The trip to Kalymnos was uneventful, apart from what we suspect to have been a sonic boom which made Liz jump out of her skin. Bob dozed on contentedly. We entered a very protected anchorage in Emborius and picked up a buoy that had been laid by one of the local tavernas. This, of course, obliged us to go and eat there in the evening, but such are the trials of the cruising life.
We were last here on a package holiday in 1998, when it was hitting 45 degrees during the day and 35 degrees at night. It's not much cooler now.
One thing we have noticed in the Aegean is the relative dearth of Brits. There are plenty of Red Ensigns, but the boats are all owned/crewed by other nationalities, mainly Greek. It turns out it's a tax dodge. With Gordon Brown banging on about tax havens the words 'mote', 'beam' and 'eye' spring to mind.
Other than that there are plenty of Dutch, Germans, French, Austrians and Norwegians with a scattering of Swedes and other nationalities, but very few Brits. This isn't much of a problem as all of these nationalities converse with the others in English, but it's not quite as relaxed as conversing all together in the same native tongue.
There was, however, a Brit boat with a Brit crew in the anchorage and they went ashore and took a table in the taverna. We arrived later and sat a couple of tables down. We had thought of acknowledging them and striking up a conversation on the way in, but decided to get a drink first. It was just as well we did.
One of the three had managed to work his was through 2 litres of wine before the meal had even started. He was one of the most unpleasant, arrogant, pompous, inconsiderate, boastful, loud, obnoxious, overbearing, boorish, argumentative, xenophobic saloon bar bores we've ever been unfortunate enough to come across. We just sat in the corner avoiding eye contact and trying to look foreign. Luckily he was so self-obsessed he didn't even give us a second glance, let alone try to engage us in conversation.
We left the next morning for Kos. This is very close to Turkey and there are patriotic symbols all along the coast. On the Greek side this usually takes the form of huge Greek flags (100 + metres across) made up of blue and white stones strategically placed on hillsides facing directly towards Turkey. The Turks counter this by erecting bloody great flagpoles all over the place and flying Turkish flags the size of marquees from them. The symbolic equivalent of the playground 'Nyah nyah na na na!" . As Bertrand Russell so aptly put it "Nationalism is just tribalism with flags."
Kos is a brilliant marina in a lovely town on a fascinating island. This was just as well as we were stuck here for 5 days due to a slight technical hitch.
Bob was performing his thrice daily obeisance to the ammeter when he remarked "Blimey that solar panel's pushing in a lot of amps." Then he had a thought and reckoned it was too much current even for a 135 watt panel. So he disconnected it. Still loads of amps going in. Strange. So he disconnected everything that could put current in or draw it out. Still loads of amps going in. So he isolated both battery banks. Still loads of amps going in.
He was getting quite excited by this time, reckoning he'd inadvertently found a way to circumvent the laws of thermodynamics and conservation of energy. A glittering future of limitless clean energy on tap beckoned for mankind, not to mention fame and fortune for Bob.
He left everything disconnected and went to sleep to have a think about it. He couldn't sleep. But he could think about it.
On further investigation he found that one of the five series pairs of batteries was a trifle warm. Well, hot actually. Bloody hot. These were rapidly disconnected and extracted. On reconnecting the rest of the batteries and bridging the gap where he'd removed the hot batteries he found the problem had gone away, as had his chances of revolutionising energy technology. It turned out that one of the pair had sulphated, causing a short. This resulted in the other one discharging into the shorted battery, producing heat, a second knackered battery and spurious readings on the ammeter.
All that was needed now were two new deep cycle, 90 AH wet batteries which fitted into the available space. Bob went, more with hope than confidence, to the local chandlery who said they could have them by the next morning. Which, much to our amazement, they did, and quite reasonable at 135 euros each. Having hacked off a few flanges round the edges of both batteries he managed to fit them in and all was now well.
All that was left to do now was to explore the island of Kos and to work our way through the labyrinthine Greek bureaucracy so that we could clear out of Greece in order to be able to clear into Turkey.
