Birvidik

Or Repairs & Renovation.

Kos started off well and then slid inexorably downhill. Those with long memories will remember our previous, unsuccessful, attempts to get into Kos marina last year. With a sense of deja vue I rang them and asked if there was the slightest chance of getting a berth for a few days to sort out our little problems. "Of course" they replied "When do you want to come and for how long?". I should have been suspicious straight away.

We reversed direction and set sail for Kos at sparrowfart on the Monday and got in about midday. I went over to reception and booked in for three days. While I was there I asked the receptionist if there was an at least halfway competent electronics bod in the vicinity and she gave me a mobile number. (I mean, of course, the number of a mobile 'phone and not a set of positive integers capable of independent motion). I reckoned that Dejan Sevic didn't sound authentically Greek but I rang the number and by 1:30 we had a fluently multilingual Serb on the boat poking around with the electronics. After about 10 minutes of this he demonstrated that his diagnostic skills were at least on a par with mine by pronouncing that "Your GPS engine is knackered". I told you he was fluent.

Even in Kos there was nowhere with one of these in stock. The Greeks seem to have got the 'just in time' school of logistics down to a fine art. Either that or their credit rating is now so low that no-one will supply them with so much as a paperclip unless paid up front. Apparently he had actually held three in stock but these had all been used up in the aftermath of a recent thunderstorm which had wreaked havoc with electronics across the Dodecanese. "Not to worry" he assured me, "I can order one from Athens and it'll be here by tomorrow". Impressed and reassured by his confidence I set off to Kos town to get Vodafone sorted out.

This proved somewhat more problematic, with a repeat of the demands for more numbers that I didn't have. They were, at least, different numbers that I didn't have from the ones previously demanded over the 'phone, but I still didn't have them. The absence of a Greek tax number didn't seem to bother them at all. I'm sure they just make these things up to relieve the boredom of spending eight hours a day selling pointless accessories and irritating ringtones to hordes of gormless, vapid adolescents. It transpired that the only way to sort things out was to set up an entirely new contract from scratch. This only took three days and five visits to the shop.

The next day was notable for the absence of any visit from Dejan. When I finally 'phoned him he said that the main agent in Athens didn't have any in stock and he couldn't give a date when he would. It was looking like the 'poor credit rating' theory was gaining strength. On the bright side though the hand held GPS seemed to have done an Ernest Saunders and made a miraculous recovery from Altzheimers. It will be interesting to see to whom that apparent miracle is attributed. I'm half expecting the beatification procedure to kick in for Bernie Madoff and Fred Goodwin soon - probably before they're even dead.

Taking solace from our partial success we set off for Kalymnos and made fast to a buoy in Emborios. We hired a scooter for a couple of days and toured the Island. The road from Emborios south reminded me of when we rode a motorcycle down the Croatian coast in the early 1970s. It winds its way precariously halfway up between the soaring limestone crags and the sea, giving a breathtaking view over the many islets and bays. Occasionally they've erected a token crash barrier, but usually the road is edged with about a metre or so of loose gravel and then it falls precipitously onto the rocky shore below.

Travelling in on the bus to pick up the bike, we were somewhat less than encouraged by the fact that the locals had a habit of crossing themselves whenever the bus approached a bend. This faded into insignificance when we had to get a taxi back after dropping off the bike. The driver gave a passable impression of Peter Sellers impersonating a gangster in one of the Pink Panther films - drastically overweight, wedged into the driving seat of his Merc, slicked back dyed black hair and shades. He had obviously trained at the same school of taxi driving as the stunt drivers in 'The Italian Job'. He threw the Merc into one corner after the other with such enthusiasm and speed that we spent the entire journey with our faces pressed flat against alternate windows. Tyres squealed and gravel flew. We sank into our seats and nervously tightened the seatbelts. He did all of this with one hand, leaving the other free for doughnuts, mobile phone and, as he approached any particularly circumflex bend, crossing himself. Does crossing oneself with a doughnut in one's hand have any particular theological significance I wonder?

These terrors notwithstanding, I've got a soft spot for Kalymnos and the Kalymniots - they hang on in there come what may..

The island used to have a thriving economy based on sponge diving. Sponges were big business as far back as the Mycean era. According to no lesser authority than Lawrence Durrell, the servants in 'The Odyssey' swabbed tables with them. They were used by artisans to apply paint. Soldiers used them to transfer wine from amphora to mouth. Burnt sponge served as a cure for various illnesses and sponges soaked in olive oil were used as contraceptive pessaries. Indeed, in the argot of modern Athenian prostitutes the word 'sponge' has a number of colourful translations.

Getting hold of them, though, (sponges, not Athenian prostitutes) was a phenomenally dangerous activity involving grabbing hold of a large rock and throwing yourself off a boat into 20 metres or more of water without so much as a pair of goggles or a swimming costume. On hitting bottom the diver took the iron bar from between his teeth and started prizing sponges off the sea bed and depositing them in a basket tied to his waist. Just before he expired from hypoxia he would head for the surface (no fins) and, if he was lucky, still be conscious enough to breathe when he got there.

The advent of hard hat diving suits should have increased available working depths and improved their life expectancy no end. It did the former but as for the latter it brought its own little limitations. For a start the air was supplied by a couple of bored matelots working a see-saw bellows a bit like those hand trucks they used to use on the railways in the old west. They had to pump constantly and at increasing rates as the diver descended. If their attention wandered, or they stopped for a fag or sloped off for a dump, not only could the diver not breathe, but the pressure in the suit dropped off. This caused the suit to compress under the higher water pressure. Brass helmets, though, don't compress very well. The only entrance available to equalise the pressure is the neck of the helmet. Can you see where this is going? At 30 metres the total force on the body of the suit is equivalent to around 2500 newtons (about a quarter of a tonne). The low pressure (which is where the water wants to push stuff) is in the helmet.... It doesn't bear thinking about, does it?

Even if they survived all that, there was the small matter of decompression sickness. No-one told them about nitrogen saturation curves. Hardly surprising, since no-one at the time no-one knew anything about them. Divers crippled by the bends became a familiar sight around the island. Between 1886 and 1910 some 1 000 divers died and another 2 000 were crippled.

After the privations of the second world war, the advent of scuba gear and decompression tables should have done wonders for the Kalymniot economy, but the double whammy of mysterious sponge diseases attributed to pollution and the advent of cheap synthetic sponges killed off the fledgling recovery. Undeterred, the island succumbed to the siren promises of the package holiday industry and the west coast was transformed into the Benidorm of the Dodecanese. The tour companies stayed just long enough to ruin both the local ambience and what local commerce there was before suddenly pulling out completely, ostensibly because their poor pampered punters couldn't face a 20 minute boat transfer from Kos and the Kalymniots baulked at blighting a significant proportion of what was left of their island with the construction of an international airport.

So they dusted themselves down and started again. They promoted themselves as a walking and climbing venue, making good use of the island geography. This took off in a big way and they now have a thriving industry which, according to some with whom we spoke, is bringing in more income for much less disruption than the not sadly missed bucket, spade and lager brigades. Of course, now the Greek economy's imploded.....

Despite all their troubles the island continued to develop, to the point where Kalymnos town is now the second largest in the Dodecanese, having overtaken Kos. This made us think that it might be worth trying to get our GPS sorted out there, and so it turned out. It was still the 'order from Athens' syndrome, but the guy in the shop 'phoned Athens there and then, ascertained that the model we had was obsolete and advised us of a compatible replacement. This arrived in three days (over a weekend) and I fitted it and had it working within two hours.

Now we could continue across the Aegean.

Except for the fact that we'd now missed the weather window.