“No. I have plenty!” He offered them again.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Ah. Endaxi.3 Anyway, thank you.”
They walked away. What the hell was going on? I called after them.
“What do I do now?”
They considered this carefully, and then the petty officer shrugged.
“Anything you like,” he told me, and they departed for the town.
I didn’t have a clue what to do... I watched them carefully to see if they went to the port police to report me, but they continued into town at a leisurely stroll, deeply engaged in conversation.
Well, bull-by-the-horns time, it seemed. Let’s find out once and for all. Collecting my papers, I marched determinedly into the port police office to declare my entry. Would I be arrested? Nope. A thoroughly polite and smart young man gravely calculated that I owed forty-eight drachmae for staying overnight (a sum which would barely pay for all the ink he used filling in the complex receipt) and bad me a cheery ‘good evening’. As fast as possible without damaging property, I left in search of it.
At the head of the bay of Kamares is a sweeping beach fringed with trees and restaurants where I sat, wriggling my bare feet luxuriously in the sand, whilst keeping a leery eye on Green Dragon for anything that resembled a uniform. When an hour, and a number of gin-and-tonics, had passed, I began to breathe a little easier.
The setting was truly beautiful, the last of the light lingered in the western sky and the heights of the mountains were tinged with the rosy caress of the parting sun. A pristine white church was illuminated like a Disney attraction opposite me on the north side of the bay, and all around, above the warm, yellowish glow of the restaurants, reared spectacular mountains.
It was still early in the season, but the tourists were here in modest numbers, so Kamares was pleasantly alive with people and muted music. It was utterly delightful, and only the sense that the sleek, death-dealing, sinister shadow lurking under the cliffs still had dastardly intentions for me detracted from my pleasure.
By the last of the light I saw the two sailors, conspicuous in their white-topped caps, boarding a passenger caïque. Some boys passed down a number of cardboard boxes, and they set off out of the harbour again. Had I been mentally scarred just so that they could get some bloody groceries? Or were they going to return home, report that the port police had done nothing, and set the grim-looking officer again on the path of retribution? Well, I have a procedure for these tense and uncertain situations. As an old captain of mine once remarked, when bailing me from a Chilean calaboose, “Always try to go to jail with a full stomach, Son.” It remains excellent advice, and I ordered lavishly.
Sifnos is renowned for its cookery, and one of its specialities is their local version of the ubiquitous Greek salad. They add capers and use a local soft cheese called myzythra, which is deliciously salty, creamy, and has a delightfully sensual texture. Together with a charcoal-grilled kalamari, a pylino4 of luscious moussaka and a copious dose of muscle-relaxant, it set me up splendidly for a prolonged spell in chokey, but the beadle remained ostentatiously absent. I began to think that I had heard the last of it... but just in case, I decided to leave very early in the morning. I had intended to get going at first light anyway; now I decided to have another couple of gins, get turned-in, and be away before daylight.
I lazed in that beach cafe, nursing my frosted glass and marvelling at the effect of a rising moon, just past the full, on the overhanging cliffs above me.
The moon’s declination must have been somewhat northerly, as it shone onto the spectacular folds and spurs of the south side of the bay rimming every ridge with blue-white light and plunging every chasm into pitchy shade. When people ask me what are the most beautiful sights I have seen in Greece, that night always comes to mind. The light of the full moon on the mountains of Kamares... see that, and you are a huge step closer to dying content. The light was also bright enough to show me the tourist-caïque chugging in full of sailors in their best uniforms, but after an initial consternation I realised that they were just coming in for a night in the town, and relaxed again before my apprehension had registered on my laundry-bill. With great reluctance I dragged myself away from the glorious moonscape, set my alarm-clock for four A.M. and rolled into my pit.
* * *
I had thought to awake before officialdom, but no matter how early you rise, you can’t beat a man who has not been to bed. As I emerged into my cockpit just after four in the morning, the still-vivid moonshine showed me four uniformed figures on the dock next to the Green Dragon. The second glance showed that one of them was the officer of the day before.
