In which we meet a real working ship... and an idle one... a Ton of trouble... the Meltemi... problems with summer wind... a call to duty... paperwork... Swanning around... mechanical perfidy... Shergar shows his metal... we prevail... a recipe for a disaster... a summons... an arrival.
A large tug used to live in Poros in those days. She was a salvage tug which lurked there waiting for some unfortunate vessel to have a breakdown or a collision in the busy waters at the mouth of the Saronic; and that tug never slept. Her name was Fengari, which meant ‘the moon’, and it was appropriate for, even in the darkest hours of night, the porthole of her radio room shone out like an honest man in Parliament as the airwaves were greedily sieved for bad news.
When that news arrived, the Fengari erupted into a roil of activity in her determination to be the first to the casualty, and her behaviour then was less than considerate, for, with a salvage in prospect, Fengari considered, ‘decorum’ was something that happened to apples.
When something of interest emerged out of the radio, Fengari’s master, heedless of waking the whole town, pulled his whistle-cord and didn’t let it go until all his crew were on board. As the last man galloped, half clothed and awake, up her long stern gangway it would be pulled in even with him still on it, and the last lines slipped. The ship would clank and froth her way off the quay, and then, contemptuous of permission to sail or speed limits in the channel, she would select the most direct route to the ‘shout’, ploughing east down the straits or west along the bay, and disappear.
Anything between a day and a week later she would slip back into her berth, and the longer her absence, the smugger she looked on her return. Anything more than three days, and she exuded self-satisfaction like a crocodile in an empty hippo enclosure. She would then apologise insincerely for any disruption, uncomplainingly pay any fine imposed for her antisocial behaviour and resume her sentry duty.
Poros did not resent this cavalier behaviour. In fact, the town took a slightly masochistic pride in the disruption. Above all, it was a seafaring community, and such a vital, virile connection with the vagaries of marine life was part of the fabric of the place.
Fengari was well known to me, not least because she had damned nearly trampled me underfoot during a couple of her impromptu departures, and I was well-used to her high-bowed, chalky shape sitting at the northern extremity of the ferry quay; so, when I entered from the west one day early in August, it took me a moment to realise that there were now two high, white bows on the wall.
At first I thought I was seeing double... a constant worry, given the lifestyle... but it was early in the day and I had passed a quiet night, so I conjectured that another... possibly (and I experienced a frisson of anticipation at the thought) a rival... tug had arrived. That theory also crumbled as I got closer, however, when I saw that the newcomer’s main-deck was not open, as a tug’s must be, but rather appeared to have what looked like a tenement on top of it. And she reminded me of something.
She was painted white with dark-green trim lines on her rubbing-strake and funnel, and her name, Swan, in the same forest-green on the bow. Something over fifty metres in length, with a rather old-fashioned upright stem, her forecastle was strangely high and long for her size. It eventually rose to a neat little enclosed bridge and then dipped back to forecastle level to accommodate a business-like funnel. The forward half of her was as seaworthy a craft as a mariner’s heart could desire, but at the funnel the delight turned to dismay. From about amidships there rose a slab-like block of cabins, decorated with external galleries and stairs, which resembled nothing so much as a hijacked, twin-storey American motel. This edifice almost reached the stern, finally sinking gracelessly to a small, open poop for a few feet until the vessel ended in a flat transom hung with a large bathing platform. The accommodation did not flow with the line of the vessel, and looked almost temporary.
I had seen nothing quite like her. She looked as if someone had mated a tug with an American stern-wheel river-boat, and yet I still experienced a most irritating sense that I should know what she was. Her forward end was hauntingly familiar. I did in fact wonder if someone had welded two ends of dissimilar ships together... but that couldn’t be, because, as the light shone full on her side, I saw that she was carvel-built out of wood. And with that discovery, the penny dropped... she was an old Royal Navy Ton-Class minesweeper, and someone had dumped an accommodation block on her main-deck.
The Ton-Class were ubiquitous in their day, a numerous family of ships in the British Royal Navy and built for, or sold to, a number of other navies too. Made of wood, to reduce their magnetic field, they had high bows to counter the harsh northern seas, a traditional naval capped funnel and a long, open main-deck which gave them their distinctive profile. With their double-diagonal carvel construction, they were tough as nails too... effectively double-hulled... and twin engines and rudders made them pretty manoeuvrable.
