“One hyars that the English captain was exceedingly firm with the local authorities. No nonsense from Johnny Foreigner, sort of thing.”
“Now that is entirely true!” I agreed, “...and as a consequence, the English captain now knows how to make an exceedingly fine aubergine salad!”
* * *
Sunset over the Peloponnese. The Meltemi had subsided, and the Bouka Doura was declining gently as the sun sank into the promontory of Akra Mouzaki. Molto Alegro lay at anchor in Skindos Bay on the island of Dokos, and we were all invited to share the evening meal of the archaeological team, to which I had contributed a pile of home-made bifteki made on Molto’s charcoal grill. The clatter of chatter sounded behind us as Clemmie and I sat on the end of the promontory and sipped wine in companionable silence.
It was still summer, with all of autumn to come. I had almost two months of fairly steady charter work lined up for me by Rory Carteret, and Clemmie was going to be working at Dokos until she went back to Uni in October. I was extremely comfortable in Poros, and had access to boats to take me down to Dokos pretty much any time I was free.
That sausage in Piraeus, I thought, was taking some time to digest!
* * *
At this point, I must repeat the disclaimer made in Adjacent to the Argonauts.
* * *
My old friend Pandelis is still the ex-officio master of Hydra Harbour, and my even older friend Petros still runs his cafe in Poros. One new character, The Snail, continues to delight his Poros public with both his cuisine and his humour. As previously stated, there are some people whom it is impossible to describe even remotely accurately without disclosing their identity, and so I have made no attempt to disguise these larger-than-life characters.
I have also indulged myself by mentioning two most excellent teachers from my school days, together with my very good friend Joe Burke, sadly no longer with us. This I have done purely out of an impulse to record a modest tribute to these fine gentlemen.
With those exceptions, however, the identities of all persons in this story have again been compounded from various experiences. The reader is assured that, although the inspiration for the characters and occurrences in this book is genuine, I do not describe any actual person or event apart from the exceptions mentioned.
* * *
The cover for this book has been painted by the talented and charming Pats Van Dam, who knows her subject as she has been rash enough to sail with me. Take a look at her work on www.patsvandam.com. Old shipmates Dave Baboulene and Roger Sarginson have been refreshingly unsentimental critics, and cruising buddy Aad Wijt has made valuable analyses from the cockpit of Sahlamara. To these friends, and to many others who have offered encouragement during the writing of The Trojan Walrus, my earnest thanks.
* * *
Once again, my most sincere gratitude to Greece and its people for providing a canvas upon which even a blind man cannot help but paint a glowing picture.
ENDNOTES
CHAPTER ONE
1 Decrepit caverns are frequently concealed gems, laying on their down-market, plastic table-covers fresh food and decent local barrel-wines for a very modest price. Anything with a linen table cloth, or laid place settings, however, is as often as not an over-priced, pig-processing plant equipped with a bank of microwaves which serves box-wine and last week’s moussaka ‘a la ping’.
† I detest okra; the taste has nothing to recommend it, and the texture nauseates me. If I went out with a double-barrelled shotgun and met Heinrich Himmler, Pol Pot and an okra farmer, I’d give the okra farmer both barrels.
2 Lightoller was the senior surviving officer of the Titanic, a skilled, stolid, courageous man to whom many survivors owed their lives.
† Hawkins was the second mate of the gasoline-carrying tanker San Demetrio which was abandoned by her crew after she was hit and set on fire by eleven-inch shells from a German pocket-battleship. Finding the tanker still on fire but afloat a day later, Hawkins re-boarded her with the chief engineer and half the crew. They successfully fought the fires and restored power, then Hawkins, without charts or instruments and steering with a spanner, navigated her safely to the Clyde. I make no claim to be this sort of second mate.
3 See ‘Adjacent to the Argonauts
4 He said it was an accident.
5 Lavotry
CHAPTER TWO
1 Mrs
2 They’re still there.
3 The Orthodox church – with, I must say, commendable discernment – observes the old Julian calendar, whilst the johnny-come-lately religions follow the Gregorian one. Consequently, the date of the Orthodox Easter only occasionally aligns with other faiths.