“Ah! Good morning!” He beamed. “I am so glad to see you are awake... I would not like to wake you.”
His grin, in my befuddled and guilty state of mind, reminded me of the Gestapo officer in The Great Escape... you know, the one in the leather jacket who says “Your German is excellent, Herr Bartlett. And also, I hear, your French. Your arms up, please!”
For an instant I thought, ‘Here it comes!’ and seconds later I thought, ‘Bloody hell! Middle of the night, no-one around to see... what the hell is this?’
“We were wondering,” asked the spokesman in his really excellent English, “if you would be so kind to take us back to our ship? We are sailing in two hours.”
All was great bonhomie as we puttered up the moon-drenched bay towards the submarine. The officers had enjoyed a night amongst the tourist girls in the bars, their uniforms being of the utmost service to them in this environment, and they quite candidly admitted that they had been having such a splendid time that they had missed the last boat back. They had, in fact, been sufficiently desperate to ‘borrow’ a boat had it been necessary to get them back in time... delaying military operations for debauchery, I do understand, is frowned upon in the more elite units, and in contemplating such irregularities these chaps were no doubt just being ordinarily sub-servient... but a lift back was a much less contentious way of resolving their dilemma. They were generous with their thanks.
“All very well,” I growled as we approached the dark, menacing shadow below the cliffs, “But you scared the living daylights out of me with that stunt yesterday. I’ve been waiting to be arrested all night!”
They looked sympathetic, but also smug. Greeks anywhere love putting one over on someone, and enjoying a clever solution to a problem is a core national value. Even deep gratitude isn’t going to stop them glorying in it a little.
“Sorry,” relied the linguist, as sincerely as he could through his smirk, “But the Captain told me to organise some souvlakis for the crew. It just seemed the quickest and easiest way to get a couple of guys into town.”
So that was what had been in the cardboard boxes. I had been traumatised so that a Greek submarine crew could enjoy a pork lolly.
I deposited my debauchees, giving the submarine another couple of clouts in the process, received more fulsome thanks which included a friendly wave from the official-looking character who was again surveying the world from the top of the fin, and departed with the glow of dawn at my back. Turning southwards out of Kamares Bay, I headed under Sifnos and eastwards towards Amorgos.
An hour later, as I motored along the rocky Sifniot coast in the morning calm and munched a bacon butty, a steel cylinder slid vertically out of the water barely ten metres to starboard. I was half expecting it. The lens of the periscope turned towards me, and then it dipped gravely, two times, below the water in salute. I waved back. It dipped a third time, and was seen no more. Leaping to the rail I looked down into the blue depths and thought I saw a shadow moving away to seaward.
How very friendly, I thought, considering I had crashed into them. Truly, one does meet a better class of people in collisions.
CHAPTER EIGHT
SALVAGING PRIDE
A spot of harry-roughers... great hydrofoil journeys of the world... malodour-de-mer... techniques for rough weather... what to do when they don’t work
... blowing for a tug... how to tow if you can’t do it properly... the bun-fight at the Omega Kappa corral... philotimo... an unlikely explanation accepted... the reward of virtue.
In terms of my reputation I may not have been achieving much on the romantic front, but my Barnacle Billy-ness was about to have an opportunity to exhibit itself.
Lochinvar had been struggling. She was a good-looking boat, a Gib-Sea 106 with a very sweet sheer, and she was a capable sailor; but she was not designed for the bloody-minded conditions we had encountered together over the last two days.
Firstly we had beat thirty-five miles to windward into a relentless north-north-east, driving over steep, short, slamming seas, which are so typical of the Eastern Mediterranean, under a treble-reefed main and half a genoa. That had been rough, and wet, and very tiring; and yet we had made headway, and the exhilaration of bucketing over the ramping, slab-sided, thuggish waves had still held some charm. The astringent spray, the whipping freshness of the air, the profound, cathedral-vaulted, cobalt lustre of the deep, deep sea as we clove into it, combined with the sheer achievement of making progress would be compelling memories long after the aches, the chill, the hunger and the weariness had been forgotten. The second half of the trip, however, was one of those sailing experiences which make one wish that one had lived one’s entire life up a mountain, and bred vampires for a hobby.
