harry
@sysop
sysadmin sailor slacker programmer currently on the wine-dark Archipelago in my BCC 28, Indigo
Two pretty yachts in Porto Cheli - the second is Shamrock V, last surviving America’s Cup J-Class; a sign in modern and Tsakonian Greek, the latter the last surviving Doric dialect; a sign while walking the route of the first marathon towards the Lyceum.
Got a little karma for mocking an English sailor nearly exactly one year ago at the Scottish border. Sailing for Eyemouth, he put into Burnmouth (and ran aground). They’re 2nm apart! …& today I lazily ran downwind into Plaka, moored, & found myself in Sabatiki, 2nm north. (No grounding though 😮💨)
I had a replacement gearbox for my windlass shipped here. The old gearbox’s worm & wormwheel teeth fully sheared off - because, so far as I can tell, a previous owner ‘upgraded’ the sacricifcial drive pin, preventing it from failing on a jam & so protecting the worm as intended 🙃 🪱
In Monemvasia, ‘Gibraltar of the East,’ whence Malmsey wine was once shipped and for which it is named 🍷⛵️🇬🇷
Also on the island: the so-called cave of Nestor, a pretty spot, and one inhabited from the stone age onwards.
This is not the only noteworthy battle in the area. Modern 🇬🇷’s independence was won when a 🇬🇧/🇫🇷/🇷🇺 fleet brazenly sailed into the roadstead & sank a larger & better-positioned Turkish fleet. The Greeks maintain memorials to the allies. The Brit’s is on an islet in the center of the bay, seen here.
The Spartans then landed across this narrow channel, on Sphacteria, a comical mistake - when the Athenian fleet arrived in force, they were stranded. The soldiers’ eventual surrender and captivity was a tremendous blow to Spartan prestige. Thucydides can tell you more!
fended off a sea assault here, on the southwestern tip, per Thucydides - an assault in which Brasidas first distinguished himself! (He is said to exhorted the Spartans to wreck their ships on the rocks to land, which… not great advice, Brasidas. Not great. But certainly brave.)
I climbed to the top of the once-island, now peninsula, called Pylos, which is some miles north of modern Pylos town across the bay of Navarino. It’s here Demosthenes & Cleon accidentally laid a trap which caught ~200 Spartans on the island of Sphacteria, just south. They fortified Pylos, and…
Spent some days in sandy Pylos last week. Visited the tholos (Mycenaean) tomb called Thrasymedes’. (A son of ‘wise’ Nestor, wanax of Pylos and giver of mostly bad advice in the Illiad. His reputed palace in the nearby hinterland I visited some years ago.)
Mandatory yacht inspection by the harbormaster of Sami, Kefalonia. Frankly she was embarrassingly easy to bribe.
Which would mean that my passages from Scylla & Charybdis to Corfu to the north of Palliki, anchoring below Arethousa’s spring, well matches the poem’s homecoming narrative :). I was not required to complete any archery-related tests of skill, however. #sailing #odyssey #archaelogy #history⛵️🏺
Zakynthos is the southernmost of the Ionians. Kefalonia was once (probably) called Samos or Same. Both would be of Odysseus’ kingdom. To the east of Kefa lies so-called Ithaca; I am convinced the real Ithaca is now Kefa’s westernmost peninsula, Palliki (www.odysseus-unbound.org/evidence/)
At anchor, dusk, in the bay of Abelike, Meganisi, just north of Ithaki. We’re bound for Patras, then onwards to the Corinthian Canal.
Rewired Indigo's 2x 130w solar panels from series to parallel (better performance when one is shaded - increased current isn't a concern with such a small array). Add the new lifeline mounting location (which reduces overall shade), & Apollo's fulgent summer sun 🇬🇷, & voila: our first kWh day!
Leaving a Lefkas marina pontoon under sail power alone ⛵️ (conditions were optimal: wind fifteen on the nose, marina’s exit astern, Indigo moored to end of the pontoon)
Anchored for tonight off Aetos, Ithaki. Here, a bronze age citadel of lesser fame than Mycenae or Pylos - is it Odysseas’ palace 🏺? We’ve come two & a half miles from Vathy. I sailed it on wind which was mostly just rumour - an hour or more, fifteen tacks, to drift out the harbor channel ⛵️ #sailing
