The adventures of Captain Jack

Sea legs

(For Dutch click here) It’s almost five years since we live and sail fulltime on a small sailboat and still I have no sea legs. I have to train them again every season. Just like my sea stomach, sea body and sea head. It is best to build it up slowly, but there’s no time for that. So after five months in the sheltered harbor of Mesolonghi, we sail in three day trips to Kyparissia, in the southwest of the Peloponese. With faltering technology, the coldest Greek winter in 30 years and the next predicted winter storm as a serious deadline.

At the boatyard

(For Dutch click here) ‘No problem’, says the fisherman, but I highly doubt it when I see the large white Greek sheepdog coming straight at us with twisted lips and his mouth wide open. Our fearlessly barking Sammie seems to be his first target. As I lift a thick bamboo stick with both hands as high as possible above my head, I look straight into the big dog’s mouth. He doesn’t back down. Then I hit the stick on his head with all my strength. It breaks. Bamboo is not strong. Fortunately, the dog is put off anyway. Relieved, but still somewhat trembling, we enter the tavern, where we have just been invited for the remnants of the Easter table. Kalo Pascha (Happy Easter)!

Four years of(f) freedom

It’s on a Thursday just over four years ago that I close the door to my office for the very last time. Friday we hand over the keys of our empty house to the new owners. That same day we drive for the last time in our fully packed and already sold VW Polo to Kollum in the North of Holland. It takes three days for all our last belongings to finally find a place in our new sailing home: a seven-meter-long Cornish Crabber. The great adventure can begin. Or actually: it has already started.

Small world

Voor Nederlands klik hier

For a moment my heart sinks. When Dagmar and I step into the Lidl in Arta, I notice that the shelves with ‘non-essential’ items are covered with red and white ribbon and plastic again. This probably means that our Arta region has now also gone from ‘red’ to ‘deep red’, our lockdown rules have become stricter again and our world a bit smaller.

A dog’s life

“Dja skilos?” (for the dog), I ask the butcher’s wife in my best Greek. “Aaah, kokkalla …” she replies enthusiastically and turns around. I’m curious what she will come back with. Then I see her open the waste bin next to the butcher table and fill a plastic bag. When I inspect the contents, I look into six large, questioning eyes of three skinned heads of lamb and some other offal. No paying necessary. I thank her kindly. Our dogs are having another feast tonight.

Silent

It is quiet. Quieter than quiet. Even in Koronisia it has never been so quiet. We are in the middle of the second Greek lockdown, a curfew has been imposed and it is almost winter. But the silence doesn’t bother me. On the contrary, I enjoy it more and more. I can hardly imagine that I have been able to live without silence all these years.

(Un)limited possibilities

Summer 2021 cruising the rivers towards the Netherlands and this winter crossing over to Italy. Sounds like a good idea to us when we arrive in Koronisia, so familiar to us, more than a month ago. But the longer we talk about it, the more obstacles we see along the way. So for the time being we stay where we are: in Koronisia.

Hazardous adventure

Under the navigation table, a fire extinguisher and socket set lying around remind us of our perilous, nerve-racking journey away from Meltemiland. It all starts on the small Cycladic island of Koufonisi just south of Naxos. An adventurous trip, though. But not the adventure you are hoping for.

From nothing to nowhere

When the weather forecast finally indicates two calm days, we are ready. Our stocks have been replenished to the maximum, because we don’t know how long it will take before we’ll run into amenities such as running fresh water and a supermarket again. When double reefed we still sail out of the bay at top speed, we wonder what will become of the ‘calm weather’ forecast. As soon as we leave the shelter of the bay behind us, there are also the high waves after two weeks of Meltemi. It promises to be a tough journey. With the waves almost exactly sideways on our Coco, we regularly imagine ourselves in a washing machine. Fortunately, our speed is good and we pick up a mooring early in the afternoon in the perfectly sheltered eastern bay of the almost uninhabited island of Levitha.

Blue zone

Around here the blue of the sky almost seamlessly flows into the blue of the sea, but that’s not what they mean by ‘blue zone’. That term refers to a number of areas in the world where people live measurably longer and there are relatively many centenarians. The island of Icarias is one of them. I still doubt whether I want to live to be a hundred, but just in case, I would like to know how they actually do that.