Doughty little ships, by the early eighties many had been paid off from naval service. I had seen them being used as training-ships, trawlers and static floating accommodation, but the extra accommodation puzzled me. I had never heard of them being used as passenger ships, and even if that was her purpose, she was in entirely the wrong place. She had a large Cayman Island ensign at her stern... and Greece is very restrictive about allowing foreign-flag carriers to operate in her waters. I wondered what the ship’s current function could be.
The Poros waterfront did not keep secrets long, of course. Swan was not an inconspicuous visitor. Her high bow and accommodation block were almost as big as the Ydra and the Danae, the larger ferries which served the island, and her ensign was so big that it almost swept the quay. Her owner, Les, a larger-than-life chap with a vaguely Mid-Atlantic accent, a spade-beard, a ringing laugh, a beer-belly and more teeth than a crocodile’s wedding photo, was not exactly a recluse either. The story of our new neighbour was soon out.
Purchased from the Royal Navy and fitted out for dive-chartering, Swan was neither fish nor fowl: the bridge and forecastle were rather as they had been in her naval service, Spartan and utilitarian, except that the cabins had double beds installed. She retained communal heads and shower compartments in the forecastle. The new accommodation block was composed of twin bunk cabins without en suite facilities... comfortable, basic housing which was adequate for divers but completely useless for normal passenger service. Underneath the cabins, the old mine-sweeping deck was enclosed in a single, long bar-restaurant furnished with plastic patio tables and chairs.
Les was quickly a familiar face in the watering-holes of the town and frequently invited parties back for impromptu barbeques. Invited to one of these, I got to know him a little and rather liked the chap... he was extremely noisy when happy, and he became happy very readily. His extrovert ways were not calculated to endear him to everyone, especially the officials he had to deal with, but I got the impression that he was a very genuine character beneath the persiflage.
Having fitted out Swan as a dive vessel for the Caribbean, Les had crossed swords with various official entities there and simply sailed away. On a whim, without any research on the matter, he had decided to do ‘a bit of diving in Greece’, and when he arrived from Gibraltar he announced to the port police that he had ‘come to do some diving on the antiquities’.
Now, Greece was so sensitive on the subject of uncontrolled access to historic artefacts that diving was actually banned unless one had a government-approved dive supervisor; so Les’s declaration, coupled with the casual revelation that he had fifty sets of diving equipment on board, was the equivalent of Lord Elgin returning with a back-hoe and an empty truck. Greek officialdom had a collective seizure. By the time they recovered sufficiently to make a decision what to do about this, Les’s South African captain had left the country because his visa was expiring; so Swan sat in Poros, with all her diving equipment firmly under customs seal, and without a crew apart from her enthusiastic but highly landlubberly owner. And in Greece, July is the month when the Meltemi starts.
* * *
The Meltemi is a north wind which predominates in the months of July and August, and it can be anything between a robust sailing wind and a howling gehooligan. Meltemi is taken from the Turkish Meltem, which may have its roots in the Italian ‘mal tempo’ or ‘bad weather’; but the original Greek name is the Etesian, or Annual, wind, derived from the word etos, a year. The two different derivations always seem to me to mirror the two culture’s differing confidences on the sea.
At times, the Meltemi can be so severe that it almost closes down the Aegean, and at any time it makes that sea uncomfortable for all but very confident and adventurous sailors. It is also a wicked spreader of wild fire... extinguishing fires in the Meltemi is a Herculean endeavour. Nevertheless, it is welcome in one respect at least; it tempers the heat.
In a normal year, the Meltemi starts around the second week of July when, just as one begins to feel that the temperature will go on rising until the fishermen started to land ready-poached fish, the Meltemi begins to blow and finally tames the heat.
Strongest in the Aegean, the Meltemi is still significant in the Argo-Saronic; but its effect is rather different. At moderate strength out in the Aegean Islands it typically starts from a morning calm, building to force six or even more in the afternoon, and begins to die again mid-evening, leaving a lumpy sea.
I soon found that, on the Peloponnesian coast, however, it would typically rise to a stiff northerly by about midday; then the heat rising off the land started the thermal wind, and the Meltemi would be countered by the south-easterly Bouka Doura. This normally brought the wind to a calm about two o’clock, and then it reversed to blow from the south, rising to force five or six by early evening, before dropping again.
