In one of Asterix’s many adventures there is a joke where if my increasing addled memory recalls correctly went something like this.

Q. How much does a Grecian earn?
A. About five amphora’s a day

Bad probably incorrect jokes aside my ten day tour of Greece is a blur. Our charter guests were particularly demanding and a lot of the time I embarrassingly did not know where we were due to the chop and change, start stop nature of our trip. I drank a lot of coke, I was averaging about six cans a day towards the end.

Thankfully our Chef had time to take a few photos and these will supplement the mere minutes I had to reflect on the stunning mythical qualities of the Greek islands.

Our trip began in Athens we steamed somewhere for about three hours and anchored for the evening.

This is the town we could see. Are you impressed with my practiced vagueness? It gets better.

From the island that is quite close to Athens we travelled in a direction for a few hours and anchored in a cove. The cove had a fantastic hilltop town which was very pretty.

View back down from the town. Chur Chef.

This island was completely devoid of any meaningful vegetation. It turns out the crusades stripped a lot of the islands of all trees to build warships in times past. Sadly a lot of the islands have not recovered.
After the treeless island we made our way to Mykonos. It is fitting that I remember the name for Mykonos because we had terrible weather and photo opportunities were very limited. I did have a funny interaction with another yachty.

I was waiting on the dock for our guests when a bespectacled, uniformed frizzy haired fellow turned up and jumped in a tender. He was fluffing about and I asked him if he wanted me to slip his lines for him. He said, ”nah mate i have to put this fucking tent up on this fucking tender first’

I smiled with the acknowledgement nothing says “I am from Australia” better.

After a few windswept days in Mykonos we sailed past Rhodes and went to my highlight of the trip. The highlight was so large that I committed the name of the island to memory forever. 

Symi.

Symi was other worldly. There are vast sections of it which would not look out of place on mars.

The pockets of civilisation were charming. I can’t say with any clarity what the town reminded me of. It didn’t look real. 

 

Symi by night.

The real highlight for our Guests and anyone who enjoys water sports are the abundant coves and sheltered bays where you can tie up to a rock drop an anchor and while away a day water-skiing, swimming, wakeboarding, kayaking, skurfing, jet skiing and anything else water related that ends with ing.

 

There were a couple of nice caves in this spot. With a satellite dish and some air conditioning I think I could make myself at home here as a hermit.

Sadly we left Symi for more wind and an island of which the name escapes me It had an apocalypse cave of biblical importance. If you are really interested you can probably find out the name of the island quite quickly.

It also had a fortified town on a hill surrounded by a newer town.

By now we had been on the sea for ten days and our trip was winding down. We did our drop off in Samos. Samos is incredibly close to Turkey which is where we are now.

I guess this post reinforces the perils of travel blogging when you are working 12-15 hours a day. I saw a lot, digested little and want more.  Sounds like a coke addiction. 

The coastline of Turkey awaits and so do I. Kick off is on Sunday see you all next time.