Greek Islands
Athens, Greece
August 13th – 22nd, 2004
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We spent our first night on
the boat. Our cabin, berth, cubby hole, very small closet, was in the
back (stern) under the seats. I must have cracked my head at least 5 or
6 times on the stair well, the stateroom header and the cover over our
bed before crawling in to bed. If you saw Good Morning Vietnam, you will
remember Robin Williams doing the spoof on the weather man when he said
the forecast was Hot, damn hot. Well that was our first night.
No air, no relief. We were so looking forward to getting underway on
Sunday to create some breeze.
We had to be very careful when leaving the harbour as the Olympic
sailing was very nearby and as we were leaving we watched a sailboat
that got too close to the buoys and as you can see by the red coastguard
boat, they got on his tail pretty fast. The area around us was watched
24/7 by two blimps circling. As well as the coastguard in the water, we
felt we were very safe here. We saw lots of different vessels on the
water. There were the local ferries including what I call the bug…a
ferry that rises out of the water on what looks like skies.
Sailing the Aegean. We thought we were going to be sailing the
Mediterranean, but Athens is actually in the Aegean Sea. We left Athens
bound for our first port of call Perdika.
Apparently there are over 300 Greek islands. I have to say cruising by
some of these of islands I was reminded of Homer’s Iliad and the Odyssey
how each of these islands were ruled by their own kings. Hard to imagine
those dry rocks being a kingdom. After setting the boat in the harbour
we headed into town on our little dingy. The only problem of course is
you can only take 3 plus the driver in the dingy so it took 3 trips to
get everyone in to the town. We wandered around town, taking in the
local flora along streets and in yards. We got a chance to sample some
fresh figs right off the tree.
Amazing. All of the dinners along the way were excellent. Tzatziki,
fried cheese and souvlaki – yum. One of the things we both noticed about
Greece and each of the islands were the amount of cats running around.
They said they kept them to keep the mice down. Never did see a mouse
and the cats are well fed and not at all aggressive.
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