JASON AND THE ALPONAUTS 2019
So…. Ja..so..n here on the good ship Alpos, once Jan of Damacle. It's high summer 2019 and Damacle remains safely moored up in Marina De Las Salinas duneside of Murcia's Mar Menor, at the other end of the Mediterranean Sea.
It's been an interesting and as so often quietly peripatetic twenty-six days since getting a flight from Murcia to Stansted and then on to Athens, utilizing those big birds with golden-harp-emblazoned tails, and that, post having booked my seats on them, required of me a further €12 per journey leg to take my baggage, which continues to (now even more euphemistically) be called cabin baggage and be of weight (less than 10Kg) and dimensions (55 x 40 x 20 cm) that allow it fit into an overhead locker. Apparently my additional €24 payment has no profit impact, so Uncle Michael said.
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Click a chartlet to get to a particular leg of the voyage.
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Olympic Marina
Rant over, I can report I landed safely if slightly delayed at Athens Airport around 02:30 on the morning of the 20th of June, and with a first bus service departing for Lavrion at 06:30, I forewent the luxury of a hotel room and did some sailonline.org admin work to keep me awake. It was c 08:00 when the bus dropped me in Lavrion centre, which made a pretty indifferent impression, the more so as Olympic Marina in the shadow of the Temple of Poseidon where Alpos - which Red Che and Salty Sel, and Clon and Mai, and Hunslet and I, were planning to sail to Istanbul and back - was lying a further 30 minutes walk distant.
I was the first of the crew to arrive, and a variety of jobs were going to have to be attended to before departure. So, after a good sleep, the rest of the day was spent in intermittent communication with the ship's 'dual', i.e. first officer cum chief engineer, a degree course you can actually follow in Rotterdam these days, and which my son actually holds. Alpos' 'dual', however, is Che, and he is no relation.
The next day, Sel from Birmingham (not -on-Sea, that's Gibraltar) arrived. Sel said he was a slow walker, and thus persuaded me to go back into Lavrion that evening for our evening meal. The walk took twenty minutes this time, but in fairness was well worth it, as the town truly comes alive when the sun is down, and we enjoyed some very tasty deep-fried or should that be deep-singed anchovies and garlic basted prawns, washed down by beer of course.
The next day, Che from Palma arrived, and with it more work to be attended to involving davits and airco. Success with these jobs proved elusive. Che had gotten the use of a car, so that evening we went into Lavrion again. It was as lively there as the night before.
The next day, Clon and Mai and Hunslet arrived. Jury rigging, to stay the radar mast to in turn secure the starboard davit better, was installed, and Alpos was generally ship-shaped for an early departure into the Aegean the next morning. Che returned the car that evening and so we took a taxi into Lavrion instead, where Che knew of an Irish pub.
Heffernan's is run by a very fit Serbian lady, who alleges she is married to Heffernan, but he was nowhere to be seen. Che showered her with gifts, all of a green tint, and made of linen. Three weeks later we were back in Lavrion and pleased to see that Che's gifts (flags in fact) were on display complimenting the many other items of Irish paraphernalia adorning Heffernan's, and we also met the proprietor, Bill, who recognized Clon from his (Bill's) days running the Malahide Boatyard when Clon had had some repairs done to his beloved Hibernia there. But I am running ahead of myself. First our voyage.
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The Dardanelles
With all the Alponauts assembled, at 06:00 Saturday, and with a nod and after a votive cup-o-tea to Poseidon, it was off. The wind, as forecast and expected, was from ahead, but Alpos' Penta has a mighty heartbeat, so that an average BS of slightly in excess of 7 knots was easily maintained. Thus twenty-six hours later, having passed a brightly lit parking lot of ships off Bozcaada Island waiting for clearance or cargo at the mouth of The Dardanelles, we were moored up by mid-morning in the quarantined marina of Canakalle on the Asian shore opposite Sultan Mehmed II's wholly-intact massive-walled Killitbahir Castle built in 1452.
