The sterling qualities of Ermioni mud... entertainment cordiale... I observe an accident from a distance for a change... a damsel in dis-dress... I pass a rigorous interview... customs of the sea... the obliging Porto Xeli... view halloo!!!... woman overboard.
True to my Second Law of Nautical Recreation, I met Bron through a collision, but there was nothing iniquitous in this. It is my habitual policy always to maintain that accidents aren’t my fault, but on this occasion my denial was built on firmer foundations than usual; I was in a taverna when it occurred.
The harbour at Ermioni is noted for its ‘holding’... that is to say, the tenaciousness of its mud. Ask any real sailor what he thinks about a port, and he won’t tell you about the restaurants, or the berthing fees, or even about the wildlife on the village beach: He will tell you about the ‘shelter’ and the ‘holding’. ‘Shelter’ is the direction from which, and the extent to which, a boat in the harbour is protected from wind and waves and ‘holding’ is the adhesive properties of the seabed which keeps it there. And in Ermioni the holding is about as good as it gets... the seabed is an obstinate, possessive sludge which cherishes anchors as a dog does a bone... it snaffles them with the speed of a striking snake, buries them deep, and forgets where it put them.
Ermioni is the on the Peloponnese coast opposite Hydra. The port nestles in the armpit of a narrow spit of land which projects eastward out of the mainland, rather as a thumb projects from a hand, forming a long, narrow bay against the adjacent coast. The harbour, closed off by a concrete mole at the seaward end, looks to have almost perfect all-round protection, and from the open sea this is so; and yet Ermioni cannot be said to have all-round shelter, because when the wind goes into the north-west it tears down the mountains of Didyma and drives white-capped waves pell-mell across the closed end of the bay to hit the mole from the inside.1
There is an open quay on the south side of the peninsula which can sometimes be used in northerlies, but no-one really wants to be on an open quay in any strong wind and so, in all except the strongest blows, boats tend to use the harbour and rely on the bulldog-grip of the Ermioni mud to keep them off the mole. And keep them off the mole it does, for if you once get your anchor into that seabed, you will break your chain before you dislodge the pick. You might say that Ermioni is, at bottom, a gripping place to visit.
It was a hot day, bright and clear, but the problematic north-wester was blowing. It was not yet strong enough to be a worry, but it was already a bit of a pest... some of the ‘bullets’ coming down off the hills were sufficiently powerful to set white caps skimming over the bay and the boats in the harbour jostled and swung as the gusts hit.
This was a matter of very little concern to me as I didn’t have a boat; I had come down by ferry to fix a genoa-winch on one of Spiros’ smaller yachts and, having failed spectacularly to do so... it was an old aluminium winch, and one of the castings had dissolved beyond any hope of repair... I was buying the clients a consolatory lunch at the ouzeri on the waterfront whilst Spiros hustled around Alimos trying to find a replacement which he could put on a hydrofoil.
The clients were a very pleasant bunch, a young French couple with four kids; a serious girl of about fourteen, and three boys who were presumably at liberty only because they were still below the age of criminal responsibility. The family’s dismay at the delay quickly evaporated when plied with mezes and cold refreshments, and, like Hèloise before them, they apparently found listening to my French to be one of the high points of their holiday†.
I enjoy entertaining, at least when I can plausibly claim to be unaware that it is for the wrong reason, and so was thoroughly enjoying my filibustering when a large sailing boat of about forty feet entered the harbour looking for a place.
A chap on the front of the new arrival prepared the anchor, slacking the chain and then poking with his foot to persuade the reluctant lump of iron to slide out over the roller. Unfortunately, it seems he forgot to put the brake on again, because when the anchor did finally move it grasped the concept of gravity with such alacrity that, by the time the anchor man had hurriedly applied the pawl, it had obviously reached the bottom of the harbour. The boat was still doing about five knots. At that speed, and on such a short scope of chain, an anchor would normally simply have bounced along the seabed, but not in Ermioni. The greedy, glutinous gunk seized that anchor like a politician seizing an excuse, and the yacht stood on its nose.