4 Waterfront, or coastal road.
5 For the non-nautical, I have attached a glossary at the end of this book. It is the same as the one in my first book, but several additional terms which occur for the first time here are included in italics.
† The French often like to do their charter-sailing in large groups. A French boat will commonly arrive in harbour with about ten people milling about on deck, tie up, and everyone will go ashore for the ‘Apero’. Another ten will then emerge from below and take a shower on deck.
6 Actually, I don’t believe she ever was, until after she sank. That’s newspapers for you.
7 An asset which was at once exceptional, prestigious and almost completely useless. Greeks treated plastic money like an exotic animal with big teeth; they were quite fascinated, but they weren’t going to pop into the cage for a cuddle. The closest they got to such a trusting, not to say taxable, means of payment was to put Visa and Mastercard stickers on their shop doors. Any tourist attempting to construe this as an invitation would be told the machine was
CHAPTER THREE
1 A noble and complex work consisting of 5 parts containing 38 rules plus 4 appendices
2 Courtyard.
3 Yes.
4 Later- too late to do me any credit, I fear- it did occur to me that her commitment must have been even greater than I imagined. The life of an Icelandic archaeologist presumably requires considerable tenacity when you consider the hardness of their ground. There are also perceptible difficulties in having a quick look under a glacier, and if you go peering into holes you are
5 This was a premise which continued to misguide me throughout my professional yachting career.
6 Anyone know the incumbent’s name? Nationality? Sex? I rest my case.
7 I will never, to my dying day, understand why people pay good money for fenders and then prefer to use delicate and difficult-to-replace body-parts to try to make sure the poor dear fender doesn’t get squeezed. For woolly thinking, it wins best-of-breed in the merino class.
8 I had a Greek language course which pointed out that when ordering, the waiter will often respond by saying ‘A méssos, Kyrié’, which means ‘Immediately, Sir.’ “Although,” the voice on the tape then continued rather wearily, “…sometimes, in Greece, it does take a little longer!”
9 Don’t try this if you really are planning to leave without paying... I’ve seen a good few people try it, and it doesn’t work. This just proves that they do know what is going on!
† Can’t actually remember his name, but if it wasn’t Billy-Something then it should have been.
10 Vine-leaves stuffed with rice and herbs
† Meatballs
11 Almost... the only motorised transport on Hydra is the garbage-truck. It is the only place I know where the refuse-collectors kerb-crawl. Since only the most attractive ladies are usually honoured with their attentions, Hydra is surely unique in considering it a social cachet to be seen being taken out with the trash.
† ...and still does!
CHAPTER FOUR
1 Greek men do not have a problem with rejection, because they simply don’t recognise it. It isn’t really on their radar.
2 Try it... it isn’t easy! And these guys were taking off from soft gravel.
3 Probably telling his crew, “Yo
u don’t want to go through there!!!”
CHAPTER FIVE
1 The accepted English spelling ‘Cyclades’ is generally incorrectly pronounced by English-speakers in one of two ways; the first suggests unwell gentlewomen, the second an immunity deficiency caught from a bike. The correct Greek pronunciation is ‘kick-LAH-thess’.
2 If a doctor isn’t too sure whether you are going to live or die, he doesn’t, of course, say ‘Your ticker’s on its last legs, so I hope you didn’t waste your money on a return ticket.’ That would be highly unprofessional, and not at all the sort of thing that even a patient patient would pay his substantial stipend for. The doctor will take refuge behind something like ‘anomalous myocardial dysfunction’ and in extremis may go so far as to predicate ‘an uncertain prognosis’. Navigators are no less careful of their professional image. If they use the term ‘dead reckoning’ it means ‘we guessed’.
