The Fat Lady has Started to Sing

So that’s it.  Its all over bar a bit of a tidy up in Palma.  We stood on the marina quayside yesterday afternoon and watched as Dulcinea pulled away and headed west to Palma.

The last leg of the journey went by fairly smoothly.  We had managed to get away from Mykonos during a slight lull in the wind and headed to a place called Ermoupolis on the island of Siros.  This place is the capital of the Cyclades and used to be the centre for the shipping until Piraeus took over.  Had a great sail over and pulled into a huge harbour.  At the north end was the town lying around the quayside and up the slopes of the surrounding hillsides and a blue domed church topped the whole scene.  For the first night we parked at a run down marina complex in the south of the harbour as we were unsure of the town quayside but moved the next day to tie up stern to the cafe-lined town quay.

Ermoupolis is a busy town and not the prettiest but it has a certain run down charm.  We were the only yacht on the town quay so looked pretty lonely.  The weather has improved and when the sun shines its beautiful.  We strolled around the town enjoying all the different shops, the market and the occasional cafe.  The town used to be quite affluent and so many of the streets are paved with marble.  There are a few grand buildings, one of which is an opera house modelled on La Scala in Milan.  Not sure that this is really a tourist spot but it was very interesting and well worth a visit.

Ermoupolis harbour - with a lonely Dulcinea to the left

Next we sailed to Kythnos to a picturesque bay we had visited before on the journey eastwards and dropped anchor.  We have plenty to do just getting the boat tidy and finishing up the schoolwork.  During the night we sat through a terrific thunderstorm - the last - in the bay and got a huge downpour of rain which helped to clean the deck.  After a couple of nights we kept moving to a bay on the mainland.  The weather gets better the further west we go and the wind especially is tempered once you get out of that central Aegean corridor which the Meltemi thunders down.  We sailed into Zea Marina in Piraeus near Athens arriving on the 10th November.  The delivery crew were not scheduled to arrive until the 14th so we had a few days to get the boat ready and visit Athens.  

Piraeus and Athens have been a pleasant suprise and although they are big cities they are not as bad as we expected.  We went into Athens at the first opportunity to visit the Acropolis.  You would have thought that by now we would be kind of over the ruins but each time we visit a new one we are just as amazed all over again.  The Acropolis is stunning.  We thought that the Parthenon and the Acropolis were the same thing and that that was the extent of the ruins but there is much more.  The Acropolis is the hill upon which the Parthenon sits but there is lots of other ruins both on top of the hill itself and at the base.  We spent most of the day wandering around the site.  The Parthenon is a spectacular monument and lives up to its reputation of being the most beautiful building in the world.  Even after all the sites we have visited this takes your breath away.  The amount of work still going on at the site is amazing - there are cranes everywhere lifting huge slabes of marble into place or people on there knees doing some intricate work.  Apart from the Parthenon there is a spectacular smaller temple on the Acropolis called the Erechtheum with the “porch of the maidens”, a line of colums with draped femenine figures.  Around the base of the Acropolis are other ruins of theatres, healing centres and other temples.

The Parthenon - our pictures really do not do this justice

Nearby the Acropolis is the new Acropolis Museum which we visited.  This museum was built to display the finds from the hill and its design and the way the displays have been arranged is fantastic.  We remember the museums from our childhood to be these dark dusty places lined with glass display cases packed full of items - you would start at the beginning of a hall reading the information but after the 50th piece of pottery shard from the 5th century BC it would all get a bit much.  Modern museums and this one in particular have gone for the “less is more approach”.  The museum building is very modern and spacious with three very open floors filled with many statues from the Acropolis site.  The museum is built over part of the old town which they are still excavating however the building has glass flooring sections to allow you to look down into the excavations.

The "Porch of the Maidens"

The main prize exhibits for the museum would be the metopes and pediments from the Parthenon.  These have been set up in the museum as if they still ringed the Parthenon.  The metopes are the relief panels which surrounded the building showing various scenes from ancient Greek history or mythology and have been arranged  in a similar fashion in the interior of the museum.  Some panels have been completely recreated but some are the originals and then there are spaces where some of the panels were plundered or lost.

The Roman Theatre

To the north of the Acropolis is the ancient Agora which we also made time to visit on another day.  This was the administrative, governmental and social heart of the ancient city.  Its a beautiful spot to walk around in the shadow of the Acropolis and one temple is particular is in remarkably good condition - the Temple of Hephaestus.