With some of the crew holding visa's only valid from a day later, we spent the rest of the day behind the high perimeter fencing surrounding the berthing quay and dined afloat. Tip 1 here is to fill in 'today' for 'valid from' in the electronic visa application, unless you anticipate you could be spending close to 90 days in Turkey after arrival. Tip 2 is to make the application via the official https://www.evisa.gov.tr/en/ website for a spend of US$20 plus 50 cent admin fee; routes via other sites may cost you 4x this amount, as some of us had discovered.
On Monday we were released. With Hunslet having organized a bus and guide, Troy, or rather the mounds and ruins at Hisarlik of in total nine resurrections of Troy, including Troy VI as sacked by brothers Menalaus and Argamemnon and their friends, and Troy VII destroyed by the earthquakes that heralded the start of the Pre-History Dark Age and the collapse of the Late Bronze Age Hittite, Myceanean, Egyptian, Assyrian and Babylonian cultures. The site's presentation and particularly our guide was excellent, providing a great and visual revision for those of us who perhaps many years ago might have read Michael Woods' equally excellent 'In Search of the Trojan War'.
Tuesday's mission naturally had to be Gallipoli. Bus and guide took us across the strait to the peninsula, which we toured from South over West to East and home again, seeing many beaches and many memorial cemeteries, and being instructed of the many errors made in 1915 by the Royal Navy and by the Commonwealth's commander, one Sir Ian Standish Monteith Hamilton, a Scot of unusual intellect for high command, having penned such works as 'The Fighting of the Future', 'Icarus', 'A Jaunt on a Junk', 'A Ballad of Hadji', 'A Staff Officer's Scrapbook' and of course 'The Gallipoli Diary'.
But I digress. It was all a bit mind-numbing. However, Sel found the gravestone of a related ancestor, and back home in the UK, his great-grandchild was moved to tears when Sel presented them with a pebble from the ground where he has lain ever since that monumental hubristic disaster that was First Lord of the Admiralty Winston Churchill's Gallipoli Campaign.
Back in Canakkale we did a big shop and eschewed the use of a cab, as a short walk through the park got us back to the marina before Clon could find a taxi stand. We dined early on fine fayre prepared by Mai and Sel, slept well, and left first thing Thursday for Istanbul.
The Meltemi had been blowing strong out of the north east ever since our arrival in Turkey, which indeed we had experienced as a welcome bit of natural air conditioning during our traipses along the shores of the strait and the peninsula. Fortunately, again cued by the forecast, the wind had dropped a little to only the top of F6 (25kn true).
There's a 2kn-3kn of current running down the Dardanelles from the north, driven by an overwhelming deluge of fresh water supplied by the rivers Danube, Don, Dniester, Dnieper, Bug and Kuban into, or rather onto the surface of, the Black Sea. With various headlands and shallows breaking the Meltemi's fetch, and current and wind in harmony, the Dardanelles have an easy-going seaway, so with engine on and sails furled, we easily averaged 5.5kn SOG, and we were clear of the straits in less than four hours.
Out at sea, things got a little more uncomfortable (little and all though the Marble Sea is) and we throttled back, in anticipation also of a forecasted drop in wind later in the day and further up the track. Four hours later the better weather duly arrived and soon we were steaming at 7.5kn direct for the Princes Islands to the east of the mouth of the Bosporus.
By midnight the wind was gone and as we motored on, a mighty debate broke out between Che and Clon as to where the TSZ (Traffic Separation Zone) really was. Was it where the 2018 version of the paper and electronic charts showed it, or was it where the steady stream of merchant ships in both directions clearly thought it was? It could not be resolved, but prudent navigators that we are, we crossed both possibilities at right angles to enter the Bosporus close in under the European shore.
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The Bosporus
Having seen further ship parking lots leaving the Dardanelles, a largest one yet now hindered our entrance to Otakoy marina as dawn broke. We counted more than 60 ships at anchor – all sorts. Unintimidated, we were moored up by 08:00 and then spent the rest of the day scrubbing decks, polishing briteware and fixing things. The marina's mechanics were also employed and were very helpful, welding the davit and servicing the dinghy double quick time.
