Postcard from the Argolic Gulf - Postdated 30 Sep 2022

At first blush it would seem preposterous that I would return to Greece to go sailing with Kosta. As I recall from my first (and only) sailing expedition with him, five years ago, the cabins were tight and the bathrooms were tighter still (use your imagination). On the other hand, what a fantastic opportunity to visit so many ports without having to unpack and repack my luggage at each stop as one has to do on a road trip. My last adventure with Kosta was for five days, so I doubled down and suggested that we sail this year for ten. I invited some others to join in and before I knew it (months later), we were all aboard, meeting the sailboat in Poros, a most lively town on a large island about an hour away by "fast ferry" from Piraeus, the famous port that serves Athens.

Kosta's sailboat, the Kime, which means Wave, in Greek, is a 38-foot catamaran with four cabins below deck. Each cabin has a double bed, some shelves and a tiny porthole which is more for air ventilation than for peering out. In fact, I have to admit now, that it is spacious enough if you are solo, and as long as you only use the cabin for sleeping and nothing else. Back upstairs, there are two large areas for sitting or eating on deck, one inside which is practical if it is raining or cold (not often the case in Greece), and one outside which fortunately is covered by a bimini to keep ourselves from broiling under the very hot Greek sun.

One of the advantages of sailing with Kosta is that he is as active as I am. At nearly every port that we docked, we either rented bikes or hiked up a nearby mountain, usually in the afternoons. One memorable hike was near Astros, a charming town, four kilometers walk from the marina. The entire uphill portion of the 14-km hike was on a dry creek bed. It was rather steep, about 900 metres up over 6 km (this calculates out to 150 metres elevation gain -- a 45-storey building's worth --  for each km walked). The creek bed, at the bottpm of a canyon with nearly vertical walls up to the ridges high above, was strewn with huge boulders, mostly bunched up in cascades to form huge obstacles, each about 10 - 20 feet high, between short strectches of flat hiking. These cliff-like rocky structures transformed this climb into one of my best hiking experiences. It was loads of fun scrambling up the rock faces, often at a faster pace than simply walking. It reminded me that I need to return to rock climbing again after the long lull caused by that spooky pandemic.

It was a typical Greek scorching hot day, although mercifully a couple of degrees less extreme in the mountains than in town below. The weather called for short pants. The only downside were the hundreds of prickly and thorny small bushes that reached out from the edges of the trail or from between the rocks that we were scaling which frequently scratched my legs. You know that you want to avoid these nuisances as many of the scratches drew blood!

Once we eventually reached the summit, a two-km walk on top of this mountain range followed, between grazing herds of bleating goats and sheep. Before long it was time to follow the trail back down to Astros. Nobody warned us that we were about to walk down the face of a 2,500-foot cliff. If Kosta hadn't promised us that he had done this once before, I would have bet a year's pay that only mountain goats and suicidal burros would venture down the narrow path etched into the cliff face. If you look at the photo below you will be hard-pressed to even imagine, let alone actually see, a path down from the summit, switching back from left to right and right to left along its descent. It was exhilirating. It was exciting. And it is unforgettable. Now I long to find more such hikes and simply skip the casual ones, starting today.

After a few days of sailing in the Mediterranean Sea and the Argolic Gulf, I more fully appreciated the freedom that sailors enjoy: unlike on the restrictive, crowded one-dimensional terrestrial highways, at sea we are free to sail in two dimensions, in any direction on its surface, and at any speed with hardly any concern for traffic. When it gets very hot, we simply find a bay, drop the anchor and dive off the boat for a swim. We did this every day, taking advantage of the warm, clear blue waters and regularly swam about 500 metres to a beach where we chatted, skipped stones along the water's surface and then swam back to our sailboat. A kilometer swim each day in the healing salt water is likely more healthy than jogging or weight training. With perhaps only an exception or two in decades, I hadn't skipped stones since I was very young and the joy of (again) perfecting the art quickly brought back to mind my fondest childhood memories of summers on Nantasket Beach, on the South Shore of Boston, where I "grew up" on the Atlantic Ocean. 

In case you haven't inferred, each of these beaches is deserted as they are inaccessible by car. At times the bays where we weighed anchor had other sailboats parked as well, however we were usually the only swimmers. It is cool to be able to see clearly 20 meters down to the seabed but I suppose it may be scary for most people to swim in such deep water. I was wondering if maybe it's not the depth, however, but the fear of scary marine monsters that may be lurking below, waiting for their chance to snack on an unsuspecting human above.

Did you notice that I referred to the Mediterranean as healing. I am uncertain how well documented the healing powers of salt water are in the medical literature, however, I am convinced that a daily swim in salt water will cure all dermatological problems. Pimples gone, dry skin no longer, toenail fungus healed, itches and scratches disappeared. If you forgot that I revealed to you how my legs got scratched up the day before while hiking, my legs did remember for me: each scratch was burning in the salt water, feeling as though razor blades were maliciously cutting up my legs. I imagine that this is the first symptom of speedy healing and so, in my own mind, I transform the discomfort of a thousand cuts into little pleasures. These are some of the reasons why I always imagined that I would return to my childhood summers by living again on the sea, once retired, somewhere in the world. At least for part of the year. This is a work in process, of course, and this season's progress is marked by ten days of sailing in Greece.

Naturally, one of the benefits of living on the seashore again will be a visit from you!

Barry, retired but not yet retarded 😂