The former was relatively easy and painless. The latter will be described in tedious detail in the next entry.
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The forecast winds were from the South, so we decided to head North-east to Samos. Naturally we had light Northeasterlies on the nose and had to motorsail all the way. We anchored in Pythagorias on the South coast, named after its famous son. Nice little town, but not a right angle in sight.
Pythagorias used to be the capital of the 6th Century B.C. tyrant Polykrates (roughly translates as 'Big Boss'). He decided to make his mark by instigating great public works (a harbour and a 1040 metre aqueduct bored through the mountain) and persecuting Pythagoras, who responded by disappearing off into a cave on the West of the island.
Samos is one of the bigger islands in the Eastern Med, so we hired a car to take a look around.
At Potami on the North coast was a walk along a gorge with a river running through it - cool, shaded and wooded - absolutely exquisite. At the head of this a steep and ramshackle set of wooden steps climbed to a treetop restaurant with views over the woods and out to sea. No disabled access here.
The next target was a deserted village and a church in a cave up in the mountains. Liz likes mountains. Here we came up against the Greek tradition of misleading signposts. This, we suspect, is designed to confuse invading Turkish troops and usually follows a pattern.
Firstly, the existence of some not to be missed site is marked on a map or guide book. As you approach in the car a sign is usually found at a multiple junction, cunningly placed so that it could, depending on the exact angle you view it, feasibly point in any of the 5 possible directions leading from said junction. Positioning a sign in precisely this way is very difficult and requires 3D geometric skills of the highest order. There's probably an entire department in the University of Athens dedicated to it.
Having overcome this first hurdle by employing all available Y chromosome spatial cognition abilities and finding the correct road you come across tactic 2. This involves placing the second sign just after the relevant junction and adding a frisson of a challenge by planting a large bush in front of it.
Level three of the game follows with a long stretch of road with no signs to your desired destination at all. This stretch of road is specifically chosen for having most of its junctions such that it is impossible to determine which road is the main road and which are the subsidiaries. If you manage to overcome all of this they reward you with a sign saying "Churchy villagey thing this way - 5 Km". Soon after that they play their trump card and the road just peters out into a narrow, rutted, boulder-strewn track bordered by precipitous drops.
Not to be outdone we, or more precisely Liz, determined that we should press on on foot. Bob concurred with his usual good grace.
It got hotter and stickier. We became sweatier and more dust covered. The swarms of flies became thicker and more irritating. After 3 kilometres (as measured by the pedometers) we came across another sign: "Churchy villagey thing this way - 5 Km". Were we disheartened? Well, Liz wasn't. Onward and upward we went.
Then Bob played his trump card. Whilst panting his way up a particularly steep, dusty, fly infested section he managed to inhale a rather large flying insect, which promptly lodged itself in the back of his throat. Understandably, it did not wish to disappear further into the hot, damp maw gaping before it, and so it sank its mandibles into where his tonsils would have been had he had any, and hung on for grim death. Which is what it got when he hawked, coughed, chewed and spat it out.
It came out mangled but, unfortunately, sans mandibles, which remained firmly embedded. Further hawking and coughing managed to loosen them a little but not completely dislodge them. It also managed to produce quite copious quantities of blood.
We'd been unable to determine what sort of insect it had been, as it was distinctly mangled by the time it came out, so we didn't know whether it had a sting or not. Both of us at this stage thought of the possibility that it might trigger a swelling of the tissues in the throat and compromise breathing. Neither of us, of course, mentioned this to the other.
So we abandoned the expedition and started to make our way back to the car. The things he'll do to get out of one of Liz's expeditions.
We tramped the track back to the car, with Liz surreptitiously checking Bob out every time he slowed or coughed out more blood. She had all sorts of horror scenarios running through here mind. Trying to get help from up a mountain in a pine forest in the middle of nowhere, especially in Greek would not have been easy. Bob didn't tell here that that particular problem wouldn't arise as he'd surreptitiously checked his mobile and there wasn't a signal there anyway.