Saturday, a gang of us went into Istanbul. Availing of the Istanbul Transport Card (Sel had been a year ago and knew all about it) we travelled by light urban rail, tram, funicular, ferry and underground to visit Hagia Sophia (chaperoned by an expensive queue-breaking guide), the Blue Mosque (was closed), the Grand Bazaar (haggled for a trinket) and crossed The Golden Horn to ascend to Taksim Square and then descend again to the Bosporus to tour the Kadikoy district.
If only I had revised Lord Kinross' very comprehensive 'History of the Ottoman Empire', I might have understood the significance of more of what we saw. Instead, the best I can come up with here are some simple off-the-cuff impressions; the on-going battle between secularism and fundamentalism as exhibited by the wildly different garbs of the women out on the street (and on the move by public transport); a metropolis of c 20 million people all hustling to earn a buck – street sellers, bazaar merchants, tour guides, restaurateurs and shopkeepers; the elegance of slender minarets in comparison to stubby gothic church towers.
By the time we got back to the marina, it was dark and we were exhausted and Elle had joined us to increase Alpos' compliment to seven. Sunday was Ladies' Choice and so it was Clon (again, he just loves walking) and Hunslet's turn, together with our now two-in-number females, to go see the sights and return exhausted.
Hunslet's expedition got back to Alpos much later than expected, causing the preparation of dinner to delay and delay. This, however, was a minor inconvenience compared to the one that had held Hunslet and his team up. Hunslet had mislaid his phone, which through the process of ringing it was discovered to be in the possession of their last taxi driver.
Foreign language is a difficult thing, so it can be that a driver is perfectly able to understand where his passengers wish to travel to, but quite difficult for him to understand where a phone is to be returned to. To help with translations, a policeman was found; everybody understands a policeman. To complicate matter further for the unfortunate taxi driver, Red Che also called the phone to enquire were they ever coming back, to then unwittingly give the poor man slightly different instructions. And thus, it was well after ten, when finally phone and expeditionary party were back in the marina. All's well that ends well.
Monday an absentee owner turned up for the day, en route to points much further east. A short cruise under engine up as far as the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge, about halfway up the Bosporus, was as much as there was time for but we had good fun, cheating the even stronger than in the Dardanelles current where we could, and taking care to dodge the ferries and freighters criss-crossing the water with foolhardy abandon. No sailing on the Bosporus does seem to be a sensible restriction – more so than in The Dardanelles. Wine was already flowing at lunchtime, so that night everybody was exhausted once again.
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The Sea of Marmara
On Wednesday then it was finally time to leave Istanbul. With the wind now from astern, once into the Sea of Marmara we made good time towards our first stop in the lee of Kapidag Yaramadasi, a large island south of Marmara Island itself, connected to the Asian mainland by a narrow land bridge. Averaging 8 knots under full main and jib, we were there by late afternoon, anchored up, noted jellyfish in the water, discarded our swimming plan, launched the dinghy, and went ashore.
Erdek was the name of the village. All told, it counted two beer-free (not the same as free beer) bars, a shop, and maybe twenty houses. One of the sleepiest, most time-forgotten places any of us had been in for a long time, perhaps as long ago as summer school in the Gaeltacht, where I'd never been, or Ursula's wedding on Achill Island when I was young, which I had attended.
However, the quayside was paved in rough cut marble and the village shop sold beer and wine. We made some purchases and returned to the quay where a couple of benches were to be found. A feral curious cat came to investigate. We chatted, said hi to a housewife who had come out to feed the mog and some of its friends, and then took the dinghy back to the Alpos, where the girls took off their glasses, decided the jellies were gone and dipped in.
The night was very windy. Hunslet was up once or twice to check the anchor held, but with the wind coming over the land, there were no problems and the rest of us slept comfortably, our 24 tonne displacement vessel proving once again to be the stablest of platforms.