The view over the ancient Agora to the Acropolis

The delivery crew arrived on Friday.  We contracted the crew through a UK company called Professional Yacht Deliveries.  Steve Pickles is the skipper and he had two crew with him, Richard and Madeline.  All are yachtmaster qualified and are friendly.  We got them settled onto the boat and then moved the family out to a hotel.  The next day Scott and Nic spent the morning doing a handover with the crew and at around 14:00 everything was deemed ready and Steve felt that he had sufficient knowledge of the boat to set off.  Its quite impressive that these guys can come onboard a unfamiliar boat and sail away within hours.

Dulcinea departing Piraeus with the delivery crew

We watched them sail out of the marina and then walked back to the hotel in relative silence.  This is the first time we have stood on the quayside and watched the boat depart and its starting to sink in that the sailing life is over.  We have lots to look forward to with the travelling over the next three weeks and getting back to Australia but still its part of our life which is over and so quite sad.  We will of course see Dulcinea again in Palma to carry out the final demobilisation and then it will really be finished.  So we are now off to Denmark and will finish the blog in Palma.

Trapped by the Meltemi

Man……the summer is well and truly over.   The wind has been relentless for the last week.  Every day it has been blowing strong from the north.  Here in Greece the North wind is called the Meltemi.  Its not outrageoulsy high but hovers around 25kts on average dropping to 15kts for periods or gusting over 30kts.   We could move but the wind is over the entire region and we are as good anchored here as anywhere else and besides it would probably be a wet, cold journey.

Mike being nautical

We took advantage of one lull and managed to get up to Mykonos and anchor in a relatively sheltered bay in the south of the island.  The new location gave Mike and Sue an opportunity for further exploring but things are definately starting to close down.  Mykonos town is an attractive but typical whitewahsed Greek town surrounding a small port.  In the season you can see that it would get very busy.

Mykonos Streets

Nearby Mykonos is the island of Delos which is an important archaelogical site and so we had a day trip to see the ruins.  Delos was an important centre in the Greek times and was supposedly the birthplace of Apollo.  As such, it was full of temples and sanctuaries.  Later it became an important trading location - a sort of Singapore of the ancient world.  The island itself is small, relatively flat and featureless and produced nothing of note - it was just a home for the temples and acted as a trading hub for the different peoples from the Mediterannean and near east .  But in its hey day the island supported a population of 30,000 people and so there was a reasonably sized town or city, the ruins of which are slowly being uncovered.

Mosaics on the floors

The ruins at Delos are not as impressive as some of the others we have seen but the old settlement is fantastic.  You walk down the original roads between the remains of the houses.  Again terrific mosaics are clearly visible on some of the floors.  As with a lot of the Greek ruins you need a bit of imagination to put it all together.  There is so much here though that it is absolutely overwhelming.  There are bits of columns, or carved marble, or pieces of statues lying scattered around the ground.  Obviously in some order to the archaeologists and just waiting to be reconstructed.  The archaeological work continues and the site can only get more impressive as they keep digging.

Nic on the old Greek streets

So here we now sit waiting for a break which is forecast in a couple of days.  This is one part of cruising which is not enjoyable at all.  It's kind of like going camping in the rain.  Most of the enjoyable stuff we do on the boat relies on nice weather.   We are safe enough swinging on the anchor but the noise of the wind howling through the mast and rigging is incessant and a constant reminder.  No matter how hard we try, at some angle one of the lines will vibrate against the mast producing an intermittent slapping sound.  Every now and then the boat heels slightly as a bigger gust hits the boat and occasionally there is a scraping sound as the anchor chain changes position on the bow rollers.  Out of the saloon windows the beaches of the bay spin as the boat swings on the anchor.  You know that you are secure but you can never clear your mind completely of the possibility of an anchor dragging or a chain link failing especially at night.  If you do manage to forget about the situation for a while the noise soon brings it back to your attention.  If we do venture ashore for a break there is a good chance we will get soaked during the transit in the dinghy, and once ashore you worry more about the boat being safe even though its secure.

Atop Mt Kythnos on Delos

So we settle in, get out the school books, regularly look at the anenometer readout and check the anchor snubber every now and then and wait for the winds to pass.  Once this clears we will start to trek back towrads Athens and there is supposed to be some nice weather coming.  We are starting to clean up the boat where we can, throwing stuff out and getting ready for the arrival of the delivery crew.