Greece Trip - Part Two

Monday, September 8

We finally got out of port at around noon after our grocery trip and our “safety briefing” from Stu. Considering that Jim broke his toe, I found myself holding on for dear life on the side of the boat, and we dented the boom and tore one of the lines, I’m not sure how effective the safety briefing was.

The first day on the boat, I realized that the there are 2 big problems with sailing. The first is that you are sitting on a boat all day. I know this seems obvious. Sailing = being on a boat. I, however, didn't seem to make this connection. I guess I thought much more about exploring the islands rather than actually sailing. I saw the sailing part as a means of transportation, but not necessarily the main event. Unfortunately that view wasn’t necessarily shared with our captains so some of us were disappointed with the amount of sailing vs. island exploration that occurred.

The second problem with sailing is the bathroom situation. For those of you who don’t know anything about sailing, there is one bathroom that can be used when the boat is in the harbor. You must pump out the toilet’s contents into a storage tank and pull in sea water. No toilet paper can be put in the tank so you have to put your used toilet paper into a bag which hangs on the bathroom door. Yes, that would be the ajoining door to our cabin.

I mistakenly thought it would be great to have a bathroom near our room to compensate for my pea-sized bladder so we chose the room attached to that bathroom. Due to the proximity of the bathroom, our cabin had a distinct sewage smell to it and was one of the main reasons we slept on the bow of the boat every night.

Our first day on the boat was a slow one as the winds were light. At one point, we stopped for a swim in the middle of the Aegean and were actually able to swim faster than the boat. It was amazing to be able to swim in the middle of the sea with absolutely nothing, but tons of water around us.

We had intended to go to Kythnos but the wind didn’t cooperate so we only got as far as Kea. The island of Kea was quite barren and didn’t have much of a town. The landscape was scattered with housing projects seemingly abandoned as if they lost their financial backer midway through construction.

I was anxious to get on an island and explore so was disappointed that we were staying on the boat. However, looking back on the trip, that was one of the best nights. We had dinner on the boat, followed by a refreshing night swim. Then Jim and I were able to look up at the stars while we drifted off to sleep in the silent bay where we had anchored.