All this is jolly useful to know when getting up and down the coast in a normal Meltemi; but the Meltemi that hit Poros just after Les’s captain made his adieus was the other sort, the sort which takes no prisoners. A full Meltemi can last a couple of days or a couple of weeks, and it is an unremitting, whistling torrent of northerly air which blows day and night, raising high, short seas in open waters and sending lethally strong spilliades cascading down the backs of any high ground to bedevil any water on the supposedly sheltered side. The best place to be in a full Meltemi is tied up firmly to the lee side of a strong pier. Swan got it half right.
* * *
My day started very pleasantly. Sleeping al fresco on my terrace, I was awoken by the earliest probing fingers of the resurgent sun, and, being sufficiently refreshed, I decided to start the day. Trotting down to Kanali Beach, I had a coffee at a beach bar and watched the searing orange orb detach itself from the eastern horizon near Agios Yeorgios.
As I plunged into the ocean to wash away the vestiges of night I heard the trumpeter of the nearby naval school saluting the raising of the flag, and then I pottered along to the all-night bakery behind the beach. This was doing a steady trade from a fifty-fifty mix of sprightly, early rising enthusiasts heading smartly out and dishevelled all-night revellers limping in, and I bought a piping-hot, fresh spanakopita, or spinach pie, for breakfast.
As I munched my pie, I wandered back over the canal into town, strolling along the North Quay as I noticed that the north wind was already sending reconnaissance parties of skittering flurries across the sheltered waters of the bay. Not a good day to be on the North Quay, on the windward side of the town, I noted; and then, with the complaisance that came from the fact that I didn’t have a boat to worry about, I ignored the matter. When I reached The Snailery, close to the cinema, I saw the Fengari churning away up the bay, evidently with work in hand. This left the high starboard bow of Swan pretty much unsheltered from the north.
By about midday I was smugly content, sitting at George’s Cafe in perfect shelter as the flag at the clock tower above me crackled and snapped in the rising wind. With an early, icy, invigorating beer in my paw I watched with compassionless complaisance whilst frequent blasts of wind hurled spray lashed the yachts and heeled them sharply over as they escaped from the North Quay, running helter-skelter round in to the shelter of the channel.
Gina and Andrea, winding down after their nocturnal shift before going to sleep on a beach, were with me. Shergar and Miss Iceland, who was back again, had joined me, and also Yiorgaki and his brother, Simos. This latter was a young Merchant Navy officer who was currently doing his national service as a sub-lieutenant in the Navy, and was the First Lieutenant of a World War Two-Vintage Fast Patrol Boat which was tied up at the naval school. In the finest Poros waterfront tradition, the combination of heat, beer and lack of immediate commitment had induced in us all a languorous detachment from care.
Into this lotus eating assembly suddenly came the bustling, pristine white figure of the Chief of the port police, an entity from whom I normally kept a polite, watchful distance. I always assumed that he knew I was working from Poros, and since he hadn’t bothered me I supposed that, so far, I hadn’t upset him. It was my earnest wish to keep things that way.
“Kalimera!”
He bad us all good morning and, without waiting for a response, he addressed me, in very fair English.
“Captain Tzoulian, please can you tell me... I believe you are First Captain,1 yes? You have diploma? From British?”
I admitted that this was so. In fact, I held a British Chief Mate’s certificate, but I had already passed a Liberian Master’s examination for a foreign-flag vessel I had sailed on. This news seemed to please him.
“And you sail on big ship? Real ship?”
“Yes, that is my job,” I told him... I was somewhat concerned about why he wanted to know this, and gave him a fiction he could reasonably accept. He nodded.
“Please can you help me? I have big problem. Is one British ship, this one Swan. She have to move. She have problem, and she have no captain. She need to go to anchor.”
“What problem has she got?” I asked. The reply came in a flood of Greek, which Simos untangled for me.
“The anchor is dragging, and she is blocking the ferry quay. There is a ferry coming very soon. They want you to move her.”
I agreed to take a look, and we all trooped around, out of the shelter of the town and awnings, into the teeth of the Meltemi gusting across the bay from Neorion. Things were, indeed, a bit grim.
Swan had been lying with two anchors out and her stern very professionally tied to the quay with four stern-lines and two crossed lines to brace her; but the wind on her unprotected starboard side had been too much for her anchors. Her starboard cable was almost slack, and her port one was as tight as a bowstring across her bow, grinding ominously on her stem.