There was a horribly expensive sounding bang and something took off from the foredeck, curving through the air to end in an ice-bright splash; the yacht pitched steeply forward, then back, then swung rapidly round about ninety degrees, so that the wind came full on her starboard side. The helmsman abandoned the wheel and joined two or three people on the far side poking desperately at something in the water.
Listing slightly and left to her own devices, the boat drifted sideways and landed with an audible ‘crunch’ across the bow of Spiros’ boat. As the wind piped up again she started to grind her port side on our bow-roller, and the world was treated to a rare display of Blatchley attempting to run, grinding up through the gears in the style... and I am eternally grateful to the clients who were kind enough to share their image with me... of a drunken yeti trying to catch the last bus home.
Arriving on board Spiros’ boat, I grabbed a couple of fenders and started trying to limit the damage. The parents were preoccupied with their three young storm-troopers, and whatever was in the water on the other side of the other boat was still engrossing her entire crew. The resources at my disposal, therefore, consisted of the girl, who spoke not a word of English.
Spiros’ boat was fine, as only the bow-roller was in contact with the larger boat, but the new arrival already had some spectacular scratches on her side. I managed by main force to exert enough pressure on her shrouds to permit my apprentice to slide a fender in horizontally, and then hopped over the pulpit onto the other deck. My intention was to see whether there was enough anchor chain deployed to heave the boat clear; however, I too quickly became primarily concerned with the thing in the water, because it turned out to be a rather attractive young lady.
The rest of the crew were apparently trying to lift the lass by main force, but they weren’t achieving much beyond annoying the victim considerably. The bathing ladder at the stern was masked by a caïque, so I quickly made an improvised foot-step by tying a bowline in the end of the genoa sheet and dropping it over the side. Adjusting the height of the loop to water-level, I secured it to a winch at the foot of the mast, and using this as a step the reluctant mermaid managed to get a grip of the toe rail. Bending low, I took her hands one by one and heaved upwards.
She was a willowy creature and rose easily enough, the pressure of her body on mine causing my T-shirt to ride up, until I had her hands level with my ears. In this indecorous position we were locked for a moment, as she felt for a foothold on the toe-rail, and it was at exactly this point that the upward strain on her arms popped her breasts neatly out of her strapless sundress.
Suddenly sharply aware of a dramatic change in the texture of that part of the lady which was now firmly in contact with my belly, I nearly choked as I stifled a snort of amusement and lifted my eyes heavenward in a vain attempt to pretend I hadn’t noticed. I doubt if it conveyed much conviction. And, on further consideration, if it did, it may have been received with mixed emotions.
We were now in something of an impasse. I couldn’t... either physically or morally... lift her any higher; and she was having trouble getting a foothold. I couldn’t drag her inboard, as the lifeline was between us. So I hung on, feeling the strength starting to ebb in my arms but increasingly aware of rather more pleasurable sensations in my belly as she jiggled and wriggled, trying to get a leg over the railing.
I don’t know how long we indulged in this bizarre embrace, with myself considering whether it might not be the best thing all round if I were to lob her back in the harbour; but just before my strength failed me the helmsman insinuated himself into our ménage. Grabbing the lady’s leg and lifting it over the rail, he sort of rotated both of us until the she could sit on the cabin-top. Everyone else, the boat’s crew, the French family and a couple of fishermen, were sniggering. I feigned interest in something at the top of the mast, until the victim said wryly, “You can look now!”
I did, cautiously. Tried to make eye contact only, and never came close. Her top was back in place, but one could see why it had failed... frankly, it was working for its living.
“Thank you very much!”
She was fully aware of my flickering gaze, and indulged me with a wicked grin and a tiny wiggle of her recaptured appendages. The voice was dainty, cheeky and Welsh.
“Worth saving, I hope?”
I deliberately misunderstood that.
“Who knows, you might find a cure for cancer one day!”
“I might indeed... if someone was smuggling it. I’m a customs officer, see.”
They all laughed. British customs officers to a man, on a works outing.