As dawn broke it was anchors away, but not after first celebrating Mai's birthday. A poem was composed in her honour:
Long long ago in Dublin City fair,
A girl arrived with quite big hair,
On Pembroke Road she settled in,
With other girls and boys, oh oh, oh sin.
Twixt engineers she studied Math,
And graduated, fancy that,
Whilst falling for an engineer,
Who took her to a land most weird.
A proper multi-cultural land,
That democratically shouts ‘grand’,
Let us go back to Queen Vic's time,
When everything was jolly fine.
But now and then, our girl with hair,
Escapes it all to Outremer,
Her name is Ma(r)i, stateside nee.
And here she is on Erdek Bay.
Adrift awhile on Marmara's Sea
With friends and salty company,
Who wish her many many more
Of years beyond the big 6-0.
(allowing a little poetic license)
That done and dusted, a good sailing breeze took us swiftly back to the entrance to the Dardanelles, where it was time for the engine once again to take us back to our port of entry, Canakkale, where we were now going to have to check out, and where when we arrived, it was blowing a proper hooly. We anchored off and by the time the wind had abated, it was evening and the marina secretary and border police were gone. However, we had gleaned they would be back by 08:30 next day.
At 09:00, the check-out time changed to 11:00. Via G-maps we identified a Carrefour some 1.9km distant and a provisioning expedition was soon on its way, counting the same shoppers as were on the previous expedition in Canakkale a week earlier. Clon, as always, was keen to take a taxi, and so a compromise was agreed with him: the party would return by taxi.
Alas for Clon, G-maps is not good on elevation, and our walk, after a while, started to climb, and continued to do so till our destination was in sight. After the hustle of Istanbul, the relative provincial quietude of Canakkale as we went on our way, unmolested by vendors or beggars, made up for the effort involved to some extent, although Clon perhaps would not agree.
A Turkish Carrefour, like any French or other one, is quite a capacious thing. However, the choice inside is different, more limited, and presented in a non-Indo-European language. Nevertheless, an hour later, our triumvirate of Clon, Mai and I had completed some €200 of purchases, the check-out girl had understood to order us a taxi, and we were back outside loading up our ride back down to the harbour.
Clon, as always, was now running out of ammunition for his pipe. This state of affairs had started back in Istanbul and was the same as on Pico a few years ago. Since Istanbul, it had progressively become more pressing. Somehow the taxi driver understood Clon to therefore want to interrupt the journey with a strategic stop.
The driver phoned a friend who spoke some English, and passed him on to Clon. A short exchange between Clon and the friend was followed by a lengthy one between the driver and the friend. Next thing though, we pulled up outside a shop that fortunately was in the general downhill direction for the harbor.
Not entirely happy, Clon emerged from the shop five minutes later with a plastic bag of loose tobacco. To try and make him happier, the driver then stopped somewhere else but no tobacco was to be purchased there. The lesson here is that pipe smokers should always bring ample ammunition for their entire time away from their preferred tobacconist.
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The Aegean Sea
By the time all the shopping was loaded into Alpaire, it was 11:00 and time for passport controls. The same slightly surly pretty young border guardette officiated. It went well, but then alas the ship's paperwork took the best part of the rest of the hour to 12:00 to get processed in quintuplicate. No sooner done, than the passarelle was folded away, the dinghy up and bowlines dropped, and we were away into the Aegean, where once again a fine breeze was blowing.
With Lemnos, our Argonautic predecessors' first stop on their quest for the golden fleece, now our next destination, lying just slightly south of west, we fairly flew along on the wind abeam, bar for an hour or two when it lulled in the afternoon.
We moored up off Kondia, a reasonable distance away from a French catamaran, the only other boat in its very sheltered bay. The swimming season now opened in earnest. Everybody jumped in, with a number of us swimming all the way ashore to a gentle, desolate beach with two parked-up mobile homes. More swimming ensued in the morning and then it was off again, generally towards points further west in the Northern Aegean.