She had fallen to port so that she was at an angle of about thirty or forty degrees to the quay, with her port quarter grating horribly against the concrete. On her small poop-deck, Les was making a valiant but futile attempt to get a large fender into the non-existent gap.
“You are captain, you can take her to anchor, yes?” asked the port policeman, and almost turned away... he seemed to have complete confidence that this would now be done. I hastened to disappoint him.
“Ena lepto... Please, a moment, Captain,” I said. “I can’t just walk on board and take over this ship. I don’t know how it works, what condition it is in. And unless they are declaring a distress, I need the permission of the owners.”
Simos translated this, and the port policeman’s face cleared immediately.
“No problem. Thees the owner.”
He waved at Les, and shouted to him, “Hey, Meester! This man Captain. From British, same as you!”
He waved at the streaming Cayman ensign which, having a Union Flag in the corner, was all the evidence of nationality he evidently required. “Now, you go. You go now. Go anchor.” And with that, off he went.
Les came down the gangway.
“Can ya help me getter outa here?” he demanded, whilst crushing my hand and looking at me as if he was buying a horse with a limp.
“Dunno,” I replied, “Is everything working?”
He shrugged.
“Think so. Dunno why not, it all was.”
“Can you get the engines started?”
“Yep, I reckon I can. Just not too sure about the fuel tank switches.”
“Ah!” I had a think about that. “Right, I’ll tell you what. You get the engines on line, and we’ll start running them ahead, to lessen the weight on the quay. Meanwhile I’ll have a look at the bridge. Then we test the steering gear, then the anchor winches. Then, when the engines are up to temperature and we’re sure they’re running OK, we’ll see. Have you got a bow-thruster?”
He shook his head at this last. Pity! That might have helped.
“I’ll give you a hand with the engines,” volunteered Shergar, and the two of them disappeared up the gangway.
Followed by the rest of my interested crowd, which had now grown by the addition of a port policeman and an ordinary policeman, I explored my way up to the bridge. On arrival, the first problem I identified... in my calm, professional manner... was the complete lack of a steering wheel!
If the lack of any apparent means of steering was set aside, the bridge appeared otherwise well-equipped. I quickly found the other bits I needed in the short term... standard Teleflex-type engine controls, a rudder-position indicator, VHF radios and voltage-metres which seemed to indicate good current available. A large captain’s chair and a smaller engineer’s one faced a compact and crowded instrument panel where I noted two large switches labelled ‘steering gear’, which I left alone for the moment... even if I could find out how to steer, I didn’t know if the generator was large enough to take the load.
I found a trap door into the space below and opened it, wondering if the steering position was below the bridge as in some other warships, but unfortunately it appeared that this was an access to the captain’s cabin, and the captain apparently had a mate, who was in the process of dressing. I closed it again with a quick apology.
A phone buzzed, and Les informed me that I could start the port engine using the key on the bridge. It came up second time, and I set it at one thousand RPM, out of gear, to watch the temperatures. Then I asked Simos to go and check that the port propeller was clear of ropes or obstructions. When he said it was, I gently put the engine in gear and increased power a little to try to reduce the contact with the quay.
The phone buzzed again, but the starboard engine resolutely refused to start. I asked Les to come up on the bridge.
“Can I start the steering gear?” I asked. He shrugged again, a deep, comprehensive gesture which eloquently said “Only one way to find out!” and pressed the button. The light flickered on. He pressed the second button, which also lit up.
“And now, how do you steer her?” I asked.
For a reply, he lifted a piece of varnished plywood revealing the shaft where the wheel should have fitted, and a chrome plated lever which was obviously a non-follow-up steering backup system.
“We took the wheel off to varnish it,” he announced, “an’ then we never put it back. We didn’t use it much, see, an’ the instrument panel is too slopey to put the beer on.”
“Have you got the wheel?” I asked. He shrugged again.
“Probably.” He looked vaguely around. “Haven’t used it fer ages.”
I sighed and tried the lever. It seemed to work.
The port police chief was back on the quay, shouting through the whipping wind to know if we wanted the lines letting go. I went down to talk to him.
“I only have one engine,” I told him, “and I don’t know how the ship will handle in so much wind. The safest thing to do is slack the anchors, and let her come alongside.”