Using a line from the next mole we dragged Her Majesty’s Finest off Spiros’ boat, and got their anchor set. This had to be done using the cockpit winches, as their windlass had disintegrated in the unequal fight with the Ermioni mud... the shiny bit which I had seen arcing into the harbour was the pawl. I had a look at the toothless remains with Bron, my erstwhile dancing partner, and Geoff, the skipper.
There was nothing to be done. The cast metal of the winch-body had fractured where the pawl attached, also detaching one end of the brake-band. It was a hand-powered winch, and without the pawl it couldn’t heave in. Geoff asked me if I could explain it to the charter company, as he didn’t know all the names. The company was in England.
In those days in Greece, making international phone calls was an arcane art. You went either to the O.T.E., the telephone company, or more commonly, to a periptero... a street-side kiosk. There was an exaggerated displaying of metres being reset to zero, and then you started dialling. Here was where a person of nervous disposition with urgent business could easily run barking mad.
The phones were pulse-dial types, and the occasions on which the call went through on the first dialling could be counted on the fingers of Admiral Nelson’s right hand. There were various theories on how best to defeat the system... some advocated speed but the general wisdom was that you should dial each number at the very instant that the last click of the preceding number sounded. That worked as often as anything else, if you could count fast enough. Time of day was important too... in the early evening, when the Greeks were awake and the tourists were just back from the beach, you might as well try to talk to the Pharaohs across the Styx as your mum in Chipping Sodbury, and a three-page fax could end up costing fractionally more than a first-folio Shakespeare. But on a good day, in the afternoon when people were mostly eating, resting or sun bathing, you might get through on the sixth or seventh attempt.
When I did make it, my response was a breezy, laconic, mannered voice with just a hint of West Country about it which claimed to belong to one Rory Carteret and asked me “To whom am I speaking, please?”
I think it was the first time I had ever been ‘whom’ed’ by a telephone.
I explained my mission, and described the problem. Mr Carteret displayed a good practical knowledge of the windlass in question, and in a staccato exchange of questions and answers we efficiently established that the winch had nothing further to offer the general progress of mankind unless it became a door stop.
“Thank you so much for helping, and forgive me asking, but are you a professional skipper?”
I replied, with the utmost complacence, that I was, and that appeared to be the end of the interview.
“I wonder, if I can get a new windlass to you, would you be available to fit it for them, and get them on their way as soon as possible? We would of course pay you for your time, and any travel.”
I said that I would.
“We have an associate in Alimos Marina who should be able to get a windlass today... can you take down a couple of telephone numbers?”
I jotted down the first one, and found myself looking at the very familiar series of digits which connected one... quite often... with Lefteris’ souvlaki shop on Amfitheas Street. This was followed inevitably by the Alimos hotel bar. I was therefore completely prepared when the associate turned out to be none other than the ubiquitous and multi-functional Spiros Thallasodoros.
“Don’t worry,” I assured Mr Carteret, “I know Spiros. In fact, I’m expecting him to call me within the hour.”
“Well, that’s a result!” enthused the telephone. “If you know Spiros, I can just send your money via him.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” I hastily interjected, “I’d rather you just sent a cheque to my home address in UK.”
The bellow of laughter which erupted from the handset turned heads across the road.
“Ah! I see that you DO know Spiros!” it chortled. “Okey doke, pip pip, job’s a jaffa, drop me a line if there are any problems.” He gave me a fax number, signed off with a hearty ‘Toodle-oo!’ and hung up.
Spiros managed to send me a ‘new’ winch for the French family’s boat by an afternoon hydrofoil, and by early evening I had installed and tested it. They were free to continue, and set off immediately for the nearby island of Dokos to spend the night in a bay. The anchor winch, though, proved harder to find, and by the time Spiros had located a suitable replacement there were no more ferries to Ermioni that day. It was agreed that he would send it instead by taxi to the mainland harbour of Porto Xeli, about fifteen miles further down the coast, and I should take a hotel for the night, sail down with the boat in the morning, and fit the winch in the afternoon. And thus it was that I sailed the next morning with a boat load of my mortal enemies.
* * *
The British Merchant Navy has been at war with Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise service since about quarter-past nine on the morning of the day the very first excise-man put on his uniform, and the subsequent hundreds of years of incessant mutual antagonism have transformed a rational, proportionate contest into fervent tribal combat in which no blow is too low, no stratagem too vile and no victory too Pyrrhic.
