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.