Author: Kate McCombie

As we travel around the Med we regularly see reminders of the fact that people in these parts haven’t always gotten along terribly well together. But the “memorial” in the Cathedral at Otranto is one that takes the cake. As is so often the case, religion was the reason for the slaughter. The muslims besieged the Christian town in 1480 and were fought off by the locals for 15 days before they caved in. The eight hundred that survived were then beheaded for refusing to convert. The Chapel of the Dead has the bones of those slain neatly arranged in display cases. Slightly macabre. Why can’t people just live and let live? (Even today?)

Otranto was our port of entry into Itlay, before we headed up the coast to Brindisi, Monopoli, then Bari to meet up with my brother Peter and sister-in-law, Martine. (This is in between the toe and the ball of Italy’s foot). Great fun to have them on board, as we seldom get to catch up with the Londoners. We hired a car and spent a day driving through some of the pretty towns in Puglia. Polignano a Mare sits atop craggy cliffs looking out over the Adriatic, whilst the locals all pack onto the weeny pebble beach to soak up the sun. Locorotondo has quiet, pedestrianised streets paved with smooth ivory-coloured stones and abundant planter boxes adding a snap of colour here and there. Along the way we visited Alberobello, another UNESCO World Heritage site, with the beehive-shaped “trulli” houses. We then headed north to Trani, another old walled town, where we took in the local sites and provisioned before setting off on an overnight crossing of the Adriatic. No wind. Motored all the way.

Our port of entry in Montenegro was at Budva, where yet again we enjoyed strolling through the well-preserved old town full of rabbit warren lanes. We cruised up the coast to the Bay of Kotor, stopping at Herceg Novi and Risan, before continuing up to Kotor town. Had a bit of a dingy adventure along the way when our dingy decided to cartwheel during a 40 knot gust whilst were were anchored. Luckily the rope on the dingy anchor was of the floating variety, so we were able to retrieve the anchor and tackle, but alas, the oars were gone and the outboard was decidedly unhappy. Fitz did a good job of cleaning the outboard and managed to get it going again.

During our stay in Kotor it was Martine’s birthday. We felt very virtuous having started the day climbing the 1350 steps up to the top of the town walls, some 260 metres above sea-level, for spectacular views over the harbour. Enjoyed a day sailing on the Bay of Kotor with gentle breezes and wouldn’t you know it, Fitzy took the dingy for a spin and managed to locate our lost oars! Knowing his love of nicknacks, I saw something the other day that looked really appropriate, a sailor throwing his anchor away. I’m sure I can find room for it somewhere onboard. There’s a theme emerging about Fitzy, the dingy and things going AWOL.

That evening we enjoyed a very smart bottle of champagne Peter had brought from London to help Martine celebrate her birthday. During our pre-dinner drinks on deck our Russian neighbour noticed the birthday balloons and very generously presented Martine with another very nice bottle of champagne. Ten minutes later he reappeared with a bottle of Chivas Regal. “The champagne was for the women. This is for the men!” Note to self: birthday balloons are a good lurk when moored next to super-yachts!

Next day we hired a car to take a look inland and visited the Ostrog Monastery, built into a cliff face 900 metres above the Zeta valley. Millions of Orthodox Christians make the pilgrimage annually, particularly to the impressive Upper Monastery, and to where the bones of Saint Basil lay wrapped up in a coffin.

Montenegro seems to embody the split in the Roman Empire with Catholic and Orthodox churches almost equally popular. Up until 1918 it was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, so as with many parts of Europe it has known many masters, including fifty years of Communist rule. The old town of Kotor is a lovely place to spend a few days wandering around the narrow, carless streets, taking in the ancient Venetian palaces. The winged Lion of Saint Mark, the emblem of the Venetians greets you as you arrive at the Sea Gate to the town. Trolleys and carts are the favoured mode of transport. Local fishermen can be observed cleaning their mussels at the bottom of the town’s fortifications. Opposite where we were moored was a fabulous market with fresh fruit, veg, fish, meat & cheeses, etc. We loved the tiny alpine berries sold in recycled pickle jars. Sweet and tart at the same time!