As in any worthwhile sectarian feud, the origins, long obscured by time and distorted by chauvinist rhetoric, have become utterly insignificant. The war is perpetuated for its own sake... and just for the fun of it, here is the British sailor’s point of view.
Some seamen probably were... and probably still are... smugglers in the full moral sense of the word: conscienceless, evil-minded criminals bringing in saleable quantities of dutiable or prohibited goods for illicit gain or nefarious purposes. We didn’t know them, we had never met them, we didn’t approve of them, and anyway they were probably foreigners. And that, we strongly felt, was where Customs ought to have been spending their time... rummaging foreigners.
We, of course, were not smugglers... bringing home a few thousand fags or a couple of hundred Havanas to smoke on leave... well, that isn’t smuggling, is it? Or dropping off a couple of cases of spirits for the landlord of the King’s Head? Or taking home a few stereos for the family? A sailor was away from home for months, years sometimes, so it was only fair that he could bring more swag back to the country; after all, in those days people could go to the continent for a day-trip and return with a larger European Union duty-free haul than we could bring back after a year in the Pacific. It stood to reason we had to be allowed some latitude, we were a special case and clearly the excise laws weren’t intended for us.
Then there were things like Citizens Band radios, which were prohibited in Britain despite the fact that everyone under the age of thirty had one in his car... it was for safety, wasn’t it, and how else was one supposed to get them if they were not available in the shops?
H. M. Customs, regrettably, took a divergent view on all these issues, and far from exempting us from their attentions they seemed rather to circle like vultures over a wounded buffalo at the first glimpse of a Red Ensign coming up the river. They insisted on treating us... us!... like criminals, and plagued us so zealously that it seemed they hardly bothered with foreign ships at all. Oh, it was enough to make the blood boil! Why couldn’t they spend their valuable time annoying dishonest foreigners, for Pete’s sake? Purely in the spirit of teaching the swine a lesson, sailors considered it a moral duty to put one over The Revenue.
Intense as it was, however, this battle was fought on a narrow front. The relationship between seamen and the customs officials in British airports, for instance, was nothing short of cordial. There, excise-men seemed to have some sympathy for sailors who had been away for months at a time, and in turn the seamen couldn’t get too outrageous as they were limited to what they could physically carry. At airports we made our profession obvious, and many were the tales of generous, lenient treatment.
However, when Jolly Jack turns up on a ship in a British sea-port he has the extravagantly honeycombed bowels of an entire vessel in which to hide his plunder, and cranes to offload it, and there he is greeted not by indulgent, avuncular well-wishers in collars and ties, but rather is confronted by the ‘Black Gang’. Officially known as a Rummage Squad, this is a grim platoon of humourless professional snoops, heavily armed with flashlights, sniffer dogs, bristling tool belts, mirrors-on-sticks and an assortment of electronic wotsits. Frankly, you could find more mercy in a firing-squad.
Ships were dirty places in those days, and those who sought to uphold the command ‘England expects that every man will pay his duty’ wore black overalls to hide the grime they accumulated when fossicking in the crannies of vessels; but there wasn’t a British sailor alive who didn’t devoutly believe that the Black Gang were named not for the colour or their dress, but for that of their hearts. And of all the rummage squads on the British coast, the hearts of the Liverpool Black Gang were, by common consent, considered to be the most Stygian.
Merchant Navy folklore has it that Liverpool is where they train the youngsters; where the most malevolent and remorseless older hands impart their low cunning to, and expunge all vestige of trust or decency from, the recruits. Over dinner I learned that my new shipmates were all members of the Liverpool Black Gang.
* * *
The harbour of Ermioni is only a short walk over the ridge of the town from the South Quay, and here the restaurants have a charming view of the sunset over the mountains of the Peloponnese mainland. To this panorama I led my party, an action which grieved the owner of a hotel and restaurant in the harbour so much that he chased me up the road and tried to remonstrate. The only thing his performance achieved was losing him my custom as a lodger as well, and on the way up the hill I engaged a room at a small pension up in the town... I didn’t even bother to look at the room, having no baggage or toiletries to leave, and the proprietor gave no indication that he found this at all unusual. Without even asking my name he pocketed his modest fee and handed me a key with a grave nod of thanks.