This was translated by Simos again, but before he was halfway done the port police chief was becoming agitated. Simos said, “He wants you to go, now. There is a ferry coming, he needs this space.
I looked at it. True enough, there was no way to get a ferry onto the quay with Swan angled across it. I desperately wanted to help out... as I have said before, I like helping anyway, and I especially liked helping this guy, who could probably have me run out of town if the mind took him... yet I also didn’t want to end up being held responsible for wrecking the Swan by taking her out in a strong wind without all her equipment working, even in an emergency.
“Les, do you have an official logbook?” I asked.
From the now familiar heave of his shoulders and pout of his lips, I inferred that I might as well have asked for world peace and disarmament.
“OK, are you the owner?”
He grinned like a Cheshire tiger, delighted at last to be able to answer a question in the affirmative.
“And is the vessel fully insured?”
Again, he was happy to please me with a positive answer.
“Right, then I need a witnessed letter from you saying that the situation is an emergency...” I pointed at the damage already sustained by the Swan’s port quarter... “and asking me to put the ship in a safe position.”
Les nodded and went off to do this without demur. He was a very obliging chap when it lay within his power. I had a rather different response for the port police chief when I turned to him, however.
Explaining to him, with Simos’s help, that I was willing to help but needed to be indemnified in case of a problem, I asked for a letter to confirm that I had been asked to remove the vessel by the port authority. If I had asked for the sole rights to his favourite daughter, I couldn’t have had a more negative reaction.
I hadn’t yet been long in Greece, and my knowledge of the country was, of course, nowhere near as complete as I conceited myself it was; otherwise, I would have known that getting a Greek official to put a signature on anything, even something mundane and routine, is like asking him to stop a train with his head.
He said he couldn’t; I said that, in that case, I couldn’t too. He said he was ordering me too; I said he couldn’t, I didn’t work on that ship. He asked me as a favour, as a fellow seaman, to do it; I, expressing the profoundest regret, in parallel with my esteem for his person and position, declined.
Finally I knew we were getting somewhere when he looked at his watch, cast a haunted look up the bay to see if the ferry was yet in sight, and said he would prepare the letter immediately, and give it to me after I had moved the Swan. Well, there was a lot I still had to learn about Greece, but I was ahead of that move at least. I told him that I would try to get the starboard engine working, and wait for the paper, and as soon as it came on board I would move off the quay.
To my amazement, some fifteen minutes later, a port policeman came trotting along the quay bearing a typewritten letter with a big stamp on the bottom. I couldn’t read a word of it... I had begun to make some elementary steps in reading Greek, but lower case typewriter script is still difficult a quarter of a century later. So I handed it to Simos.
“What does it say?” He shrugged. It was turning out to be a very shruggy sort of day.
“I think it is very good. You will like.”
Just at that moment, Shergar announced that he had cleared a blockage in the starboard fuel filter, and the starboard engine was running. Fair enough, I thought. Let’s do it. I scribbled quickly on the letter what I understood it to be, got Les to witness it, and made for the bridge.
Les went to the anchor winch, and confirmed that the hydraulics were running, both cables were in gear and all was ready to heave-up the anchors. Simos and Yiorgaki took a walkie-talkie and went aft to let go the lines. Shergar stayed in the engine room to keep an eye on things down there. One port policeman, Gina, Andrea, Miss Iceland and the captain’s mate took up interested positions on the bridge, until I shooed them out onto the wings. Half of the Poros waterfront congregated to watch the fun, and the wind, sensing the theatrical qualities of the moment, began to gust over forty knots according to the anemometer on my instrument panel. Everyone, including the Meltemi, appeared to be ready.
When we were down to a single rope aft, a rope which quivered with tension and threatened a lethal backlash if it parted, I got the port policeman to keep spectators clear and told Simos to cut the line with a long knife. He recognised the danger, and kept well out of the way, using a bread knife2 lashed to a broom-handle. The line parted with a twang, and we were off.
Increasing the port engine speed, I signalled Les to start heaving and put the tiller hard-to-starboard. Swan sprang away from the quay, and began to swing her stern very rapidly into the channel between Poros and Galatas. The windlass began to clank as the chain cable started to come in. And then a hydraulic hose detached itself from the windlass, reared vertically into the sky, and shot a jet of hydraulic oil high over the bridge, and all over my window.
I said a naughty word.
