Greece – 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.

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

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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.

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.

Normal

The Greek tavernas are allowed to open again, we are free to sail and step by step Greece is opening its borders for tourists. So all goes back to normal. Or not quite?

Category 6

Although I still wonder daily how the hell we got into this global mass hysteria, at the same time I try to accept our fate: in lockdown living aboard our Coco on the beautiful Greek island of Samos. There are worse places to be stuck and fortunately the strict rules also offer some escape options, like our favorite ‘category 6’: personal exercise and walking with pets.

Lockdown

When we get up at 6:30 that Monday morning, the Greek lockdown has just started half an hour ago. From now on we must have a statement with us to be out on the street. Walking Jackie I quickly do illegally. While drinking our morning coffee on our sailing yacht Coco, we find out exactly how it all works. When I read the statement that goes with it, I imagine myself in a scene from Orwell’s famous book ‘1984’.

Unreal

Perhaps there will be war with the Turks, the Greek fisherman whispers. We are having a drink with our neighbors, Ruud and Annette, and Yannis has also joined. Sometimes Turkish jets fly over Samos. Sometimes we see Greek soldiers driving around the island. Erdogan has opened the borders for refugees who want to go to Europe. The situation around the camps on Lesbos and Chios escalates almost immediately. The situation on Samos is also unsettled. It is forbidden to sail here. We are stuck on our sailing yacht Coco in what appears to be a war zone, but we don’t notice much of it here in Ormos Marathokampou. Sometimes there’s a silent witness on the beach: a disheveled life jacket. Empty. Lifeless. Unreal.

Scared

I lie awake for a while allready. Nightmares are ruining my sleep. I feel warm and I’m tossing and turning. In my dream I have lost Captain Jack and I am calling out to him constantly. Suddenly I wake up from a loud bang. Jack too. He is scared and crawls under our bed as far as possible. I have an indefinable premonition. The wind should be howling right now, but instead it is calm and dead silent. I lie in bed with baithed breath. It is half past two in the morning in the harbour of Ormos Marathokampou. All of a sudden the predicted storm and torrential rainfall do break through the ominous silence. A fierce katabatic windgust pushes Coco crooked over her fenders against the concrete quay. Things fly through the cabin. “I’m scared,” I say to Ron. “Me too,” he replies.

Travel stress

“Well ma’am, it says ‘security’ behind your name”, the friendly Transavia lady at the check-in desk explains the reason why I could not check in online and even not now in person at her counter. “Did something happen on an earlier flight?” I react as ‘blondly’ as possible and seem to convince her. She assumes a mistaken identity. In the meantime, musing about a ‘security risk’, I imagine something completely different than a scared dog that cannot be put in a locked bag under an airplane seat, as happened to us on our first Transavia flight with Captain Jack.