Greeting from the Ionian: The Spring Diaspora and the trail to Croatia.

At the end of March Julia and I returned from eight weeks away from Mary Ann and I found myself uttering one of those paradoxical cruising phrases: “Well, enough vacation from my vacation.” In actuality the cruising life is not really like a vacation of laying on the beach and having waiters bring you cocktails but more of ‘a seeking’ with times of intense preparation, soul-calming passages and cultural surprises, which appear mostly when least expected. In the Ionian the spring brings with it an eruption of the winter-dormant charter boat industry and soon an inevitable western European intrusion into the Greek island culture. The cafés with men twiddling their worry beads and older woman dressed head-to-toe in black will soon be overshadowed by the sun-burned classes.

We had integrated into the little dock community here these couple of months and early April found us doing the preverbal spring launching from our shore power umbilical cord and from a network of friends who will now scatter to the winds. It's a bit like facing hurricane season in the tropics when everyone has to make a move somewhere (or "chance the consequence".) Here it was a little bit more like adolescents moving from home as our dock spaces were taken up with charter boats. The sirens of Preveza, Corfu and Dubrovnik call. Of course, there will be no tying me to the mast, as we plan to be taken in fully by their seduction and lured ashore (Homer understood a thing or two about sailors, didn’t he?) A few days ago Julia said: “Oh, it did seem like it would be such a long time when we set off but eight months has gone like a flash.”

On April Fool’s Day our house in York passed on to a young couple, first time buyers and we left behind the nagging worries over frozen pipes and future tenants. We felt lucky to have sold as this year saw an expected 4.75% annualized return dwindle to a 3.5% on the property (and that was without counting interest payments or renovation costs.) But from a global perspective you have to think that a banking system which so heavily relied on Europe and American housing stock to bank role its reserves was a bit of a “house of cards”.- oh well. Julia is feeling much better about selling the house than I expected, especially since she so misses that charming English fixation – the garden.

Tom is still eager to test his mettle in a deployment to Afghanistan. When he told us he could be sent as early as June, we emptied our bank account to acquire a high frequency radio and special modem that can transmit and receive emails. This will let us stay in touch when there are no internet cafes or mobile phone masts. Satellite phones remain the venue of the rich and famous at 13 dollars a minute. Despite having had all this stuff on Mary Ann before, the new and improved kit is proving to be a test of my inherent geekiness / “right parietal lobe” approach to technology. It has also turned about half of our living space into piles after pile of emptied cabinets, just when we were feeling a bit more home-ie. Hopfully this is our last fairly major project, although entropy never rests near salt water.

So far we’ve done of a bit of retrograde sailing to a familiar haunt – Meganessi. On the way we anchored at Scorpios Island, which still belongs to the Onassis family in the bay where Aristole moored his famous mega-yacht: Christina. In Meganissi we met up with my 74-year old Welsh diving buddy, Tony. Thus far there are only us cruisers about and surprise, surprise all from the British isles (well if you count Ireland that is!) Our next stops were brief stays in Lefkas town and a harbour on the mainland, Preveza. Only a few miles away was the sea battle of Actiom where Augustus routed the fleet of Mark Anthony and Cleopatra.

We spent about a week on the lovely small island of Paxos south of Corfu. We particularly enjoyed joining in the Easter midnight candle-lit procession accompanied by the local brass band thru the village to the local Orthodox church. We’ve now been on Corfu Island for about a week. We’re presently moored in an ancient harbor at the back of a very large 800-year old Venetian fort. This morning we visited the birth place of Prince Phillip. In 1921 at the age of one year he was taken in a orange crate by the British navy to a destroyer for passage to Britain. This afternoon there is a rather substantial Greek wedding party at the restaurant just behind the boat. We feel a bit under-dressed but the dancing and festive atmosphere under the hot Mediterranean sun feels a bit like Zorba is going to come drag us on to the dance floor at any minute. The bride is lovely and a good time is being had by all.

We’re now just awaiting a good southerly mistral wind from Africa before we head to Croatia. We’re hoping for no more than a week before we bend on the spinnaker and head for Dubrovnik. I’ve posted a few photos on Facebook under Cruising the Ioanian.

Fair Winds and Beam Reaches,

John, Julia and Murphy.
SV Mary Ann II