With the windlass disabled, and two anchors down on a long scope, I was somewhat trapped. Swan was driven this way and that by the wind, which blattered across the bay from Kalavria, hitting the ship now from one side, now from t’other; and as she swung one way her stern narrowly missed the ferry quay, whilst on the opposite swing she came perilously close to boats anchored in the excellent mud near the channel. As Les and Yiorgaki plummeted into the bowels of the ship to try to find a new hydraulic hose, I grimly manoeuvred the engines and rudders to try to limit our swing, but I was also aware that the anchors were still dragging slowly. I was moving gradually astern towards the shallows off Galatas, where many boats anchor. It was a lovely, clear day... A feature of the Meltemi is that it blows under clear, open skies... and the growing crowd in Poros had an excellent view of the proceedings.
I was gratified by the remarkable speed with which Les reappeared, triumphantly brandishing a new hose and a spanner. I was even more impressed by the very workmanlike manner in which he set about changing it. He was about as nautical as a giraffe on a pogo-stick, but he did appear to be a practical chap.
I was not quite so impressed with the port engine, which now decided to have an afternoon nap. Shergar appeared briefly on the bridge to inform me that this looked like another clogged filter, and estimated twenty minutes at least to clear it... it didn’t look pretty, he confided. By way of a reply, I took him out on the bridge wing and showed him the church in Galatas, which was getting steadily nearer, and didn’t look very pretty either. He took my point, and submerged again like a cormorant after a fish.
As I tried to manage the meandering of my crippled charge across the narrow, wind-whipped waters between Poros and the mainland, my mind began to dwell somewhat on the number of ferries which passed through here every day, linking the islands of Hydra and Spetses, the ports of Ermioni and Porto Xeli, to Piraeus. I also caught a glimpse of the clock tower, which, if it was correct... it sometimes was... showed that it was about one hour since I had been sitting without a care in the world at George’s Cafe; one single hour in which I had gone from being a blameless innocent in the early stages of getting pleasantly inebriated to the man with the potential to cut off half the Peloponnese from Piraeus at the height of the holiday season.
Well aware that things were not going well, but powerless to help, the port police on board tried to get Simos to ask me what was going on. Beyond a polite ‘we’re working on it’, I was too concentrated to reply, and Simos was too sensible of the situation to press me. Then, evidently unaware of the situation, another port policeman arrived in an inflatable boat and shouted up at Les.
“You can’t anchor here!”
Les was preoccupied with his repairs, and in any case was not a natural diplomat even by marine standards, but he initially maintained his cool to reply politely that we were not anchoring.
“Then what are you doing here?” demanded the port policeman.
Les’s patience expired at this point, and his reply was delivered so forcefully that, even in the teeth of the gale, it reverberated back from the very walls of Galatas.
“We’re having a fuckin’ picnic, ya butt-head!”
I assumed, from the lack of resentment with which this was received, that the port policeman was not au fait with colloquial English.
The windlass hammered and banged a bit as it was restarted, but quickly settled down, and Les resumed heaving the anchors. At last, inch by inch, Swan’s stern began to edge further from the anchored boats in the channel. My heartbeat slowed to that of a mere machine-gun, and I even found the time to quickly explain to the port policeman that we were moving away now. And, even as I made this fatefully premature pronouncement, the rudders jammed hard-a-starboard.
I was feeling that I was beginning to run out of options now. Only one engine, neither anchor holding, no steering, and the wind battering me left-right-left like a heavyweight boxer moving in on a beaten opponent. I sent Simos down to appraise Shergar of the steering problem, and watched in glum silence as Swan’s high bow started to swing broadside to the wind.
I had one shot left in the locker. The theory of ship handling says that, when the engine is operated astern, the stern of the ship will ‘seek the weather’; that is to say, she will stabilise with her stern pointing into the wind.
The scientific reasoning for this is that a vessel turns about a ‘pivot-point’, which is normally about a third of her length from the stem when moving ahead; but when she goes astern this pivot-point moves to a position near the propeller. The result is that the whole area of the ship forward of this pivot-point is acted upon by the prevailing wind and behaves like a lever, swinging the bow away from the weather. It is a theory one rarely gets the chance to test, so what the chances were of it working at any time I wasn’t sure; when applied to a vessel with a large box on her after deck and designed to be twin-screw, I had no idea what the theory said, but as I found myself broadside on to Galatas with a plethora of small boats in an anchorage between me and the shore, I decided that beggars could not be choosers and I put my last remaining engine full astern. Then, having nothing else to do, I explained what I was doing to my audience. I don’t know how much of it they followed, but it was damn good occupational therapy for me.