We ate juicy, grilled kalamari, crisp chips and a village salad, washed it down with a few kanatas of decent rosé and skirted playfully around the subject of smuggling as the sun set flaming orange and then blood-red behind the serrated skyline of the Peloponnese.
In the taverna I sat next to Bron by chance, and we chattered away quite happily... she was new to sailing, but loving every minute of it, and full of questions. She was as chirpy as a chaffinch, black haired and dark eyed, and when we moved to the subsequent kafeneion there was nothing chance about my sitting next to her again; I held her chair for her, and claimed the adjacent one with all the tact of a prop forward approaching the bar after a hard game.
By the end of the night Bron was leaning towards me sufficiently that I was regretting not having had time for a shower, smiling a lot and twirling a finger playfully in a strand of hair over her ear. Her tinkling laughter rang like a bicycle-bell through the subdued murmur of the evening. I had the highest of hopes... and the profoundest of falls, because at the witching-hour she gathered her paraphernalia, gave me a sisterly peck on the cheek and, with the other two girls in the crew, she Cinderella’ed into the night. The gents stayed somewhat longer, and over the late-night drinks the talk turned increasingly to our common enmity. We chuckled far into the night at tales of smuggling done, and smuggling dished.
I longed to tell the tale of Captain... well, no names, no pack-drill; but anyway, a shipmaster I once sailed with. On the day when he left the ship to go on leave, his wife came to collect him. Entering the dock gates, of course, she was not an object of suspicion... smugglers go away from ships, not towards them, after all... and no-one looked in her handbag. On the way out, she stopped the car at the gate and the back was duly inspected, revealing nothing more than the captain’s suitcase and a normal allowance of duty-frees. A quick look was taken under the bonnet, and a customs officer took the spare tyre off the back door and bounced it a couple of times, to make sure it was not packed with something illicit. Finally a couple of mirrors were waggled under the vehicle briefly before the car was waved through. The captain’s wife pulled the Land Rover expertly out onto the road and disappeared in the general direction of Yorkshire.
If a customs officer had searched her handbag on the way in, he would have found a pair of vehicle registration plates. He might also have noticed that she had arrived in a taxi.
I didn’t tell that one... I might want to use it myself some day; but we did find some tales we could laugh at. I told them of the time we had managed to get four cases of Four Bells navy rum2 ashore and onto the Gladstone Dock quay in their very own bailiwick of Liverpool. At the inopportune arrival of the dreaded blue mini-van with the portcullis emblem on the door, we had swiftly stacked the boxes on a convenient pallet so that it looked like cargo waiting to be loaded. By the time the van cruised suspiciously by, we were innocently having a smoke and a chat. Turning again as it disappeared we were just in time to see our booze being lifted high into the air and swung into number four hatch, where it was duly placed in the bonded locker and sealed. We were about forty quid... a month’s pay for an apprentice... out of pocket, and some lucky swine in Papua New Guinea was roughly two months away from a very pleasant surprise.
Another tale concerned a ‘channel fever’ party. In those days of long contracts on ships, channel fever was the madness which gripped British seamen when the English Channel hove in view and the imminence of family, home and leisure changed people’s natures dramatically. Its effects varied from person to person... some became withdrawn, others effervescent, but few remained unaffected once ‘a dose of the channels’ took hold.
Once upon a time, safely tied up in the King George Dock in Hull after a nine-month trip to the South Pacific and back, a boisterous party had been celebrating the climax of the channel fever outbreak in the Fourth Engineer’s cabin whilst awaiting the bus bringing our reliefs. We were in ebullient mood, and when a customs officer in his Great Escape ‘ferret’ overalls appeared we gave him a good amount of cheerful cheek.
The customs man ignored us stonily, and stepped amongst us, peering thoughtfully at the pipes running through the top of the cabin. Then he departed. We hooted disparagingly at his back but moments later he returned, indicating a pipe about four inches in diameter with his heavy screwdriver.
