Kalymnos has, in my opinion, one of the most varied and splendid collections of statues, bar none. There was even a mermaid on the break wall entrance to the port. There were whimsical and historical statues, with different looks scattered along the bayside. In contrast our next stop, Leros, had only army generals busts for statues. We stopped at two bays in Kalymnos, the main town where Colleen bought the lucky lure, and at a harbor that had a couple of tavernas with a pleasant dinner and free mooring.


The town of Lakki lies on the island of Leros and is blessed with a beautiful deep harbor. We backed Homecoming up to the town wall, her butt facing the heavy north wind that had been forecast for the coming week, dropped the passarelle (gangplank), dug out the folding bike, and hunkered down for more than a week. The winds just did not stop. After WWI the winners were carving up the Turk Ottoman empire (who were losers) at Lausanne. The Italians ended up with a bunch of the islands including Leros where we were. The deep harbor and strategic (I'm not sure why) location lent itself to being a giant Italian naval base. The Italians brought in architects who envisioned the little town of Lakki in its entirety. They used an Art Deco 30s industrial slab design. WWII found the Italians in cahoots with the Germans this time, and when Italy capitulated the 3000 some Italian soldiers on Leros had to decide who to fight for. The British quickly bombed them mercilessly and invaded from Crete and so the Italians fell in line with the British. The Germans, not ones to miss out, bombed the British and Italians even more, invaded and the Italians had some explaining to do. In visiting the town of Lakki the most amazing thing is, with all this fighting and bombing, how the bombs could have missed all the ugly Italian 1930s industrial slab buildings in the downtown and the Italian naval base. The buildings survived and are all still there in a slow decay beneath the Greek sun.

The Leros "War Museum" was an odd collection of bits of planes, bombs, canteens, and all the different occupiers helmets. The whole thing was stored in a series of long dank underground tunnels, which the bombs seemed to miss as well. Colleen managed to dodge that museum.

We ended up in a little Italian cafe in Lakki and as often happens, Colleen struck up a conversation with the guy seated beside us. He was an actor from England and his wife he said was winding up Phantom of the Opera shows after 30 something years. Sure enough the next morning it was front page news that the show was closing, we heard it first in......Lakki.

Pk version "Colleen gave us the weather all clear after a week and we headed from Leros for Naxos 70 some miles away. Homecoming made excellent time and performed well in the residual heavy waves."
Ck version "I don't think the wind will ever stop, but this day seems better than others, are you sure this boat won't flip?"

After making awesome time we anchored off Apollo's temple at Naxos and watched as the Temple Mount filled with people watching the sunset. I am sure people had been making the same trek up the hill and gathering there to pay tribute to Apollo in much the same way. Naxos was closing up for the season so we enjoyed the last minute sales in the medieval winding streets. At the restaurants it kind of left you wondering if the stuff you were eating was something they found on the bottom of the freezer and said heh we better get rid of this.

After two seasons of dragging a lure behind the boat and untold Euros spent on "better" versions of lures we finally caught a fish. It was a baby swordfish (tip to toe about 30" long) that we put back in the sea. It had gone for our lure and caught its sword thing on the hook. Our nephew Erik says they use their sword to stun the prey before eating, so it was probably trying to stun the lure and got caught. The next day we landed a largish sea bream that joined us for dinner, reeled it in, filleted, and into the pan in under 15 minutes.

The taverna cats see the tavernas winding down, the hardy tourists that are left wearing sweaters. The cats who are seasoned are becoming bolder in their desperation. Colleen had one follow her down the dock, banging into her, meowing, and then came right up the passarelle by putting her paw on it to lower it down onto the dock. Seasoned cat I say and knows her way around boats. We immediately shut the door and got some tuna out for it. The tuna was no sooner open than the cats paw reached in through a little gap left in the door and snagged the can trying to drag it outside. We dumped the contents at the end of the dock and ran back inside, later that night we could hear the cat pattering on the roof, and meowing. In an ominous meow she said "winters coming".


The boat was taken out of the water and set on some blocks of wood for the winter at Basimakopoulos shipyard. The yard has seemingly grown over the years to inhabit several fields of boats. The Basimakopoulos family house sits in the middle of it all like a farmers house in a field of corn, the masts spreading out from the house. The yard is very neat and well laid out. Most of the people we've encountered are part of the Basimakopoulos family, even the people we talk to in town have someone related to them. Homecoming should be happy here, so far so good.

We ended up getting a layover in Munich on the way home. Keegan is there at the Technical University Munich for his masters degree. He was just starting the semester so we were able to see a classroom, his lodging and a good part of Bavaria. Bavaria is the state that the city Munich lies in. We were pleasantly surprised with Munich. The whole city contains buildings that are pretty much all five levels high. The whole thing is connected by mass transit of buses, trams, subways, and trains. Thanks to google for the direction app we had less times getting lost. It tells you to take Uber bahn 2 towards Olympiastrasse then walk two minutes to bus 4 towards meingenpolatz. After a few days we started to actually make the intended connections and a real sense of achievement. The beer purity laws of 1516 limit what ingredients can go into the German beers, water, barley, and hops. Some areas of Germany no longer follow this blindly. Munich is not one of them, this gives the seven breweries of Munich a very similar product. it also makes the four or five variations of beer they make taste similar. It definitely leaves you yearning for a hearty pale ale, so that yearning brought us back to the USA and the end of this story, till spring.

*** Please note there are Photo & Homecoming's location links depending on what you are using they are either at bottom of the page under the first blog written or to the right or left of the page.