Finally Heading South

When last we left our hearty adventurers, they had just arrived in Lesvos in Greece from Ayvalik in Turkey. As we rejoin them, they are moored at the dock of Olympic Marina in Lavriou, about two hours away from Athens by bus, waiting out another meltemi...


(Okay, this sounds like a bad radio script from the 1940s, but we are in a 40s mode—like it’s “Key Largo” and the hurricane is starting to blow.)

The meltemi is a seasonal northerly of the Aegean Sea, harsher in the southern part. It blows for three or five or more days at a time and is nothing the prudent sailor wishes to be out in. It blows in gusts and is variable. Right now it’s blowing about thirty knots, and half a minute later it’s about fifteen.
We have seen fifty knots. On the water the result is chop in the shallow places and big deep-sea swells in the deep places, with confused seas everywhere. (When seas are confused the boat is hard to steer and the ride is uncomfortable.)

So we listen to the wind blowing through the rigging of the neighboring boats; it whistles and it screams, when it isn’t howling. We hear loose halyards whacking masts, loudly, staccato but in no sustained rhythm. We are securely tied off, with two lines astern to laid moorings and two bow lines to the dock, and the wind bounces the boat about. But who’s complaining? We are safe here in the marina at Lavriou, and very nearly comfortable.

The events since the last encyclical are something like this.
We arrive in Lesvos. Wetbacks arrive in Lesvos, the hard way.
We arrive in Limnos, a day later than planned. We camp out in Neas Marmara in the Chalkidi (the three fingers sticking out from the Thessalonikan mainland) after an undignified entrance at the town dock. We visit monasteries and Salonika, also the German box store Lidl’s. We skip through Pelagos to Skopelos and Skiathos. We meet our first meltemi in Skopelos. We experience the Evia Canal, or however you spell it, on our way to Athens.


The themes, apart from the meltemi, are Coast Guard surveillance, language problems, a tentacle-based cuisine, how Greece and Turkey differ, the progress of the season.

As we mentioned last missive, the changes following arrival in Greece are startling. Instead of the muezzin’s 5x daily minor key vocalizations, we hear church bells sounding the hours, matins and angelus. No minarets, but numerous small churches with their separate bell towers. Small churches are thick on the ground in the old cities of Italy, more so in Greece. The clergy wear hot-looking, old-fashioned black costumes and grow their beards
long. The signs are all in a damn funny alphabet that is hard
to make out. In Turkey we can look at a printed word and pronounce it so a Turk will recognize it very nearly every time. Not so here with respect to the Greeks and their language, although after six weeks we are making some progress. English is widely spoken. Good thing.

When we tell people in the islands that we have come here from Turkey, they ask how do we like Greece, and we tell them we like it better since that is the answer they are looking for.

Greece is richer than Turkey. You can see it in the buildings and the cars very obviously, and in other ways as well. Prices are a bit higher, except that in Greece you can Buy Good Wine Cheap, a welcome change. Excellent pork is available, too.
We love Turkey; it’s just that you don’t go there for the pork chops or the bargains on wine. Turkey has other virtues.

There is a fresh border dispute. Greece recently claimed some additional territorial air space, and Turkey denies the claim by sending jet fighters to the edge of the air space that the Turks claim. Daily. When the Turkish fighters flew noisily over the harbor at Mitilini, a local man, 60-ish and wearing a coat and tie, spotted the American flag on Horizons, and scolded Jack by shouting, “You sold them those planes!” Jack responded not at all but might have said, “Got a good price for them, too,”
except that we are disinclined to take the bait that scolding types are doomed to be forever offering. Greece and Turkey are our NATO allies (and each other’s, they keep forgetting) so why can’t we all just get along?

The merits of the boundary dispute are no doubt interesting to the student of diplomacy and political science, but the emotional and nationalistic side of it is complicated and at bottom irreconcilable.
If you want to know more, read “Birds Without Wings” by Louis de Bernieres. If he wrote it, go read it, is our recommendation, and the same goes for Alexander McCall Smith. (Avoid Paul Theroux, who’s just too cranky.)

New topic: After getting to know Mitilini, and after finding and buying a few units of the local version of muriatic acid (a sovereign cure for clogaroonies in the plumbing), we went to the north side of Lesvos and rafted alongside a fishing boat that wasn’t going out anytime soon, in the port of Molivos.


It was a Coast Guardsman who helped us with our lines and said we had permission to raft up. The local Coast Guard office was thorough about checking our papers and updating our cruising log. At dusk a crew of four would take their 55-foot patrol boat out of the harbor and be away for about an hour.

After a couple of days it was time to head north—we had waited out a bit of rough weather and enjoyed the hot springs on this end of the island—and at 0855 on 14 June we slipped our lines and headed to the next island, Limnos.

An hour later we saw the wetbacks, right on our course. Jack was at the helm and spotted them when they were a mile off.
He had trouble figuring out what they were. Size and shape were closer to a small fishing boat than anything else, but it was not a small fishing boat. Mysterious. Nonstandard. But no collision risk, therefore case closed.