We farewelled Peter and Martine in Kotor, and said goodbye to Montenegro the next day. We are now in Croatia and the Dowdneys joined us a couple of days ago. They seemed to have settled into relax mode quite well! More on that next post.

We’ve been hearing it’s cold in Melbourne, so hope those at home are keeping rugged up. Don’t forget to drop us an email or a blog comment to let us know what’s happening at your end. We’d love to hear from you. Hope you are keeping safe & well wherever you are.

Ciao for now,

Kate

We enjoyed a couple of weeks island-hopping across the Aegean, this time heading west. Yep, it’s still a windy place! Left Samos and headed for Fournoi, then Mykonos, Syros, Kythnos, Hydra and Ermioni on the mainland. Mykonos was memorable for both arrival and departure – just really windy and an appalling marina. We spent a bit of time on Syros, with it’s lovely island capital of wide stone-paved streets and winding alleyways. Hydra will always be remembered for being pillaged by rapacious Italian pirates (even the other Italians in the bay apologised on their behalf!) But all in all, we enjoyed the islands and a few spirited sailing days, making good distances. Alan W departed Loki at the island of Poros, before we headed back through the Corinth Canal.

The Corinth Canal is an amazing feat of engineering. It’s 3.2 miles long, 25 metres wide, with the sides of the canal rising to 76 metres at the highest part. Being so narrow, traffic only goes in one direction at a time, so you have to book to arrange to transit the canal. Before it was built ships were carted up and over this land. The canal construction was first  attempted by the Roman Emperor Nero, but after many false starts it wasn’t completed until 1893. Today they still take quite big ships through, up to a width of 17.6 metres.

Found a lovely little village on the northern shore of the Gulf of Corinth, Galaxidi. Rich in maritime history, but somewhat left behind since the world moved on to steamships. It’s a very quaint harbour less than 3 hours drive from Athens or about 6 hours sailing from the western end of the Corinth Canal. It is a good place from which to visit the ancient site of Delphi. Where else can you arrange to have a hire-car delivered from the next town for the following morning, through the local bee-keeper, whilst having dinner?

The sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi is set in a stunning mountainside location at the foothills of Mount Parnassos. For many centuries it was the centre of the ancient Greek world. It was from here that the Oracle would make various proclamations about assorted matters of great importance. Although signs of habitation date back to 14thC BC, the sanctuary became established around 8th-7th century BC. Very old rocks indeed! At this point we farewelled Tim and continued on to the Ionian.

There’s no shortage of beautiful anchorages in the Ionian. Cephalonia, Ithaca, Lefkada, Meganisi and Corfu are probably the best known islands, but there are plenty of other gems as well. Some have dreamy turquoise beaches as a result of the adjoining limestone cliffs, with seriously blue water. If you want to charter a yacht in Greece, this is the place to be. Flat water, reasonable shelter from the prevailing nor’ westerlies, blue sea and sky, it doesn’t get much better. Loads of places to find a taverna ashore for a mid-morning frappe or an evening meal. Crisis? What crisis? There doesn’t appear to be any kind of Greek tragedy going on here. That said, we haven’t been to Athens where we hear there are buses of riot-gear clad police on standby.

Lefkada was once attached to the mainland by a narrow isthmus, until the Corinthians decided to construct a canal back in 650 BC, which turned Lefkada into an island. The modern Greeks have worked out that if they maintain their status as an island they continue to get special government grants and tax concessions so they have a “ferry boat” which is actually a floating/lifting/swinging bridge that opens every hour to let water-borne traffic through. Navigation here can be a bit interesting. They were dredging when we went through, making it just a bit squeezy, but we’d checked it out the day before so knew what we were in for. Managed to negotiate the shifting sands without incident, thankfully. Levkas town has some unique architecture as a result of the devastating 1948 earthquake. In the island capital many buildings are built in a “quake-proof” style with the second story made out of sheet metal or corrugated iron, either pastel colours or brightly painted. Even the town clock is earthquake-proof.