3 No dafter than the concept of a single monopolies commission, at any rate
4 A polite way of putting it. Greek vituperation is generally a complex and long-playing series of contradictory insults heavily inclined to allegations of ambigous sexuality, auto-erotic proclivities, hagio-sexual blasphemies and... well, sex and saints generally.
5 A corruption of ‘demi-john’.
6 Pronounced ‘Hora’, with a guttural ‘H’ and the stress on the first syllable. It literally means ‘village’. The ubiquitous Greek salad is actually a ‘choriatiki’ or ‘village’ salad.
7 i.e. when they saw a boat smaller than their own.
8 I love this salutation... when people are in a hurry, or being merely polite, they more often say good morning, good evening, or whatever; and these are the forms more usually heard in towns; but in rural areas one still meets xáirete, which conveys rather more than mere acknowledgement. Deriving from ‘Xaire’, meaning ‘hail’ it is pronounced ‘hxair-ettay’, and the stress on the first syllable can be prolonged for anything up to half an hour or so, when nothing else is pressing. It really gives the sense that the most important thing in the world is saying hello to you, and that all day is available for the task.
9 Possibly the first people to suggest that the way to a man’s heart could be through his stomach. Or his kidneys. They seem to have enjoyed taking the scenic route.
10 I call these katabatic gusts ‘Poseidon’s Bullets’; and the yachtsman who is new to the Med, and particularly the Aegean, is well advised to watch out for them. In Northern Europe we are somewhat conditioned to running into the lee of the land for a bit of shelter, but in the Aegean this can be a very bad idea indeed. It is best to keep at least two miles away from the lee-side of any high island when there is any strength in the wind, and if you have to come in close then reef down, be ready to release your sheets, and keep your eyes on the water to windward.
11 Hardly surprisingly, with hindsight, since I am now informed that it means ‘Zip it, Shithead!’
† ‘Shut up, you old pressure cooker’… Oh! I would have given a major appendage to have come out with that one myself!
CHAPTER SIX
1 Don’t ask me what they were. I spent my biology lessons doodling sailing-ships, and couldn’t tell a primrose from the Great Barrier Reef. If you showed me an oak tree, I’d have a fifty percent chance of guessing which end goes in the ground.
2 Basically a Shredded Wheat soaked in local honey and dusted with almonds... delicious!
3 A sort of local grappa, made from the lees of the wine pressings.
4 The wine-store, a cavernous, dark hole in the south side of the waterfront whose ramshackle shelves supported enough intoxicants to tranquilise Luxembourg.
5 About the only thing Shergar and I ever did at a higher level.
6 Possibly they are... the Pendle Witches come to mind, and a culture which can venerate black pudding and clog-dancing is surely capable of anything.
7 They had a lot of trouble with that clock. Periodically it could tell five different times at once.
8 By which I mean the French, Italians, Germans, Scandinavians, etc. No matter how pro-European they may be, the British and the Greeks are united in subconsciously considering ‘Europe’ to be somewhere else.
9 Sorry- what am I thinking of? Greek Delight, of course.
CHAPTER SEVEN
1 Alright... terelyne. But it doesn’t have the same ring to it.
2 Grade D
3 OK.
4 A pylino is an individual, oven-cooked dish which may be of various types. It takes its name from the earthenware baking-pot in which it is both cooked and brought to table.
CHAPTER EIGHT
1 I don’t know about you, but sandwiches have a fatal flaw for me. I get very bored waiting for them. I can wait hours... days, even... for a meal which has to be prepared and which exists, so to speak, only in potentia: but food in existence exerts a magnetism beyond all hope of resistance. However I justify the deed... be it ‘they’ll get stale’, or ‘I might not have time later’... if it is ready to eat then eaten it shall most assuredly be. I would be a complete liability in a lifeboat.
CHAPTER NINE
1 Roast Beef... French slang for an Englishman. Some of these Froggies have a bit of a nerve.
2 It is a funny thing, but I have often heard tell that French people, addressed in their own language by a foreigner, have a rather rude propensity to change abruptly to English. It is never so with me, I must say... they seemed fascinated by my French, and hang on my every word.
