The Team
From left to right..
Mike: Engineer, scribe and fish botherer.
Marianna: Mermaid, knot theorist and bruschetta champion.
Fransien: Social media liaison, garlic chopper and DJ.
Lindsey: First mate & enforcer. Significant sailing experience although not on pirate ships.
Captain Cobra: Our skipper, involved previously in only two sinkings. Known for taking inopportune afternoon naps and being comprehensively biurnal.
Amy: Chief cocktail engineer, fashionista and part-time navigator.
The Route
We started and finished at Levkas port. The places we overnighted at were
1) (Friday night): Varko
2) (Saturday night): Fiskardo
3) (Sunday night): A nameless cove on Cephalonia
4) (Monday night): Ithaci/Vathy
5) (Tuesday night): Kastos
6) (Wednesday night): Mytica
7) (Thursday night): Spartochori, Meganisi
The Boat
A modified 39ft Elan. We removed the cannons and used the freed up space to store booze and jars of jam and marmalade. The boat had a foresail, a mainsail, tell tails, chrome gunwales and onboard email.
The Sailing
By far the best sailing day was the last, when we had 20 knot winds and got the boat up to 8 knots on a close reach. The listing of the boat created challenges for Amy as she worked the bar but she didn't spill a drop and delivered delicious espresso martinis up to the rest of the crew as they tumbled around on deck.
Just when we were getting into it the mainsail started to come out of its furler in the mast, so we pulled it in and motored the rest of the way home. Earlier in the week the mainsail traveller rope had snapped too. Also, the automatic anchor winch gave us lots of trouble - slipping too much initially, and then when tightened it started getting jammed all the time too. "I ALWAYS HATED THOSE AUTOMATIC ANCHOR WINCHES". Basically the boat was falling apart every time we tried to do anything ambitious with it. Fortunately we spent most of the week being unambitious because of the lack of wind.
Varko (Friday night)
The first night (Friday night) was spent in Varko cove just an hour's motoring from Levkas. We had bruschetta for dinner with olive tepanade that was absolutely devine. We had what we thought might be three days' worth of alcohol on board but managed to drink pretty much all of it on that first night.
Saturday July 4th
Lindsey wore her stars and stripes bikini.
The rest of the crew joined in for some singalong of such American classics as the theme song from Team America World Police.
We stopped in the middle of NOWHERE in the sea and went for a swim in perfectly flat, 240 metre deep crystal clear waters.
Captain Dimitri had a nap, during which time a boatload of nudist Danish lesbian pirates pulled up alongside for a chat. ("ALL THEY WERE WEARING WAS EYEPATCHES...ON THEIR EYES!") We were sure he must have been woken by the thumping of their wooden stumps on our deck, but apparently he is quite a deep sleeper indeed.
Tuna Pasta and Private Cove (Sunday Night)
We stayed Sunday night in a not-so-well-sheltered cove, that we had all to ourselves. Lindsey and Mike went fishing (more on that later). We had cooked a MASSIVE bowl of tuna pasta for lunch and it was wheeled out again for dinner. In the evening we played Cards Against Humanity, the original version.
The anchoring was a common topic of conversation that night - "Is the anchor holding?" "Are we drifting?" "Will we hit those rocks in the night?". We figured we were probably OK. Fransien and Lindsey went to bed. A few beers and wines later Captain Cobra noticed on the GPS tracker that we had drifted more than we should have with the change in wind. "Why don't we drop the second anchor" he said. "What?! There's a second anchor??!" replied Mike. We stumbled over the deck and woke everyone on the boat with the loud clanging of metal and chains. Fransien and Lindsey had a fitful night's sleep, being a bit worried we were going to hit the rocks, and then being convinced we were being boarded by pirates (of the clothed and less friendly kind). With the second anchor out, Captain Cobra and Mike slept like logs.
That was the case until about 5am, when the waves shooting into our not-so-well-sheltered cove started slapping the bottom of the boat hard and woke everybody up.
Vathy/Ithaci (Monday night)
Dimitri made an awesome omelette for breakfast and we set sail for Vathy, on the island of Ithaca, the home of Odysseus.
The navigator was busy below decks mixing cocktails and we missed a left turn by about 3 miles, however the detour did take us into an area of 13 knot winds and we got some sailing in, getting to a top speed of about 5 knots.
The water station incident
As we approached Vathy we stopped to get some water at the gas/water station on the entrance to the harbour. The word 'stopped' is used in the most bracing, sudden sense. We made our approach to the dock at about 3 knots. Lindsey jumped off the bow and got the bow line in. The boat screeched to a halt and the stern started drifting away. "STERN STERN STERN!!!" Lindsey ran to catch the stern line and tied it down just before the boat went through 180 and we would have had to frantically whip the fenders over to the other side of the boat. The guy running the water/gas station emerged from his little office with his hands on his head and said to Captain Cobra in Greek "... are you in a hurry?"
While the Captain and the gas/water guy conversed ("How are you?" "How could anybody be happy today in Greece...") Mike needed to tighten the stern line. "Just wrap it around a couple times more" someone said, helpfully.
When we were ready to leave the gas/water man kindly offered to untie the lines. He undid the bow line and then moved to untie the stern line as the Captain brought on the power. When he saw the mess of rope he just stopped and put his hands on his head again.
Eventually we extricated ourselves from the gas/water/despair station and made it to Vathy. We posed by a statue of Odysseus' head.