Got closer, saw four teenaged males straddling an inflatable raft, paddles in hand, four inner tubes trailing aft. Case re-opened.
Got closer, saw they were all wearing dark blue life vests.
All were shouting, three were beckoning with gestures, one was gesturing with a go-away sign. By now close enough to tell all four were swarthy, too swarthy to be Turks or any kind of European.
Also close enough to tell they were in trouble; they were obviously complete strangers to boats and the water, and they were on a little one of the former in the middle of one hell of a lot of the latter. Got closer, learned we had no language in common and they were speaking a tongue we could not identify. Good—these chaps were at least not speakers of Arabic (call us superstitious).
Pulled alongside, sternly discouraged them from boarding Horizons and pantomimed them into tying up to our midships cleat and our stern cleat. We began towing them back to Molivos and the Greek authorities.

(While all this was going on we were trying to hail the Greek Coast Guard on VHF Channel 16, the international distress channel.
Distressingly, no response. Later learned Greek Coast Guard monitors Channel 12 exclusively, a fact distressingly not reported in any of the expensive literature we have on board to inform us of such things.)

Half an hour later their inflatable raft (available at shops in tourist areas for 20 euros or less and about two meters long, who would go out on a thing like that?) began losing air. On board they came, along with two parcels tightly wrapped in plastic.
They were tired, wet, cold and scared. The captain of Horizons, a stern Turkish-looking gentleman some 61 years of age, repeatedly gave them a look to help keep them scared and to let them know how happy he was to see them. Laurie was less severe.

They were not thirsty—they had plenty of water. They were not hungry—they still had quite a bit of Turkish salami, which they offered us, out of gentilesse. (We politely declined, being familiar with that taste treat.) They opened the plastic-wrapped bags, which contained dry clothing and went below and changed.

Their preparations had been thoughtful (two personal flotation devices each, for instance), except for their selection of a swimming pool toy as their watercraft.

The lads were polite and well-groomed. Their cell phones and eyeglasses and their clothing were up to date and according to the latest fashion. They were dry and dressed as we finished the way back.

At 1030 we entered the harbor and made a lot of noise. The Coast Guard indicated we should tie up alongside their patrol boat, and the four lads were now in Greece, which had been their goal, but also in custody, which hadn’t. The Coast Guard impounded their raft and took them to the office. We followed, and gave a statement.

In addition to that part about using Channel 12 on the VHF, we learned that the boys were Afghanis (the Coast Guard could tell at a glance) who had set out from European Turkey hoping to paddle coastwise to the Greek mainland. They had been caught in the wind and the current, drifting overnight to six miles north of Lesvos. The Coast Guard knew all this because it happens all the time and they even have a special camp for wetbacks on the island. Afghanistan won’t take them back. Wetbacks are the reason, it turned out, for the evening patrol mission, which searches the waters to make sure no rafts can make the island in darkness.


We took the rest of the day off and arrived without incident the next day in Limnos, where we anchored for a while and took a spot on the town wall for a while, and Laurie found the ophthalmologist who diagnosed conjunctivitis and gave her a prescription, all better in a few days.

We dropped anchor in nearby Mudros Bay, where the Allied fleet was marshaled preparatory to the Gallipoli invasion. We moved inside the harbor when we saw an ugly front approaching and took a place on the town dock, safe as houses in eight feet. Just as we finished tying up, along came the front and another sailboat.
We helped him with his lines—he was singlehanding and pleased to get some help. Mon dieu, this fellow was a Frenchman who spoke perfect English! (It would be unworthy of me to suggest that just about every foreigner can speak good English when he jolly well needs to, so I won’t.)

On 21 June we went to Neas Marmara, on the mainland. Wonder of wonders! A free town dock with water and electric, and it became our base for a week. We took the bus to Salonika to see the Archaeology Museum (it is still undergoing renovations, so only one section was open) and a head boat to tour the Athos Peninsula with its population restricted to the approximately 1700 monks occupying monasteries built over the last seven centuries.

The Coast Guard/Port Police have been uncurious about us for a month now, since we are no longer in Wetbackland.

We finally completed our turn to the south. The plan is to have the wind behind us as we head to the Cyclades. We had a lovely motor to Skopelos, in preparation for the next blow. Skopelos is an attractive island and a pleasant town. The waves were crashing over the breakwater, and the swell pushed us one way while the wind pushed us the other. For hours and days. Laurie threw up while tied to the wall, a first. The second day Jack located the Taj Mahal of hardware stores and bought garden hose to protect the lines from chafing on the dock. We settled in to wait it out. Made friends with the charterers stuck on the wall with us, who needed to get back to Neas Marmara, when they could. A pleasant enough time, on balance.

Jack got the worst haircut in captivity on Skopelos, and now it’s starting to break loose.

This note is going to come to an abrupt halt. Sorry it’s so long, just wanted to do justice to the wetback story. But briefly here are the items promised at the beginning and not mentioned so far.

1. We are Americans, so we like chain stores, and discount stores,
which are more like what we are used to. Lidl’s is one of the best so far.
2. It was our turn to provide the entertainment the evening we
docked (somewhat clumsily) at Neas Marmara. No harm done, details are unimportant. (Trust me.)
3. Grilled octopus is great and the local calamari are world-class.
4. When we entered Greece, tourists were rare. They started
appearing in early July. But it’s still slow. August is coming and so is the onslaught.
5. We spent three days in Athens. Our standards for old rocks
and museums have become very exacting and Athens has exceeded them. We will go to Athens tomorrow to meet friends Pat and Bob from Rhode Island, who are concluding a two-week tour of Turkey and Greece.

You never thought it would happen, but this is

THE END

PS—Sorry, but photos will have to wait until we can get access to Wifi.