Luckily there was no swelling and the bleeding had all but stopped by the time we got back to the car. We called it a day and went back to the boat.
Onwards to Kalymnos and Kos in the next, unedifying, instalment.
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Things seem to have moved on apace. It's now six weeks on (19th July) and we're in Kas in Turkey. What follows will, you'll be ecstatic to hear, need to be seriously condensed. It will also be in several parts.
So here's part one.
Light winds and smooth seas it was and Kithnos provided an idyllic anchorage. We'd have liked to have stayed on a bit, but what with the various delays and disasters we thought we'd better keep moving in order to get through the Cyclades before the Meltemi kicked in (of which more later). So the next morning we up anchored and sailed on to Paros, to another well sheltered anchorage. The met had indicated yet another blow coming up, so we looked at the marina in Paros, with a view to sitting it out there. Unfortunately it wasn't so much a marina, more a tiny, half built harbour with the only Birvidik-sized area cordoned off, so we set off for Naxos, which promised better shelter.
Naxos was better, which was just as well as, with one thing and another, we were there for a day shy of a fortnight. This was due to the expected blow (force 7-8), which lasted nearly that long, and another little snag that turned up.
Having been very strictly potty trained, Bob carries out full engine checks after every day's use. On checking the level of transmission fluid in the gearbox he was disturbed to find out that it was a smidgeon low. Further investigation showed that it was leaking from around the selector mechanism and pooling in the bottom of the engine bay.
A series of expensive mobile phone calls to The Blessed Bill Keating in Jersey (May his name be praised) pointed us to a worn O-ring which needed to be replaced, so we employed the services of a local diesel mechanic, who took out the selector shaft, toddled off to get and fit the appropriate O-ring and then brought it back and re-fitted it. Bob watched all of this closely, treating it as a free course in transmission maintenance - which was just as well as things turned out.
Said mechanic was a short, stocky troglodyte with a mass of curly, greying hair and a beard that looked as if it might be home to an entire ecosystem of birds and small mammals. He was a reduced version of Robbie Coltrane as Hagrid. Now, Bob was aware that the pressures in hydraulic gearboxes tended to be a tad on the high side, but he was surprised when mini-Hagrid did up the bolts using all of his considerable strength aided by a socket wrench which could have doubled as a tyre lever for a tractor.
After testing for leaks with the engine running, he wriggled out and pronounced the job done, adding that the gear lever might be a bit stiff for a while, until the O-ring bedded in. He took his 90 euros and toddled off.
When Bob tried the gear selector, he found that 'a bit stiff' was very much an understatement. It required both arms and the leverage of one foot against the bulkhead to get the thing to shift gear.
Bob then underwent a crash course in hydraulic transmission engineering, with the aid of several more mobile phone calls to The Blessed Bill Keating. The problem was eventually solved by redoing everything the mechanic had done, takings one bit out and putting some extra bits in and bolting the whole thing back together again. (Full boring technical details available under plain cover upon application). So, as Bob had to do the entire job himself in the end, it turned out that he'd effectively paid 90 euros for a 20 pence O-ring. Never mind, look upon it as a learning experience.
Despite the disasters, we can thoroughly recommend Naxos. It's the largest of the Cyclades, with lots to see and do. There are concerts on most nights up in the Castle, including a local music and dance evening which was carried out with genuine pride and enthusiasm, in contrast to the tourist pastiches that so often masquerade as local culture. The harbour is well sheltered, apart form some unusual motions induced by ferry wash, and the guy in charge, Kostas, is brilliant - really helpful. When we came to pay he said that he'd give us a special price, and he did. 5 euros a night, including water and electricity. Bargain.
We set off from Naxos to Patmos, with Bob nervously checking the gearbox every hour for signs of leakage or catastrophic collapse, but all was well. By the end of the day we were tied up in Patmos, having crossed the Cyclades and, hopefully, escaped the worst area for the Meltemi.
Now for a potter around the Dodecanese and then on to Turkey.
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