow to starboard stern. We are both ‘good sailors’, but decided to stand up in the centre of the boat where the pitching was least. We could see through a window the officers in the bridge ahead, and out to the horizon beyond. It steadied us, and – this is not an exaggeration – apart from the ship’s crew we were possibly the only people who had not been physically ill. As we disembarked, the vessel resembled a hospital ship with grey, sorry looking patients trudging towards the exit. The crew were filling black bin-liner after black bin-liner with used sick bags. (There were clearly spaces on board where the little paper utility bags of fun had not been to hand in time.) We had been glad to be back on terra-firma, and into fresh air.
Our latest trip on the Dodecanese Express catamaran had been nowhere near as bad, but we were not totally unhappy to be walking off the lurching car ramp and onto the salt splashed quay at Agia Marina. The captain had done a grand job from Kos as he sped north-west at 27 knots; he had tried to avoid heading his twin-hulled missile directly into the oncoming waves, but approached them at an angle and then “tacked” every so often through, say, 60 degrees. This avoided the worst of the slamming, especially if he timed his turns well.
Taxi number 25 was there to meet us on the dockside, as arranged by our Italian hosts. But we were surprised to find a Belgian couple and their luggage already firmly ensconced in our car. The taxi driver seemed to be expecting us and jovially bundled us in and put our three large holdalls, a back-pack and a computer case into the boot. We five then set off in the opposite direction to our apartment. We eventually dropped the Belgians off at their hotel at Panteli. They waved us off cheerily, presumably being over-the-moon that the driver had not asked them for any fare. I suspected, correctly, that that burden would later fall onto our shoulders.
“David, David”, the taxi driver kept repeating. “Very good, very good”. I was a bit concerned as our apartments were not called the ‘David’ rooms, but ‘Il Canto delle Cicale’ (the song of the cicadas). We realised - as the car ascended a steep, winding, single-track, concrete path in first gear - that our host was called David and that the driver thought he was a great chap. He was right. And his lovely wife Amber was charming as well.
We were tired after our long journey from Cirencester, via Bristol Airport and Kos town. We had met up with Money Penney in Kos, and it was great to see them again. They had a couple of Welsh sailing chums along from Tenby. After aperitifs on the Dufour, we visited our favourite local taverna. The two Welsh lads admitted to having had lamb for lunch, but decided to have lamb for supper as well. As they say, you can take a Welshman out of Wales, but you can’t take the Welsh out of a Welshman! [Alix: or you can’t take a Welshman out of a sheep].
Alix and I lazed the day away on swinging seats, shaded under some type of oak tree. The Italians’ home is surrounded by their own olive groves, over which we could gaze down on the deep blue bay below us, still textured with white horses. I dozed, soothed by the metronomic whizz/chirp of the cicadas, a sound only broken by the random cluck of the free-range chickens and the occasional shrill ‘begerkkk’ of the cock; an ominous sign that did not portent for a lie in the next morning.
As well as their native Italian language, David and Amber speak good Greek (with a Leros accent apparently, which is chuckled at in Athens), great English and also French. They had been cabin crew in their previous lives. You can’t talk to Greeks for too long about anything without the name ‘Erdogan’ cropping up, and our hosts were both a little concerned about the recent sabre-rattling, regarding the rights to oil found recently under the eastern Mediterranean.
Later, I drove Tony - of Tony’s Car Hire - across the island to drop me off at Lakki marina, and he also sounded-off, quite unprovoked. Tony is an aged and stocky, ex-sailor or fisherman and ventured that, “Erdogan, he crazy. He try to make Greece kaput. But we have ships on our islands and we make him kaput!” I think. Indeed, there is a sleek grey warship parked up at the old Italian naval base at Lakki.
It’s hard to remember that the Dodecanese islands were Turkish until as recently as 1912. If someone dropped you into Agia Marina or Panteli right now, you probably would not see anything ‘Turkish’. That’s possibly because the Ottomans pretty much left the Greek islanders of the Dodecanase to themselves, and to their Orthodox religion. Or so a local museum curator told Thorne and me in June. Provided the Greeks paid their taxes of course…
That our hosts David and Amber are Italian is perhaps apt in that Leros was Italian until after WWII. At the turn of the last century, and as the Ottoman empire continued to decline before its fall (see ‘Turkey, A Short History’, by Norman Stone), the western powers and the occupied Balkan states eyed up the spoils. Germany drooled over Turkey as potentially ‘Our Egypt’, the British wanted to secure the oil of Iraq, France wanted Syria, and Russia wanted the Black Sea and Dardanelles at least, thus providing access to the Mediterranean. Norman Stone describes persuasively and in detail how Germany effectively triggered the start of WWI because their generals wanted to fight off an emergent Russia soonest, before Russia got too strong for them.
But it was the Italians who seized the Dodecanese from the Ottomans in 1912. As we know, after WWI (really from 1912 to 1922!) the Italians were supposed to give the islands to the Greeks: our Prime Minister - David Lloyd George - had promised the Greeks territorial gains. But after Turkey beat Greece in their own war of 1919 to 1922, the Italians reneged on the deal to avoid effectively handing the islands back to Turkey. They were eventually given over in 1947.
After our delightful couple of days with David and Amber, the Meltemi - that had brought the strong northerlies – decreased and we started getting excited about getting Missy Bear back in the water; launchings the previous day had been postponed due to the high winds.
We went into the marina office to see Stella and Irene to pay the bills. Stella has a T-Shirt that reads “I’m not argumentative; I’m explaining why you’re wrong”. She wasn’t wearing it that day. She handed me the boat keys and I legged it across the yard and up the ladder into the cockpit. I checked around inside, checking batteries, opening the sea cocks. Missy Bear smelled lovely and fresh, thanks to our sterling housekeeping effort in June. I put on the fenders and made lines ready for when the travel hoist would lower her into the water.
Once in the water, we opened the salt-water intake for the engine cooling and fired her up. Missy Bear’s Yanmar 45hp diesel started first time. We motored around to our berth, tied up and then got started with putting her back together again. I was expecting issues with erecting the sprayhood and Bimini and solar panels, but surprisingly Alix and I nailed the process first time. It was still too windy to hoist the genoa, so we called it a day.
Next morning, I awoke early to the sound of silence: there was no wind. I nudged Alix awake to share the news. She knew immediately what we needed to do, so up we got and, even before coffee, we got the head sail on deck and out of its bag.
To hoist the sail, I have to orient it on the foredeck, and attach the two sheets to the sail clew with bowlines. I then attach the sail tack to the lower drum of the furler, and the sail head to the bottom of the upper drum (which is at deck level at this point). I then attach the top of upper drum to the genoa halyard. Finally, I feed the leading edge (luff) of the sail into a track in the metal foil that runs all the way up towards the masthead. I guide the top of the luff into the bottom of the track, with the sail still flaked-out on deck. Alix then pulls the halyard which raises the upper drum thus pulling the luff up the track with it, as I feed in more of the luff.
This all requires co-ordination as its quite easy for the luff to pop out of the track [Alix: we have a routine 1,2,3, PULL]. Once the sail is up and flapping about, we tension the halyard correctly, and finally pull on the furling line which rotates the lower drum thus rolling (or furling) the genoa around the metal foil.
We could scarcely believe it. All the prep work had gone to plan, totally smoothly and first time with not one error.
We are now on our first sail of the autumn heading north to Patmos where we will anchor overnight. We are tired and I for one will not need il canto delle cicale to send me to sleep.