Mike took the broken speaker from the boat to the chandlery (yes another broken thing). He asked Captain Cobra to ask the guy if he might by any chance sell such things. The conversation apparently went something along the lines of
"Hey, how are you? We were wondering.."
"Forget about it"
"Yeah ... we were wondering if you sold speakers like these?"
"Like those? Forget about it. Are you sure it's broken?"
"Yes - we swapped it with another speaker and it worked so we know for sure. So you don't sell them?"
"No - forget about it!"
"Ok thanks"
"Have a nice day my friend."
Then we had gyros (dirty food) and played home-made Cards Against Humanity (dirty game).
Kastos (Tuesday night)
Everyone got seriously loaded on cafe freddo's and then we set off for Kastos.
On the way to Kastos we saw dolphins!
We stopped in at a little cove we had all to ourselves and played about, jumping off the boat getting the crew to take photos of us in mid-air
This was a bay that we got the inside track on by a fellow mariner that Captain Cobra befriended in Ithaki. There was a beautiful cafe on the waterfront. Marianna swam to shore from the boat and came out of the water looking like Hale Berry in a James Bond film. Captain Cobra swam to shore too, his emergence a little less James Bond, more Godzilla!
We stuffed our faces with scorpion fish, sea bream, greek salad, the garlic potato mash thing and wine for 70EUR at a lovely restaurant near the windmill. Noticing that the wine glasses were the exact same ones as the ones on the boat, of which we had broken 2 or 3, we asked the waiter if we could buy some off him. "Buy?!? just take them!"
Dimitri, Marianna, Mike and Amy were drawn in by the sound of guitar playing and singing from a bar up the hill a bit. Marianna and Dimitri stayed on until the early hours...
The fish situation(s)
Mike had been trolling a lure behind the boat most days but caught only two things
1) the dinghy, which was also being towed behind the boat
2) the keel of another yacht that took our stern a little too aggressively.
He also did some bait fishing when possible. On Thursday morning Mike and Dimitri's dad went out in the dinghy around Mytica and caught a couple of fish.
Mike's was a small sea bream that had a talent for late 80s rap
Dimitri's dad caught a painted comber (yes that's the name, I looked it up). Stock photo:
Lindsey and Mike had also been out in one of the bays that we had anchored in and caught several painted combers. At one point Lindsey caught a whale. But it turned out not to be a whale, it was the sea floor.
In the end we never caught a fish big enough to eat, so in Kastos Mike and Captain Cobra chased down Yannis the local fisherman at Kastos on Wednesday morning and bought a bream and a scorpion fish.
After buying the fish Mike asked the captain to ask Yannis how we could catch fish ourselves. His response, in Greek, was "Forget about it. There are no fish."
So, that morning as we headed off from Kastos towards Mytica, Amy worked in the galley to prepare ceviche and we pulled in at a gorgeous cove (Paradise #4) for ceviche and BBQ pork lunch. It was awesome.
Wednesday Mytica
In Mytica we had an absolutely smashing dinner at a restaurant on the waterfront in Mytica with Dimitri's lovely parents!
We finally had our moroccan mud bath treatments, in a tiny little cove that is now named "Captain Cobra's Mud Spa and Luxury Retreat"
... and had naps. Amy and Mike were the first to wake up and headed up the hill into town. They had tsipouro's while watching the sun set and listening to the waiter tell Mike that he definitely looked very Greek.
Lindsey and Fransien joined them. By 10pm everyone was very hungry. Captain Cobra was no-where to be found so we attempted to find a restaurant ourselves. We easily found the noisy touristy place with the plate smashing and the drinking-of-shots-from-the-floor. Walking past that we came to a quiet little taverna with no english speaking staff. It was indeed the only other taverna in town, so after a sufficient amount of finger pointing and gesticulating we secured a table and ordered some food.
Dimitri was coming up the hill and ended up chatting to some locals. "Have you seen my friends?" he asked "What, the three girls and a guy that don't speak Greek?" "Yeah" "Yes I heard they went to the ____ taverna".
By midnight only Mike, Dimitri and Marianna were left at the taverna and Mike was quite sloshed. He declared his incapacity for walking down the hill unaided and so Marianna and Dimitri very kindly shepherded him down the hill ensuring he didn't get closer than 2m to the cliff edge. After SSSSHHHing their way along the dock they got to the boat and stood there thinking "No, the night's not over yet!". There was a nightclub on the opposite side of the bay with thumping music and flashing lights. Like moths, the three of them unslung the dinghy and rowed over to the club with a bottle of rum on board. "LET'S MAKE AN ENTRANCE" we said to each other.
At the club there was only one person, who left as we arrived.
We had a drink and then rowed back (let's make an exit?). When we got to the boat, after a lot more
SSSSSSHing past the other boats, we found Amy standing on the deck in a sheet. "I can't sleep" she said. "Well, get onboard!!" we chorused. Back out into the bay we went, to row in circles and finish the rum. With four people in the dinghy the water was only an inch from the gunwhale, but she held and all four sailors were returned to the yacht eventually ready for a good night's sleep.
Friday
Behold also some consistent smiles:
In addition to Fish Daddy's rapping (above), there was 80s dancing...
There were some other oft-used quotes that didn't make it into the retelling above that need to be recorded for posterity:
"When we sailed in Corsica this never happened"
"Unfortunately, peanut butter."
"Mierenneuker!"
"It's my favourite!"
"... definitely in my top 5"
"AVIVA"
Thank you, and goodnight, from Captain Cobra and his crazy crew.
