Hubris!

Our August/September update was supposed to smugly mention that we had circumnavigated the Aegean Sea.

Sin of Pride! Hubris!

If you remember your first Greek play, you know that the gods always punish that sin.

We mentioned last time that we had turned south. Our thinking was that going south with the meltemi pushing us downwind would be easy. We were wrong. With 30-50 knots of wind behind us and confused seas, nothing was easy. The autopilot wouldn’t work, one of the crew was often sick, so the other had to hand steer, and that took some brawn. Basically, sailing downwind in the Aegean was joyless.

By the time we got to Naxos, where Theseus dumped Ariadne after she saved him from the minotaur on Crete, it was time to reassess. We decided to take the ferry to Santorini instead of sailing there ourselves. We decided to go to Crete some other time. Marmaris by September 1 became our goal.

Now, Santorini is every bit as special as all the guidebooks tell you. Coming into the caldera at Santorini, especially if you are not worried about figuring out how or where you will anchor, is magnificent. The best stuff taken from Akrotiri, the civilization that blew up with the volcano, is in the Museum in Athens, but even the stuff they left in Santorini is wonderful. The island is pretty much overrun with tourists and shopping, but even so the village of Io is beautiful and the village of Thira, which has museums of the stuff that Athens didn’t get, is spectacular.

The museum in Thira speculates that Santorini was an outpost of an advanced civilization on Crete, which was destroyed in the same earthquake/tsunami that destroyed Crete. We have no opinions, having not made it to Crete. We’ll let you know next spring when we continue our interrupted circumnavigation of the Aegean and go to Crete.

Anyway, back that interrupted circumnavigation. Once we decided this was a futile endeavor, we headed east from Naxos to the Dodecanese. We had been to the Dodecanese in the fall but had spent no time there. This time we spent four days in Kos, where Hippocrates established the basis of modern medicine (and Laurie had some blood tests run for $30) We met several boats of friends in Kos, and all had had their plans changed by the meltemi.

If Poseidon and Aeoleus were conspiring to make our trip through the Aegean difficult, we had not expected the Furies (in the form of flesh eating bees) to get their last licks in on Symi. We anchored in the lovely anchorage where we had been last year, near the monastery, prepared to just kick back. There is little there except peace. And, it turns out, bees. They found us after day three. Having found us, we could not make them go away. After enduring three gratuitous stings, we decided to go around the island to Pethi, a deep but lovely harbor near the main town of Symi, where we could take a 20 minute bus ride to the main town to check out of Greece.

Symi town is a delightful Greek town, built largely in the 19th Century, so there are many buildings in neo-classical style, and many residents speak English, as their families are part of the Greek diaspora that took place in the 1800’s and 1900’s. We also stocked up on two valuable Greek commodities—wine and pork, enough to last us, we hope, until we come back to the States in November.

One last round of horrible seas (it took us 3 hours to go 9 miles, under power) and we were in Datca, Turkey. (We left on the best of three days predicted for the trip).

Things changed almost immediately. Greek weather is about wind, Turkish weather is about heat. We welcomed these changes.

Jack had wanted to simply do some gunkholing all summer, so we took a couple of weeks in the gulf that lies between Datca and Marmaris, the Hisaronu. This is a gulf of lovely anchorages, virtually no old rocks to require investigation, and the delightful bay of Keci Buku, where the three enterprises at the end of the bay entice you to stay forever by offering free electricity and water in exchange for buying an excellent, inexpensive meal at the restaurant. We also got to watch the free show of two locals leading their sheep into the water (throwing in the reluctant ones) and then washing them. A lively market once a week, means beautiful fruits and vegetables are available—a Turkish specialty. We ran into several more boats from Kemer who had also abandoned thoughts of Greek island hopping to the meltemi, so it quickly turned into a party atmosphere.

Continuing on to Marmaris, we discovered that we had a new problem to fix. We had had the engine serviced in Keci Buku by a recommended mechanic, and now we could no longer get the power the engine is designed for. Oh, well, add that to the list of things to be fixed in Marmaris.

We are having a new enclosure made while we are in Marmaris, and progress is well underway. Our expectation is that it will be done around mid-September. The Turkish family who are making it are quick and good, and our design has been vetted by the dad, who used to be a leather worker for Mercedes. We are also looking for an English speaking plumber.

We were delighted to run into friends from Rome, last seen in the Ionian, who came into Marmaris three weeks ago for a few days. The delights of the beautiful new pool were too much to give up at the low prices of Yacht Marine. They didn’t even have the excuse of needing work done. They have decided to come back and winter here, as there are many kids in Yacht Marine over the winter, which we couldn’t promise them at Kemer. They have decided to gunkhole for a few months in the lovely bays to the south of here, which we came through last spring.

We’re sorry we didn’t achieve our objective of the season, but we were much happier when we decided to just be cruisers.

This time we can offer to send you a limited selection of pictures from the summer cruise. We have wifi and it works!