t:. toastcrumbs

From Athens we took a ferry Santorini. Santorini was beautiful - we spent the next few days doing a vineyard tour, riding quad bikes around the island, going to volcanic beaches, checking out the volcanoe in the middle of the caldera of Santorini, and watching amazing sunsets which cast a golden-orange glow on the whitewashed buildings in Santorini.

We then took a sequence of ferries to Mykonos. This too was an amazing island, though not as great as Sanotirini. Mykonos’s main town has a labyrinth of whitewashed buildings - the layout was originally designed to
confuse raiding pirates!

We spent the last couple of days of our week in Athens, checking out the Colosseum, and other things. We even climbed up the big rock, the Areopagus, without realising that this was where Paul preached his sermon about the “unknown god” to the Athenians!

17 July
Left Athens - we were meant to leave on the 16th, but our plane was delayed and delayed and eventually at 4am we got to a hotel back in Athens! We had to fly the next day. It was a nice hotel though.

Loooovely weather, great times. More here.

8 July was when a number of us left our group at the airport in order to stay another week in Greece.
I lost my camera on the coach at this stage - not an enjoyable experience (managed to get it an hour later).

We took a taxi down to the port near Athens - stayed in a 4 * hotel - very nice and good rates.

1 July
Start of Greek yachting holiday. Got up fairly early to get to Heathrow. In the end, our group had 22 people in total and we made up 4 yachts in the 10 yacht flotilla.

2 July
First day sailing! Lovely morning, lovely weather, and with a bit of hassle finally managed to get sailing (I didn’t instill confidence in my crew by pulling out a sailing theory book though).

A lot of fiddling around trying to trim the sails to maximum efficiency… Because we were slow of the mark, we missed the lunch stop. On the home run, a storm roared up (within about an hour of us hearing thunder). We rolled down the sails as ominous grey clouds started rolling (Heather took a lovely shot of the clouds from another yacht here. One of my biggest regrets was that I wasn’t able to go down and get my camera!).

By the time we had the engine started, the waves became choppy and the wind had totally shifted in direction.
Next came driving rain, and the swell became very big. Around this time our depth meter started to go mental and as we were in the middle of a channel, I turned the yacht around until we were able to get the chart to work out where we were. However, by the time we decided to turn back (we had radioed for instructions as to whether we should circle around or head straight into the storm - something they don’t teach you in a 4 day course in Brighton!), the waves had become massive, and we were being blown the wrong direction (with our engine in neutral) at 6 knots!
At that point we lost visibility of land, and were lost - we managed to see another yacht in the distance (they had GPS unlike us!) and we started following them. This is where I learned the art of steering through big waves (the sort where you go down one side and all you see in front of you is the sea below you!).

Anyhow, we got through the channel in the end and managed to get back for a good meal and a fair bit of sharing our stories. I have to say that after the storm I have a lot more respect for the sea than I did in the morning we set out. It is not normal to have storms like that. By the end of the holiday our lead crew were calling us the “Stormy Flotilla”!