Q. So what do you get when you cross a Greek Island with a Russian oligarch? A. Jacqui O’s slightly run-down beach shack. Skorpios Island, which was once owned by Onassis, has since been bought by the 24 year old daughter of a very rich producer of potassium fertiliser. My how the rich and famous have changed! On the south side there’s a tiny cove where Onassis built a small beach house so Jacqui could get away from it all. Today you can sail right past it, but the rest of the island is completely off limits.

 

We’ve spent the last few days in Corfu, trying to remember that it is in fact a Greek island. Having been inhabited by the Corinthians, Romans, Byzantines, Goths, Venetians (those guys knew how to do a good fortress!), the French and then the English before reverting to Greece, the architecture here is very different from the other Greek islands we’ve been to. There are some very grand buildings with colonnaded promenades and cricket is still played on The Esplanade greens every week.

Today we are sailing to Nisis Othoni, which will be our last port of call in Greece. Tomorrow we head for Italy. So that’s it for now. Don’t forget to click on the blue link at the very bottom of the email notification to go to my blog page with all the images.

Hope all is good with you and yours.

Bye for now,

Kate

Is it a curse or a delight that you can still find places on the planet where there is no wi-fi? I guess it can be both. We found a lovely spot in Gokova Korfezi where there was no internet, but of course when you sail around the corner and you get it back you can “like” Ali’s restaurant on Facebook. It seems everyone is connected these days. I have to say, I rather did like the setting there with the day bed, although I didn’t get to try it out.

In another bay, no internet, but freshly baked bread delivered to your yacht. Gotta love that!

After leaving Gokova Gulf we spent a bit of time back in Hisaronu Gorfezi, a good place to go when the meltemi is having a bit of a roar. We decided to go for a couple of scuba dives, which was good, but it did makes us appreciate how lucky we are with the Great Barrier Reef right on our doorstep back home. Our two dive masters were great guys and loved hamming it up.

Around the Bodrum area is the home of the gulet builders. We have seen a number of them under full sail this year, very majestic but you can imagine they might be a bit of a handful in a breeze. We even saw the makings of a gulet in the pumpkin patch. They build them everywhere!

Some images from around Hisaronu Korfezi…..

we’ve been lucky not to have too many anchoring issues, but we did pick up a doosey in our final up-anchor, some sort of large, heavy “SLOW DOWN” buoy (sunken). Managed to extricate ourselves quite easily, which was a relief. There really is an awful lot of “stuff” down there.

We’ve been back at Didim for the last week packing up & winterising Loki. The marina facilities here are first class. The hard stand area is 70,000 sqm (that’s about 3 & 1/2 MCGs!). Apparently it will be full over winter, but in the meantime the marina decided to put on an end of summer concert, everyone invited. Cool! The facilities include a Yacht Club/Hotel complex, so it’s not a bad place to be doing the pack up. And I love the squadron of ducks that do a regular patrol of the marina. Obviously the water’s really clean.

It’s been a great trip, but we leave here tomorrow and are really looking forward to getting home and catching up on all the local goings on.
See you soon!
Kate

Merhaba!

Our last stop in Greece was the island of Chios, which is where we caught up with my sister Barbara and Cecily. The island is home to some lovely old medieval towns, so we hired a car for the day to drive around and take a closer look. First stop was Nea Moni, a famous 11th century Byzantine Monastery, housing some slightly gruesome relics, with the skulls of monks massacred during the Greek war of independence kept in the ossuary of the chapel.

Next stop was the carless, fortress town of Mesta, with its thick defensive walls and stone alleyways where locals sit and chat or clean their fish in the street and wearing black isn’t only a fashion statement. But the loveliest was Pyrgi where the houses are painted with fabulous grey and white geometric designs, made from a mixture of cement, volcanic sand and lime, and fresh cherry tomatoes are hung out to dry in front of every second place.