As forecast and as appear to be the prevailing conditions in the north west of the Aegean, the winds now turned light variable and by early afternoon we were motoring as close as allowed under the coast of the 2000m tall Mount Athos, at the head of the Athos peninsula, a semi-autonomous territory of the Greek Orthodox Church housing some 2000 monks (and growing in number, coming from all over the World, from Russia to the United States) distributed over a dozen or more monastic villages. No women are allowed to come within 1km of its coast, hence our caution.
Having admired their settlements and wondered at the monks ascetism, we motored on to our final destination for the night, Koufo on the east shore of the Toronaios estuary. The anchorage in front of the village was well-populated with yachts, and ashore three restaurants had plenty of clientele. We were on the mainland now. Once ashore, we walked a little out the town to find a nearly empty taverna, where excellent beer was served, accompanied by generous helpings of peanuts. More swimming was enjoyed as well and also in the morning, and then it was onward again.
Hunslet had found another splendid swimming spot to aim for and by 14:30 the anchor was out in said spot, the completely enclosed cove of Planitis at the top of Kira Panayia in the Northern Sporades. All jumped in, and some swam ashore. After an hour, Che, who had over the past few days gotten into the habit of using the tannoy, was calling all back on board so that we could continue our journey to our final destination for the night, which turned out to be Patitiri on Alonnisos.
We spent the next three days on Alonnisos, under the arrest of the Coast Guard. This hold-up was directly connected to an incident on our way away from Planitis, about which no more needs to be said, as all was explained, evidenced, signed off and recorded in quintuplicate (Greek administration has a strong Ottoman Turkish heritage) by Hunslet and Che. Briefly nevertheless, it involved a Hemmingway-like fisherman, his boat and a dog. However, we crew very much enjoyed Patitiri, dining out, swimming every day, and visiting the old ancient town on top of the hill.
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The Euboean Gulf
'Alles komt recht' (all comes right), as they say in Ja(so)n's homeland, and, after a final delay waiting for a surveyor's report to arrive stamped and scanned on the Coast Guard's puter, we were on our way again on Wednesday morning, July 10, just ahead of a storm coming in from the north.
The wind was light, we wanted to stay ahead of the storm, and we were hopeful that if we made good time we might catch the bridge connecting Evia to the mainland at Chalcis open or getting ready to open, so we motored on swiftly, leaving Artemisium, Thermopylae and Marathon for another day in our wake.
It was well dark by the time we got to Chalcis, the wind had strengthened, and the bridge was closed. We went alongside and a man helped taking our lines, much the same as a man used help you park on Dublin's Harcourt Street back in the 60s. The Alpos is a steady ship, but when the current through the narrows reversed into the wind, she was moving up and down rubbing her fenders against the quay wall quite a bit. Other yachts along the quay were faring worse though. After ascertaining that the bridge would next open the next day after 10 p.m. or so and with the wind dying away, some of us got some sleep.
Alas, the wind came back, now with a vengeance – the tail end of a storm that had been raging in the Gulf of Thermae and the Northern Sporades causing six fatalities there – and those that hadn’t yet fallen asleep kept watch the whole night through.
The wind kept it up all next morning. Clon went to find a chandlery to come back with two very large ball fenders. Clon, having been a pigman in his day, thought they reminded him of something or somepair or other. Perhaps, but they certainly didn't squeal whilst keeping Alpos clean off the quay.
During the course of the day, the bridge opening time firmed up, Hunslet got the ship's papers checked (had we paid the tourist tax was the port authorities main concern) and paid the bridge toll of €35, so that 10:30 that night we raced through at 10kn SOG with the current under us, to then motor on under the main road suspension bridge and down the tricky enough southern reach of the Euboean Gulf (aka the Gulf of Evia), to arrive safely back in Lavrion on Friday morning the 19th of July.
That night, a farewell final dinner was enjoyed by all, for the crew departures to commence the next day, leaving only Che and me behind, and now it's my turn to say farewell to Alpos and good luck to Che and his small to-do list to sort out before Alpos ventures out to sea once more.
It was a helluva of a voyage in great company!
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