The call had come a couple of days earlier, when Spiros had managed to trap me at about four in the morning at the Jungle Bar, where I was just having a last glass with the owners, Stathis and Mary, as they put the shutters up. Mary was mixing the gins as Stathis and I carried two last clients, overcome by their exertions, outside and arranged them comfortably in the municipal flowerbeds to pass the rest of the night. Jingle, jangle.
“Julian! Phone!”
I knew what would happen, but I picked it up anyway. And I said yes. (I always said ‘yes’ in any case, but after a pleasant evening with Dr Tanqueray I would probably have volunteered to take a petrol-tanker to Dunkirk). Then I packed a bag, forestalled a hangover with a heart-attack breakfast at George’s Cafe, and caught the first Flying Dolphin to Monemvasia. It had been blowing a stiff northerly for a week, and Spiros had a boat stuck at the bottom of the Peloponnese. Fifty-five miles, give or take... it would be a bit of a punch to get back, certainly, but all the same I considered it money for old rope. I blithely assured Spiros that I’d have the boat back the following night. I was a pillock.
There was a Flying Dolphin hydrofoil link down to Monemvasia. One had to get to Spetses, change onto another boat which went down to Plaka Leonidhion on the Peloponnese, and then wait for the service from Navplion which touched at Tyros, Plaka, Kiparissi, Gerakas and Monemvasia before it rounded Akra Malea and made its furthest-south in either Neapolis or Gythion. It was an excellent service... sadly now long discontinued... which opened up many wonderful, isolated bucolic havens along the Eastern Peloponnese by making, in a few hours, a trip that, by road, would have taken all day and half of the night; and yet, if there was any weather it was not a voyage for the faint-of-heart. It was even less so for the faint-of-stomach!
Two and a half hours to Leonidion followed by another two to Monemvasia was a long time to sit in a sealed tube which smelled faintly of diesel, especially with the sea that had been kicked up by a week of anemos-ity; for the hydrofoils rolled sluggishly in the quartering seas, stalling on the backs of waves and racing down the fronts, and the ponderous, slow and unpredictable motion had many a passenger intensely occupied trying to re-pack their breakfasts in bags which were neither sufficiently large nor waterproof for the purpose. Blame it on the excesses of the previous night I could and did, but whatever the reason, the fact was that, after a lifetime in boats and ten years at sea professionally, even I was not immune. Monemvasia is a magnificent, towering, vertiginous pillar of ruby-hued rock crowned with the spectacular ruins of a mighty acropolis, but by the time I arrived on the old stone jetty, which juts out of the ancient causeway joining this eminence to the mainland, my eagerness to disembark had nothing whatever to do with enjoying the view.
The apologetic clients who were leaving Lochinvar met me off the hydrofoil and handed over the keys. I cursed them for this consideration, as it meant I had to keep my rebellious digestive system in check whilst I appeared saltily immune for the benefit of the punters. Fortunately, after tailing off into silence as they took horrified stock of the condition of the refugees disembarking from the contraption, they hurried away to cancel their tickets on the afternoon return service and look for a bus.
I proceeded with all despatch to the rather wonderful pizza restaurant under the great rock-face and settled my stomach with a calezone and a flagon or two of icy amber elixir. Then I checked out the boat, had a couple of hours sleep, made a pack of sarnies to last me the night, and set forth to battle the elements.
* * *
Thus it was that I came to be regretting the siren-call of the oceans, and it was all my own fault; firstly, in general, for saying ‘yes’ without due consideration, and secondly, in particular, for the route I had taken. I was coming north to Poros from Monemvasia, at the bottom of the Peloponnesian coast, against a north-north-easterly gale, and it had seemed to me that I might get some respite from the seas if I passed west of Hydra, using that high, rocky island as a breakwater.