“What’s this pipe, then?” he demanded. We peered at it, shrugging... it was a bit odd, as it had rings around it at intervals.
“Looks like ventilation,” said the Fourth Engineer unconcernedly.
“Well, it doesn’t go through the bulkhead!” said the now gleeful customs officer. “Funny ventilation trunk, that!”
We filed out into the next cabin, and sure enough... no pipe. The Fourth was looking concerned now... it was his cabin.
“I dunno...” he said; but that customs officer... not lacking, it must be said, in a sense of the theatrical, peeled his lips back in a Hannibal Lecter grin, raised his eyebrows, placed his hands on the suspicious tube, paused a moment for full effect, and gave it a sharp tug. It split in two places and a shower of cigarettes fell to the deck. The ‘pipe’ was a series of circular tins of cigarettes, stuck together lid-to-base, and given several coats of paint.
“Whose are these, then?” enquired the delighted official.
“They’re not mine! I don’t even smoke!” protested the Fourth, who had a ticket for a train home that afternoon and was rapidly becoming aware that the station which figured in his immediate future was more likely to contain policemen than trains.
“Well, sir, I suppose you were meaning to sell them, then? I’m afraid we take an even dimmer view of that.”
He called down the alleyway, “Bob! You got a minute?” and then enjoyed the Fourth’s incoherent and utterly unconvincing protestations for a few moments until a grizzled crew-cut wrapped around a cynical grin appeared in the doorway.
“Ah! What have we here, then?” it growled jovially. “Ahh, I see... a little something we forgot to put on the crew declaration, is it?”
“They ain’t bloody mine!” muttered the Fourth disconsolately, but he was running out of conviction... or, more likely, running into one.
“No, no, of course not... someone just put them up in your cabin, gave them three or four coats of paint... coats of smelly paint... without you knowing a thing about it, didn’t they?” said Grizzly, sympathetically. “Could happen to anyone, that could.”
He paused a moment, and then scooped up one of the tins and a handful of the cigarettes. He peered intelligently into the former, sniffed the latter, and then gently crumbled one of the gaspers between thumb and forefinger. It disintegrated into dry dust.
“Tins of fifty Gold Flake,” he announced, confidently. “They haven’t made them for almost twenty years, I should think. They’ve probably been there since the ship was new... this isn’t smuggling, it’s bloody tomb-robbing! You have a good leave, son.”
They both disappeared, looking unbearably smug and displaying an intolerable jollity in the swing of their torches.
We all, of course, knew the matches story. It is a bit of an old classic. Back in those days, ship’s engine-rooms still often had water swilling around in the bilges. No-one wanted to get involved with that... very nasty business, all kinds of muck and sharp edges lurked in there... so the ship’s engineers liked to use the bilge to conceal bottles of spirits. They would wrap a piece of lead around the bottle to make sure it sank, and then attach a match to the neck using fishing line. A customs man looking into the bilge would see only an innocent match floating, if he saw anything at all, and the bottle could easily be retrieved by picking up the match and pulling the fishing line. The problem was, this had been going on for quite a while, and the trick wasn’t as novel as it had once been. Customs men like a joke as much as anyone else, so whenever they saw a sliver of wood floating in a bilge they emptied in another two or three packs of Swan Vestas and wandered off grinning, leaving a blaspheming tribe of furious engineers wading around in knee-deep filth picking up hundreds of matches one after another to save their investments.
A good night was had by all, and many risible tales were told of victories and defeats in the interminable war. And the guard was never completely lowered, and notes were being taken.
* * *
The next morning we breakfasted on board... a further trial to the grumpy restaurateur, who now looked as if he was fixing my face indelibly in his memory and consigning it to his personal seventh level of Hell. Then we departed early with a modest northerly wind.