† Once, at a French airport, I was waiting for a lady with some flowers and a bottle of champagne. A great number of passing women pointed me out to their husbands, who strangely either couldn’t make me out or else didn’t seem very pleased with me. Eventually, one such lady dragged her grumpy swain over to my table, said “Bravo! Formidable!” and asked me where I was from. When I replied “Angleterre”, she recoiled in amazement, crying, “C’est pas possible! Les Anglais sont pas romantiques!”
3 They almost reached.
CHAPTER TEN
1 There is now a breakwater to reduce the sea from this direction, which helps somewhat, but that wasn’t yet built in the eighties.
† I confess that, for many years, I thought La Vie En Rose was a song about a pink aeroplane.
2 At that time an export-only brand, much prized amongst a sea-going clientele and for which knowing harbour-side publicans would pay handsomely. When I first went to sea, the duty-free price was eighty-four pence a bottle, so spectacular profits could accrue.
3 Pronounced Pórto Heli, with a guttural ‘H’.
4 Out of consideration for my fellow man, I don’t eat baked beans myself; but other Brits in Greece used to long for them, and they were scarce. As currency within the ex-pat community, they were the equivalent of bullion.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
1 Foreigners
2 It is like OCD, but with the letters in the right order.
3 All of which, thanks to the pilot book, I discoursed knowledgably about without ever having set eyes on them before.
CHAPTER TWELEVE
1 Greek sailors do like their titles. Anyone with a boat, even one in his bath, is a Kapitanios, and this also applies to all certificated deck-officers. When working on Greek ships, everyone is calling each other ‘captain’. The actual captain is known formally as the Kivernitis, literally ‘governor’ and synonymous with the English ‘Master’. Informally, he is the Protos Kapitanios, or First Captain.
2 I have elsewhere extolled the invaluable qualities of bread knives when cutting ropes. Never, ever sail without a bread knife, even if you are gluten intolerant with a wheat allergy.
GLOSSARY
This glossary is an updated version of the one published in Adjacent to the Argonauts. New entries are in italic script.
Anchor Intended as a means of finding your boat where you left it, this useful item is primarily a conversation piece. If you have three yachties in a room, you have five opinions on anchors. Some people favour the sorts
which are light and easy to lift- these people are dangerous lunatics who should be confined for their own good. What you need is a behemoth with lots of teeth and attitude.
Anchor chain Attaches the anchor to the boat. In the Mediterranean, you want lots of it, and none of this nonsense about rope being just as good, as the bottom of the Med is mostly made of razor-blades.
Anchor winch See Windlass
Back-stay A wire which is attached to a very strong point at the back of the yacht and runs up to the top of the mast. It supports the mast from behind, and is an essential safety feature when urinating over the stern.
Beating / Beat A vessel is said to be ‘beating’ or ‘on a beat’ when she is as close to the wind as she can sail. When doing this into stiff wind and weather, she is said to ‘on a hard beat’. I suspect these terms originate from what the crew feel like afterwards!
Bitter-end The very last link of the anchor chain. The one you really don’t want to let go of.
Boom A spar which attaches to the mast with a hinge. Its purpose is to extend the mainsail aft from the mast, to control the angle of the sail to the wind, and to tension the foot of the sail; its perverse delight is to batter the unwary about the bonce.
Bow-sprit Devilish device on more traditional boats- a large spike sticking out of the front to extend head-sails, stays and anchor-leads. Fine at sea, but a liability in small harbours.
Bow-thruster A propeller fitted on the bow of a boat, sometimes in a tunnel through the hull and sometimes on a telescopic leg, which faces across the vessel and is used to push the bow left or right when manoeuvring. Driven by hydraulics, electric or their own engine, most of them make more noise than thrust. They don’t often get you out of trouble, but they do make sure that everyone else knows and can come and have a laugh at your expense.
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