For half-term holiday, the family went sailing in Greece. This was to make up for the lamentable failure to get away in the summer, since, by the time I had ceased to be busy at work, the weather had gone into its characteristic August decline, sufficiently to discourage us from packing a tent in the car and heading West, as we had planned.
The sailing idea was a whim that came about when someone thrust a brochure into my hands at the Southampton boat show. We sail dinghies generally, when the weather encourages it, but had hardly set foot on a yacht, except on a couple of days this year. We checked the T&Cs with growing incredulity that, these people were willing to let just anyone sail their craft, qualifications and certifications be damned.
I have to pause the sailing tale here to give praise for the brochure. It was not the floatilla sailing brochure that immediately caught my eye, but the bare-boat one. A brochure written by people who like having fun on boats, no lawyers, no marketing. The pictures did a good part of the selling too; somewhere warm, quiet, relaxing, clean, friendly. All the good impressions came across. Very sensibly, although they allow just anyone to sail, these folk do not let them out on their own with 60+ grand's worth of sailable glass and epoxy. Bare-boat hire requires a deposit and some sailing qualifications (more than the RYA II we have).
Investigating the available options left us with the idea of a week at half-term, which is anyway the last week of the season. At this point we didn't stop to question that the holiday price was not inflated for half-term, thoughts from the brochure bouyed us along and those friends we spoke to, who were familiar with the area and climate, all suggested that the weather at this time of year was generally good, mid 20's celsius and warm sea.
I will admit, that before we left this country, we were aware of the likely weather conditions in the Ionian sea when we arrived in Greece. There had been mention of storms and temperatures rather closer to 20 than we had hoped for. But, we do sail, we do understand that it is weather dependent. We are quite familiar with arriving at the sailing club to find that the wind is too fierce, or that it has dropped entirely, or that, on an ostensibly beautiful sunny day, there is a threat of storms hanging bleakly over the needles and threatening to flatten all boats in its way. We were frustrated though, having got up very early on the Sunday and arrived shortly after mid day in good weather, to have to wait almost 48 hours before setting out anywhere.
I think I'll dive right in with my central gripe here, everything else is peripheral. We understand weather, as I said, we undertand that the itinery is governed by what is possible in the worst conditions that can be construed from the forcast. What we did not understand is that the area is so crowded with floatillas, that finding a port that can contain one is like playing one of those 4 x 4 puzzle games in which there are 15 pieces all constrained to move in near synchrony. Not only were we constrained in our choice of destination, to ports considered safe in heavy weather, but also by everyone else in the sea, who were trying to do the same things. In fair weather of course, this situation does not arise; a full marina just means mooring round the bay and a longer row to the bar.
The immediate consequence of this was 46 hours in the harbour where we embarked, the corollary was that our first day in charge of anything longer than 16 feet on the water involved a journey that took 8 hours and involved rather more navigation than we had expected to undertake on our own. I must be fair and point out that we could have arrived much faster, but it being a sailing holiday, we took the approach of using the sails, which was probably mistaken, but is the solution, as dinghy sailors, that we naturally attempted. 20 miles (by the enthusiastic crow) or more, against the wind, was our first day and, on arrival, we were a bit emotional.
There, the tension is released,and now I can return to blogging calmly.
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