Smugly confident in my ‘local knowledge’, I had allowed for the nonsense which Greek wind gets up to whenever it meets a rock and I expected to find, as I sailed into the narrow gap between Hydra and Ermioni, that that the wind would simply turn to follow the Hydra Strait and blow dead against me. However, I suspected the seas would be much higher in the open water east of Hydra, and I took it as the least-worst option. What I had not predicted was that, in the confines of the Hydra Strait, the sea built even higher. It was bad enough beating into that, but then the wind died altogether.
Delivery-skippers in Greece either become adept at making way against the wind, or they give up entirely. People pay to sail downwind, but most of us don’t sail back up unless we are well remunerated for it. Some folks leave their boats at the downwind end of their voyage by pre-arrangement, and some are simply overcome by the elements; but the fact is that boats accumulate downwind and have to be brought back up for the next client. The majority of deliveries are against the wind, and anyone of any brain soon develops a strategy.
Normally when faced with head seas and winds, one either sailed close-hauled or else one flattened the main sail with a reef and motored on a course which just allowed the sail to be kept full. That way a fair, if uncomfortable, speed could be maintained.
Today, however, the wind having died away to leave only the high, spiteful sea, I had been forced to lower the mainsail to prevent it flogging itself to death in the pitching and rolling. All attempts to change course and angle across the seas had failed, because I lost ground as I gained speed. The boat was needed in Poros, so I didn’t want to take shelter until the sea dropped. I had endured most of the night slamming into the detestable and undiminishing chop, unable to prepare a hot meal* and feeling as if I had spent a month on the dodgems.
Lochinvar was game. With resolution and tenacity she slammed and pitched into the chunky, white-maned, anarchic swells which hissed down the Hydra Strait, her engine purring stoically despite being alternately stood on its gearbox or fly-wheel, but she was going nowhere. Every time Lochinvar hit one, her engine had to drive her up a steep hill, which slowed her down; every time the wave passed by, she briefly accelerated and then dug her bows in to the trough behind it, so that her buoyancy almost stopped her dead. It was like playing American football... short sprint, crashing stop. I was thoroughly sick of the business.
Most of the morning I had watched Tselevinia creeping closer, moving no faster than an arthritic tectonic plate, knowing that Poros was just the other side of Dharditsa and that, in a direct line, I was barely six miles from home, shelter, ice-cold beer and my bed, and the relief as I finall
y nosed into the Tselevinia channel was as palpable as walking under a waterfall. Emerging on the other side of the passage to run north-west to Poros, the boat took the high swell on her starboard side. Rolling her zincs out, but no longer held back by the impact of waves from ahead, Lochinvar swooped over the heaped beam seas and raced towards home. I had already decided on the pepper steak at Mouraghio Taverna and could just about taste that beer.
The seas were, not to mince words, bloody awful. Generated by a full blow in the Aegean they hooked westwards at Cape Sounion and hit the lower Saronic from the east-north-east. As they smashed on the sheer, rocky coast, they created back-waves which radiated out and even a mile from the land these conflicted with the next waves coming in, making them higher and steeper. I reckoned some of them were touching three metres, and I kept a good way offshore, partly to avoid the worst of them and partly to give me time to get sails on in case I had an engine problem.
In the eastern approach to Poros lies an island, Bourtzi. It is a low, rocky dome, perhaps fifteen metres high and two hundred metres long, and it is crowned with a turreted, defensive wall, like a small castle. I was watching it keenly as the thrashing white water all about it clearly showed that the waves were still potent even this far into the entrance. Foam frothed around the island like spittle on a maniac’s lips, and from this an occasional spout of white erupted to reach almost as high as the foot of the walls as the massive energy of the seas vented itself on impassive rock. And then, in that anarchy of tortured seas, I clearly saw a flash of blue which was far too light to be natural.
It took me some moments, in the chaotic, bucking world of Lochinvar’s cockpit, to lay my hands on the binoculars. It took a lot longer to snatch a reliable glimpse of the waters in front of the island, but eventually I had some sort of focus. A moment later I caught a fleeting sight of a coral-blue fishing boat rearing her bow over an advancing comber. A man was clinging to the net-winding gear.
The Trojan Walrus Page 18