We bubbled steadily through the narrow passage between the mainland and the island of Dokos and lost the wind half way to Spetses. Bron was again very attentive, and she and the other two girls took the opportunity to learn a bit of sailing until the breeze failed; then we continued with navigation... lessons which the men also attended to, but in a slantendicular manner, whilst earnestly giving the impression of being engrossed in something far away. Through all this, Bron was very close by my side and frequently laid her hand on my arm... all very promising stuff, and despite her lamented early departure the night before my hopes rekindled that she was not indifferent to me. My own partiality could, of course, be taken for granted; I have a sociable nature and quite often develop a liking for girls, even those who have not massaged my belly with their breasts.
We had a quick swim in one of the lovely, fir-scented, sylvan bays which line the entrance to Porto Xeli, and were tied up by lunchtime.
I had never been in Porto Xeli3 before. It is set in low, rolling hills on the mainland of the Peloponnese, facing south across the straits to Spetses; and although it has neither the charming Mediterranean architecture of that island nor the grandeur of the nearby coast, it quickly revealed itself to be a homely place.
Little could be seen of the port from seaward, as it is entered by a deep channel whose edges are scalloped with a number of gorgeous bays set in vibrantly green woodland. The coast in the approaches to the entrance was liberally adorned with villas, many of them palatial affairs boasting helipads and berths for enormous yachts, from which the great and wealthy of many nations enjoyed, doubtlessly with extreme comfort and complaisance, the view over Spetses and down the Arcadian coast. This set our expectations for Porto Xeli to be a chic, Saint Tropez-style bijou-sort of a place like Hydra or Spetses... expectations which couldn’t have been more wrong.
Emerging from the verdant, rural charm of the channel, Porto Xeli opened out as a large, almost circular bay around which the town sprawled; a hotchpotch of construction styles ranging from substantial, square hotel-blocks to traditional ceramic-tiled cottages. The anarchic architecture was accentuated by a number of rooftop advertising hoardings which would have looked more at home in Athens, or even Times Square, than in a Greek port. The surrounding land was not high and sloped gently, so once the delightful wooded entrance channel was behind us there was little green or spectacular to be seen, just buildings on every side. It was a very far cry from the distinctly Mediterranean styles of the adjacent islands, and possibly even a disappointment at first sight; but a church here, a Greek flag there and a scattering of tiled roofs gave it a sufficiently local, if rather urban, flavour.
Despite the utilitarian nature of the place, however, a yachtsman entering Porto Xeli quickly developed a sense of belonging, for the bay obviously offered perfect shelter and it seemed to be almost filled with pleasure craft. There were many boats in the anchorage, butterfly-bright sailing dinghies scissored the surface of the bay, speed-boats fizzed in and out, and the immensely long quay was well-populated with everything from fishing boats through massive luxury yachts to charter -boats. And Porto Xeli also has ‘good holding’. Very good holding. In fact, if Ermioni’s mud may be termed possessive, then that of Porto Xeli is obsessive-compulsive.
The waterfront was a substantial open park area, with cut grass and a good number of mature trees, and was inhabited by a boisterous pack of large stray dogs who happily adopted us as we explored and foraged for lunch. The town appeared, above all, to be alive, and once we tied up and got ashore a few more characteristics of Porto Xeli become evident.
Our first impression was of bakeries, supermarkets, fishing tackle shops, modern styled kafeneions and, above all, estate agents. Property sales showrooms and architects offices seemed to be everywhere. The wide street was a perfect sun-trap which amplified the power of the sunshine until it baked a man’s bones, and all traffic along the waterfront took place in the shade of the trees at the edge of the grassy park. In this shade there lurked a series of hulking peripteros, kiosks with a yearning for lebensraum, which had flung out awnings, magazine racks and refrigerators in all directions until they more resembled Bedouin encampments than mere booths.
Porto Xeli was something of a service centre, it seemed: it lay at the heart of a rolling, rural olive-farming district which had become a booming holiday home area, and here Greeks and foreigners alike had built their dreams and other people’s nightmares amongst olive groves with spectacular views across Spetses, Ermioni or the Peloponnesian coast. Builders buzzed like bees, electricians and plumbers swarmed. Hardware shops thrived, water- and septic-tank trucks roared around the paralia day and night, and every second shop seemed to house either an architect or an estate agent.
