Well, sorry about the lack of postings. Last time we updated we were in a small town on the south-west side of Italy. Since then we have spent time in the Ionian, Aegean and are now on the Turkish coast. We have visited Delphi, London, Rhodes, Athens, and Santorini. We have enjoyed rendezvous with three other cruising boats, and have gotten, more than any other time this trip, into a good cruising rhythm. Helped by the finishing of school, and finally reaching Turkey (our most anticipated destination), we are finally in the waa (as cruisers call it). We have really felt relaxed for a couple weeks now, and are so much in a good rhythm, that we forgot independence day, not to mention fathers day, until we were reminded by e-mails. Although our overall rhythm has improved, tempers have been running unusually high lately. I, for one, can't seem to concentrate on anything, and am growing more and more careless. We have so much time on our hands, and compared to at home, not much to do. We spend hours playing cards (mostly hearts and poker, which we sometimes play with real Turkish money), do some reading, and spend half of our time in the water, spear fishing for much of it. So far we've only caught a few tuna, some sea-bass and a marlin. Just kidding. Actually, I don't even know if all or any of those fish live in the Mediterranean. So far we haven't caught anything this season, which makes me think we should start using the technique used by Heather Doubt, our friend from Gaeta. When she was a kid she would tie a quarter stick of dynamite to a rock, light it and throw it into the water. It would go off, and she would rake the water with a net, collecting the fish that were knocked unconscious.
Now that you know how our life is going now, I will fill you in on the last three months. Since I have a lot of time to fill in, this will probably be more of a travel log than either you or I would like. I'll try not to make it so, but if you're not interested in a blow by blow account of our travels, and don't have time and patience to spare, then I recommend you skip this portion.
I wrote my last update in Vibbo Valentia, where we were forced to stay for about five days to receive a new piece of equipment to replace a broken auto-helm. Most of my time from Gaeta to this point, and also for a couple of weeks to come, was taken up with designing and making the picture frame we were going to give my Grandmother for her birthday when we saw her in London. I designed it so there would be three slots behind the picture that would each contain one poem by one of us that would pull out; one left, one right, and one up. I spent hours each day sawing and staining and sanding. You can imagine that it would be hard to get supplies in small coastline towns, and I was determined that this frame should be completely finished, so at every town my obsession was getting the supplies we needed. It was, according to my parents, extremely annoying because I wouldn't stop reminding and badgering them, but it also changed the way I saw these places. For instance, in Siricusa on Sicily I would not let my dad forget that we needed a custom-cut piece of glass. Therefore instead of walking around the old-town pointlessly, we found and searched through the artisan's section. In Crotone the two of us walked for several hours in 90 degree heat to find stain at a hardware shop.
Our visit to London came about two weeks after we were in Vibbo Valentia.. We met my aunt, uncle, cousins and grandmother there, all of whom traveled from LA to meet us. The trip was planned to celebrate my grandmother's birthday, but my uncle's was the only birthday that took place while we were together (my grandmother's was a week or two before). I'm still not entirely sure why, but for some reason I was looking forward immensely to our London visit. I know part of it was to see my family members, and part of it to be in London to see the changing of the guards, and part of it to present my grandmother with her present which I was pretty proud of, but there was something else that I still don't understand that made me look forward to this trip to celebrate my grandmother's birthday as much as any others I've ever taken, even, amazing given my personality, to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
After London we crossed from Italy into Greece and stayed about a month cruising the Ionian, where we spent much of our time on a rendezvous with two different boats. One of these was Dragonsinger, a Canadian boat with 3 kids that we had been trading e.mails with for a while, and we spent about two weeks with them; the other was Waltzing Matilda, the Norwegian boat with 2 kids we had befriended in Gaeta over the winter. After this we headed through the Corinth Canal, which looked as amazing as it's history. It's construction took over 2000 years and was completed mostly by enslaved Jews. We exited the canal and went strait to Athens, where we spent an unusually short amount of time. We were in and out in two days; having seen the Acropolis and eaten KFC, we wanted to get out of the big cities and get to the undisturbed islands.
We cruised around the Cyclades for two weeks, much of it with the company of of my grandparents and aunt, who had come to visit. We had pretty bad weather (high winds) during that time, which promptly cleared up right when they left. From here we pushed on to Turkey, where we had only one stop worth mentioning on the way: Paros. We went to three different anchorages and marinas here and all of them have their stories. First was the marina we dropped my grandparents and aunt off at. That night the boat next to us was up all night playing the guitar. When we went up at midnight the best we could do was a compromise to between our wants and their desire for them to stop at one. One came and went and they didn't stop, and at one thirty we went up and asked, or rather told, them to stop. They stopped... and started again at two. Between two and three my parents heard a splash on the side of the boat, and we woke up to find a big red wine stain on our deck and hull. A battle ensued in which we demanded that they clean it. They halfheartedly tried, and then went inside and latched their hatches. When they came out another verbal battle occurred, which ended with my mom pouring a bucket of soapy water on one of them and the guy spraying the bear he was drinking (at nine in the morning) at her. The second place on Paros was a large anchorage on the east side of Paros, where we made friends with the owner of a water sports business. We all wake boarded or water skied and twice my siblings and I had a blast on large, flat inner tubes where we could all go at the same time on three different ones. At a third place on the south side we took a ferry to the Island and volcano of San Torini. This is a volcano that is so powerful that at one point it blew the entire top half of the island off. It is the volcano responsible for the largest natural explosion ever, and some experts say it is possible that it was home to and then destroyed the mythical and lost empire of Atlantis. You sail in and on one side is the main part of the island with cities on top of the cliffs, and on the other is a mound just as big of volcanic ash. It was amazing.
From there we got to Turkey within a few days. We are spending a few weeks in the Bay of Fethiye along with a week around the island of Kekova. Everything is so close together that our sails aren't more than ten minutes most of the time, and getting our anchor caught again takes more time than moving to the new anchorage.
Almost a year ago, when I was told that this trip was a certainty, twelve months seemed like forever; but it has gone by so fast that I can recall most of the 340 days we've been here like they were yesterday. I've been looking forward and waiting anxiously for the day that we would arrive home, and still am, but now I have mixed feelings, and am really sorry to go. We have been spending the last few weeks, and will spend the next few, cruising in one large bay, going five or ten miles at a time. We can relax, play cards (we have played poker with Turkish money a few times. It's really fun to play with 50,000 lira as a minimum bet, it being equal to about 3 cents) and practically live in the water to avoid the incredible heat.