Considering that we were still trailing two anchors on short scope, I was hardly surprised that it didn’t immediately work, but we did progress backwards out of the channel a little, and I began to hope that I could ground the ship clear of most of the boats at anchor. But finally the port anchor broke the surface, and Les put it out of gear. The stern came a little closer to the wind. Les began to recover the last of the starboard cable. As I came closer to the yachts in the muddier water near the point, I risked coming ahead on the engine as much as I could, the starboard engine acting on the rudder to send us reasonably straight back into the channel. Then, as Les roared with triumph and the starboard anchor broke the surface, I came astern again and the Swan gently brought her back end up into the pulsing wind.
Ever so slowly she swung, but she kept her gentle parabola, and looking aft from the bridge wing I thought she might just clear the shallower water. I risked one more quick kick ahead, but her stern started to fall off again so I came back astern, shutting my eyes as I saw the clouds of mud now blooming in the back-wash of her starboard prop.
The phone buzzed. I didn’t answer it, because I had seen the port engine tachometer leap into life. With the greatest self-control I had ever exerted, I resisted the temptation to ram it full open, but gently increased the revolutions ahead until I felt the stern just start to swing; then I left it strictly alone.
The port screw, acting ahead on the rudder, now started to swing my stern away from the mud-bank whilst the starboard prop continued to edge me to windward into deeper water.
Les appeared on the bridge, wiping oil from his face and forearms, and laconically said “Good deal, Man!” as though everything had gone exactly to some plan I was entirely unaware of. Then Shergar arrived, equally bespattered and wiping his specs.
“Anything you can do with the steering?” I asked tersely.
“Try it now,” he replied, “...I just called, but you didn’t answer the phone.”
I opened my mouth, shut it, centred the tiller, and saw the rudder indicator judder unsteadily back to ‘amidships’.
“It’s still not too clever. Don’t go full over.” Shergar advised me.
“What happened?”
“I think it jammed at hard-over. Probably a worn pivot on the linkage, or a bad bearing. I stuck a crowbar under the rudder-heads and lifted ’em a bit. It felt like they came free.”
What an utter genius the man was. I could have kissed him.
I reversed Swan almost as far as the Poros hotel before swinging her gingerly to starboard and laying as much anchor and cable as I dared in the mouth of Russian Bay. Les brought everyone a cold beer, and then pointed at the aluminium motorboat on the forecastle.
Let’s have a cold one, an’ then I’ll run y’ashore. I reckon I owe ya lunch when this wind goes down.” he said, matter-o-factly.
I was in a sort of a daze as we sped back across the bay. It all seemed more like a story I had read in a book rather than something I had participated in myself. The sense of unreality was heightened by the absolute calm with which everyone took it. I had finished the manoeuvre... if such farcical, force-majeur antics can be graced with so elegant a title... in a muck-sweat, unable to bend my knees in case they folded under me. Even after anchoring, I had to press my beer can against my lips to prevent it shaking when I drank.
Everyone else, on the contrary, appeared at complete ease and chatted happily. I gathered that they were all quite content with the procedure.
Stepping out of the aluminium ‘tinny’ at the dock, I saw the clock again. Just two hours after we had left George’s Cafe, we resumed our seats and George replenished our beers. As I sat down I felt a crinkling in my pocket, and pulled out the letter from the port police chief. I handed it to Simos.
“What does this really say?” I asked him.
He grinned, and added another shrug to the daily total.
“Ah... it is a recipe for melitzanosalata... aubergine salad!” he admitted guiltily, and then added, by way of mitigation, “A very good recipe!”
*
We later found out that all our efforts had all been for nothing. The ferry never arrived, having sunk after a collision in Aegina harbour!
* * *
The day after the affair of the Swan, Kyria Fotini informed me that I had a telephone call from Petros to go to the cafe. I trotted down through the first cooling of evening and emerged from the maze of lanes behind the cafe. Petros pointed nonchalantly to a table by the statue in the middle of the square where sat a middle-aged couple.
“They wants to see you,” he explained economically.