A very wide range of offcomers had made their homes around the bays, and one consequence of this cosmopolitan populace was that the rather ordinary looking supermarkets were found to contain some rather extraordinary fare... Krug, Dom Perignon, Veuve Cliquot; some very decent Bordeaux carefully racked in temperature controlled cabinets; Brie and Camembert; prosciutto; Havana cigars. These were unheard of luxuries in the normal Greek supermarkets of the time, and I emerged deliriously from one emporium clutching two bottles of Bechevelle, a door-step of mature Cheddar, four tins of English mustard powder and a carrier bag full of tinned baked beans.4
Coupled with the holiday home trade, Porto Xeli also had some decent beaches suitable for resorts and, of course, an almost perfect harbour. This made it a natural terminus for the Argo-Saronic ferries bringing people from Piraeus, an almost ideal water sports centre, and a fabulous base for a yachtsman at the heart of a magnificent cruising ground. A boat yard and several chandleries prospered, and what they didn’t have could usually arrive from Athens by ferry or taxi the same day, if ordered before lunch. Porto Xeli, slightly scruffy, unpretentious, infinitely obliging and noticeably cheaper than the islands, appeared to us to be onto a very good thing.
There were a number of respectable looking eateries about the town. We finally settled for an ovelistirio... a restaurant which specialises in cooking on a charcoal grill... slightly raised up above the north end of the quay with a shady tree to sit under and a pleasant view across the bustling harbour. By night, it seemed, they had fine things to offer. A whole roast sucking pig was turning dreamily on the grill, and we were enthusiastically shown joints of lamb roasting in the ovens; but the lunch fare was cooked-to-order. The sight of the word loukaniko on the menu prompted a grateful memory of that reassuring meal on the Piraeus waterfront some months earlier, and on a whim I chose sausages.
Now, even my mother, I think, would tend to the view that the sight of me enjoying sausages is not one which could inspire anyone (except a hungry dog) to love me; but nevertheless it is a fact that, after lunch, when the crew took the dinghy and buzzed off in search of a beach, Bron decided to remain with me and pass me spanners and cold refreshments whilst I wrested the old windlass out of its tenacious silicon bed and fitted the new one.
When the rest of the gang returned we were absent without leave in one of the cafes, and by the time Geoff had tracked us down we were suspiciously close together over an aperitif, giggling without due care and attention at each other’s stories. I had been extolling the virtues of the nearby Peloponnesian coast, and a plan was hatching; Bron was intending to ask her compatriots if I could accompany the expedition for another day or so as a ‘guide’ whilst we got to know each other better. It was a proposal of most infinite charm and appeal; but, in a dogged continuance of my ill-fortune in the pursuit of romance, one which never saw the light of day.
“There you are!” cried Geoff, “I just tried the winch... works fine, thanks!”
“The Merchant Navy is delighted to be of assistance!”
“I’ve just spoken to Rory,” continued Geoff; “He’s asked me to settle up with you here... cuts out the middle man, I s’pose. We’ll end up paying it anyway, as we bust the winch.”
This was a most refreshing and welcome initiative, and I graciously accepted a gratifyingly substantial fistful of thousand drachma notes.
“Rory also asked if you could give him a call as soon as possible,” added Geoff, and signalled for a waiter.
I got through on the thirteenth attempt.
“Thanks very much, the client’s very happy!” enthused Rory, “Now, listen, if you are interested, I have another job for you.”
I steeled myself to decline. With the prospect of a couple of days with a Welsh enchantress in prospect, I wasn’t about to be deflected by the opportunity to earn five thousand drachmae for fixing someone’s toilet... known in the yachting business as ‘going through the motions’. But it wasn’t a repair job; it was a charter.
A charter. And not just any charter, but a rescue... a family, caught by strong weather in the Aegean, were in need of a skipper as soon as could be arranged. Make a good job of this one, Rory promised, and more would follow. By going, I would not only be indulging my penchant for helping people but taking a huge leap along the path from being a jobbing boat-bum to a gainfully employed charter skipper. I had to go... but those bloody Gods had me again. Another fascinating woman was about to sail the opposite way out of my life, leaving no more than a whisp of scent and a Wirral phone-number.