Log

The Ship’s Log covers journeys undertaken by sail or canal boat, and includes general posts not covered by the Travel category.

Solo Anchoring Into A Harbour

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Pserimos is a little island in between Kos and Kalimnos and is clearly a weekend hangout for the young Greeks from the neighbouring islands. The tiny bay in which I anchored was littered with RIBS, jet skis, speedboats and day-trippers. We enjoyed a sundowner at Sunset cafe, where the waiter graciously reduced our beers from €3 to €2.50, stating “I don’t want my restaurant to get a reputation as being expensive”. Even so, €2.50 for a large beer? Clearly I was going to have to do some adjusting, now that I am back in Europe.

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Take Me To A Gay Bar

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“What are you doing in Kos?” my cousin asked over the phone. “It’s full of gay bars.” You’d know I suppose, Jay, I’m just here to use the internet. Easier said than done, mind. When we anchored off Kardemena, a sprawling town for chavs, the northerlies were hitting 30 knots. At least anchoring was easy but I was amazed at how much fetch could build in such a short space of sea. Rowing over to Odin for a beer was ludicrously difficult…

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My Big Fat Greek Tragedy

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Liz has left me. She has gone and now it is just me, the cat and Esper. To pull myself out of my misery I attempted some single handed sailing, proving to myself and the world that I can stand alone, man against the elements, a conqueror, a hero. Impressive was the fact that I have never sailed solo before; even more impressive was that I managed to log two continents. Well, this all sounds good on paper, but the reality was that my first week was a complete screaming disaster. Dragging anchors, smashed solar panels, dysfunctional engines and rolling harbours all contributed to me desperately wanting my Queenie back on board. All this is set against a background of consistent 25-30knot winds that have been plaguing the Greek Islands all month. The usual self-deprecation is illustrated with loads of pics (look out for ‘Moon Goat’) and a couple of video clips too.

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The Crazy World Of The Boat Stig

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I’m compelled to send you this quick text I received from a friend of ours who is a delivery skipper (a vastly underpaid job whereby the skipper takes on a huge responsibility to safely dispatch a vessel from one location to another). We’ll call him The Boat Stig. The Boat Stig was given the task of delivering a yacht from France to Turkey. That’s a bit of a boot, and this was a delivery skipper’s worst nightmare: the owner was on board.

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Catch #3: Carangidae/Pompano

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Started fishing at 5 this morning, about the time the cicadas started. The anchorage is a stunning setting, especially at that time in the morning. I put some coffee on and chucked some crumbs out the back. Not much action for a bit until I attracted the attention of just three fish. In all the time at this anchorage (two nights) these are the only fish I’ve seen.

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First Official Fish Caught Off Esper

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Yes, after four years, three near misses, two lines and one very impatient cat we have finally bagged our first catch off the back of Esper! Under the guidance of our fishing guru, Matt, both Liz and myself caught a fish each within the space of 24 hours. Of course we frequently pull up a cage full of tiddlers and live-bait with our lobster pot but, according to our guru, “that’s not fishing, that’s just being lazy”. Click on the link to read about this very exciting moment…

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From South Africa To Turkey

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It’s perhaps not surprising that my best holiday so far was the result of a series of coincidences and good fortune. Even now, parts of it feel like a dream. How likely is it that your boss in South Africa tells you that you’re being sent to a conference in Istanbul and that – taking a chance because you know your friends are sort of crazy – when you email friends in London to say you’re going to be in Turkey for a few days, do they want to join you, they come back immediately to say that they’d love to.

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Speak Soon, Spooners!

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I learnt a lot about sailing, it was like a crash course as I had never really done any hands on sailing previously, all my boating experience has been under motor and I can definitely see the appeal when the engine is cut and you are purely under way using the power of the elements, it is quite cathartic.

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Cursing The Cruising Chute

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We pottered back across to Turkey later that day and had a good wind behind us. It was after taking the helm on a few occasions on this trip that I realised it’s not as straight forward keeping a boat under sail pointing on a consistent bearing manually and requires quite a lot of concentration.

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Highly Dynamic

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We woke up to hear that Liz had been up at the crack of dawn and managed to catch the same species of fish as Jamie but slightly bigger! [Ed: what utter nonsense 😉 ]

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Our Greek Ancestry

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The town of Simi had its own charm as well and after a bit more of an orientation exercise i.e. drinking more beer we decided to go and have dinner. The restaurant we chose was recommended to us by an Australian waitress who said she had eaten there recently and it was fantastic. Well if she’d eaten there on her wages then I’m a Monkey’s uncle

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Beautiful Bozburun

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My strategy was to snorkel around with the boat’s sweeping broom and poke the handle into various likely looking holes in the rock with a view that the Occie would get very pissed off with this intrusion and wrap its tentacles around the broom allowing me to extract the Crustacean, at which point I was going to turn its head inside it which is the way to dispatch tour eight legged friend

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Re-discovering Farting Goat Bay

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Dirsek is a charming bay, very sheltered, crystal clear water and only accessible by boat. In fact the only other inhabitants of the bay apart from other Yotties are the goats which descend from the hills to forage along the coast. I don’t know if it’s the gradual increase in atmospheric pressure as they descend but they seem to fart their way down which has lead to this bay being dubbed ‘Farting Goat bay’ of course.

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Fish And Lures, But Not Together

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We had a cracking meal at the Marti Marine restaurant with a table as about as close to the water as one could get. Our friend Siobhan arrived that evening about 3am, eventually finding us somehow after wandering round the marina for a few hours. Finding a boat is a bit trickier than turning up at the foyer of a hotel, especially when the concierge are all passed out.

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