It was then time to say goodbye to Greece and head eight miles across the water back to Turkey, clearing in at Cesme. From here we headed south around the Turkish coast to Sigacik, then to Port St Paul which is now part of a national park (where St Paul purportedly once stopped to rest his oarsmen from the meltemi headwinds) then on to Didim. We all enjoyed the brilliant facilities of the three marinas we stopped at, all of which had pools! After visiting the Temple of Apollo it was lovely to kick back poolside and enjoy the marina yacht club facilities.

At Didim we farewelled Barb and Cecily and welcomed aboard Dean and (the lovely jubbly!) Sue. Didim is located on the north side of the Gulf of Gulluck, or ancient Gulf of Mandalya. Just north of here lies the remains of a number of ancient Ionian cities which date back to 1000 BC. These were all harbour cities before the Meander River silted up the ancient Gulf of Latmos. We hired a car to explore the land northwards and were delighted to find the informative museum at Miletus that provided a great overview of the ancient gulf area. The next surprise was that we had Miletus, once an important port city and home to some of the great thinkers and scientists of the day (Thales of Miletus calculated the clipse of the sun, to within one year, in 585BC) all to ourselves to clamber about the ruins unimpeded by busloads of tourists. From there we headed towards the mountains and the site of what was Priene, yet another sophisticated city, much like Ephesus. Being halfway up a mountain with a few shady trees to loiter under made Priene an enjoyable visit in the heat of the early afternoon. Fitzy and Sue tried out the front row VIP seats with their carved lions paws and we strolled around the ruined Temple of Athena.

Back on the water again it was time to explore the Gulf of Gulluck. We left behind the sprawling mass of holiday housing that is Didim/Altinkum and headed for the thickly forested pines of Paradise Bay, Kazikli Limani. A couple of bays around we anchored in Asin Limani, where the ruins of ancient Iassus (900 BC) overlook the village of Kurin. Next stop was Guvercinlik, a popular summer holiday place for locals, but much less developed than Altinkum. Cruising around the end of the Bodrum Peninsula we stopped at Yalikavak and Turgutries before spending our final night with Dean & Sue at anchor in Ada Bogazi, also known as “The Acquarium”, because of it’s clear water.

At Bodrum we had a crew changeover, farewelling Dean and Sue and welcoming my sister, Helen, aboard. Love the gatehouse at the entrance to the marina; they’ve cut the top off a small ship.

Bodrum Castle, built by the Knights of St John in the 15th century was well worth the visit, as was the excellent Underwater Archaeology Museum housed within it.

Time then to check out the Gulf of Gokova. Cokertme, English Harbour, Dergirmen Buku, Sehir Adalari (Snake & Castle Islands), and Yedi Adalari (Seven Islands) all rate a mention. I’d read about Cleopatra’s Beach at Sehir Adalari, so felt compelled to check it out. The story goes that Cleopatra wanted to create an idyllic little beach for her and Marc Antony to cavort upon, but the local sand wasn’t up to scratch. So she arranged for galleys full of sand shipped in from the Sahara. Apparently the fine-grained sand has been examined by a notable geologist and found to be not typical of the local area, but indeed from Africa! No longer is this a secluded place for a lovers tryst, instead it swarms with gulet-filled daytrippers. These days you can swim in the water, but the actual beach is roped off in order to protect the sand.

But it is still possible to get away from it all in the Gulf. At Kufre we found a remotely located restaurant in the wilderness (must be because no wi-fi).
“I’m sure there’s a restaurant around here somewhere!
Great food in the middle of nowhere. Just had to share the bay with a cow that was using our mooring lines a an obstacle course.
We then headed back to the western cove in Cokertme Bay for a farewell dinner and so Helen could get transport to the airport.

We are loving this area, particularly Dergirmen Buku and there are still a few more places to explore around the Gokova Gulf, so the weather will no doubt decide where we go next.

Hope you are surviving the Melbourne weather O.K. (or wherever you are). If nothing else the snow must be good. Stay warm! We’ll be home in about a month, so looking forward to catching up soon.
Cheers,
Kate