I twisted my hands outwards in the gesture which indicates that a Greek wants to know ‘what is it about?’, and he replied with the less-than-helpful tut which indicates that a Greek doesn’t know and cares less.
They were a couple of the best dressed scruffs I had ever seen; he in faded shirt, threadbare cords and a sun bleached cravat, she in a blouse, skirt and a necklace made apparently of old rope. As I manoeuvred round the front and introduced myself, he rose and removed his hat... a folding panama which looked like it had once belonged to an origami research establishment... in a reflexively gentlemanly manner and introduced them as Sylvia and Gerald. The voices were plum jam with extra plum... fruity, and as far-back as a dinosaur’s tail.
“I hyar you are not averse to a Gin-and-Tonic?” enquired Gerald as he motioned me to a seat. Petros had one ready, it seemed, so I didn’t bother asking where he had ‘hyar’ed it.
“You have been recommended to us,” he continued, “...as someone who could porssibly hyelp us ayt. We have to get to an archaeological dig on an island nyar hyar, and we would like to spend the night there; but one does like a modicum of comfort, donch’yer know? Seemed like a boat might be just the ticket.”
“Which island?” I asked.
“It is called Dokos, I b’lieve.”
An uninhabited island outside Ermioni, about seventeen miles from Poros; but I wasn’t aware of any activity there.
“Oh, it’s quate new, I b’lieve. Started last week. Diving, an old harbour they’ve fyound, ’parently.”
“Ah! And are you archaeologists?” I enquired
Sylvia said, “May fault, Ay’m afraid. Complete amateur, naturally, but fascinating stuff, fascinating. We’ve been invited by the professor leading the dig.”
“Old school-chum of mine,” added Gerald. Yup, he probably would be, I thought. Along with most of the cabinet, and half of the House of Lords.
A couple of drinks, and all was concluded. I phoned Spiros and he did a deal to let me take Molto Alegro for two nights... not much of a sailor, but probably the best boat to take if ‘a modicum of comfort’ was required by the clients in prospect.
“Now,” concluded Gerald, “...if you could recommend a decent restaurant, could we porssibly orffer you dinnar?”
Certainly they could. I took them off to The Snail, where we regaled ourselves on his peerless roast pork and fruity, fresh wine... for which beverage they showed an unexpected and endearingly proletarian appreciation. They were excellent company, Sylvia being very knowledgeable about the ancient history of the area and Gerald having done a good bit of sailing in earlier days. I found myself looking forward to the trip, and only a bit sorry that it wasn’t longer.
Towards the end of the meal, Gerald suddenly smiled at his glass, and said, “Now, listen hyar, old chap. I’m afraid we haven’t been quite above board with you. You’ve been ambushed, I’m afraid. Not our fault, only actin’ under orders, what? But we will have one other passenger tomorrow too.”
A finger tickled my ear-lobe.
“Hello, Skip!” said a soft voice behind me. “I see you’re ingratiating yourself with the family.”
It was Clemmie.
* * *
“I didn’t know if I should have come back or not,” she mused as she ran a finger around the rim of her glass. “You can tell me to bugger orf again, if you like. But it seemed rather... oh, I don’t know... providential, I suppose, this dig coming up just here, just now.”
“Couldn’t be more delighted!” I assured her.
She cocked an eye mischievously at me.
“Ryally? One hyars such lurid stories... out-of-work actresses haunting the docks, Swedish tour operators, naked bathing on catamarans...”
“Well, if you have done your homework that well, you’ll know that the Swedes were lesbians and the catamaran was full of Swiss Nuns. I am clean in soul!” I protested. She laughed.
“As well as in body.”
“Oh, no, never that... I’m still a grubby oik!” I protested.
“Well, so you say. So you say. But one hyars of entire communities fed on pig. One hyars other tales too. Tales of derring-do... saving fishermen, and minesweepers, battling the elements? Isn’t there some reprehensible pretension of nobility here?”
“Absolutely not. Hadn’t a clue what I was doing, got into scrapes by accident and got out of ’em by the luck of my heathen God and the skin of my discoloured NHS false teeth. You know me... as far as I am concerned, noblesse oblige means a helpful eunuch.”
“One hyars,” she continued, “...that on this minesweeper, the ‘English captain was very cool, didn’t say a word’.”
“The English captain had run out of things to say,” I assured her. “If the English captain had opened his mouth, he would have screamed for his mum.”
“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.