Love is almost all around... how to make a miss-ogynist... captain’s mates... a dramatic performance... homosapphians... why a sailor must know his flags... the gentleman’s guide to crossing the Aegean... involuntary espionage... sub-ornation... the beauty of Kamares... a souvlaki seller’s dream... all the nice girls love a sailor... a profound farewell
The lack of a partner had not greatly concerned me earlier in the year, when prospective amours were few and far between and the end-of-Winter feeling had lingered; but as we progressed into May I not only hankered for the solace of female company but also began to feel that my continuing state of celibacy did not reflect to my credit.
Every house acquired a floral wreath on May-day, and with this tangible symbol of spring Greece finally conceded the passing of winter. The sun flew higher and brighter every day, the hotels came to life, the beaches opened. Waiters laid down their paint-brushes and took up their trays, ferries began to swarm and music drifted on the air. The locals, who had finally discarded their winter anoraks but remained well covered-up in heavier clothes, began to cede predominance in the kafeneions to more scantily-clad tourists.
The water, still far too chilly to tempt a Greek, was already warm enough for the increasing numbers of Northern Europeans who began to shriek delightedly as they frolicked in the astringent, glass-bright shallows. The skies were intensely blue, the flowers rioted on every hand, the bees began to buzz, and there was a lot of smooth young skin on display. Greece in the sunshine simply oozed sexual promise... but all I got was an IOU.
This wasn’t entirely my fault. I was doing mostly delivery sailing at the time, which meant that I did not stay in one place very long, and also I often sailed on my own. I was not inhabiting a target-rich environment. However, the fact must also be faced that I was pretty damn feckless when it came to interacting with girls. I blame the circumstances of my childhood for this.
Dad was a classical music aficionado and, at an early and impressionable age, he cunningly took me to a performance of the 1812 Overture which featured the cannon of the Royal Horse Artillery. I would, of course, have roared like Caliban if forced to sit through even five minutes of orchestral music for its own sake, but to see real cannons fired I would have endured The Ring Saga in its entirety. I waited impatiently whilst they got the silly, boring music out of the way before exulting in the smoke and noise of the guns at the finale, and enjoyed it so much that I begged to be bought the recording of the performance. By the end of the week, Dad wished he had never thought of the idea because I was incessantly humming ‘Pada-pom-pom-paam-paam-paam-paam-PAAAAAMMM-pa-paam’ and crashing saucepan lids together.
Thus a classical monster was begotten, and ever after I found myself unable to derive much satisfaction from popular music. Nothing short of half-an-hour of music registered, and I inhabited a world where Status Quo was a snobbish Roman, and Meatloaf was a school dinner.
Shortly after this my school compounded the musical misdirection I had suffered by organising an outing to Stratford-upon-Avon, there to see a wonderful performance of Julius Caesar. This left me muttering ‘It must be by his death!’ when my peers were quoting Monty Python’s Parrot Sketch. Then my strangely selective memory took a hand by auto-focussing on poetry… or perhaps I should say doggerel. Almost unconsciously, and for no good reason that I can determine, I started to learn great and pointless epics such as Tam O’Shanter, The Ballad of East and West and The Man From Snowy River. Protracted recitations of these occasionally afflict my associates to this very day.
What little room my thinking-muscle had left was very largely sequestered by the two most unconventional and charismatic teachers I encountered at my various schools; the unforgettably-named Mr R. I. Phillips (RIP), who taught history as if he had been at Agincourt himself, and only yesterday morning at that, and an intellectual English master called John Fielding who lurked behind a facade of bewilderment and failing faculties, from which ambush he lambasted the pompous and de-mystified literature. There wasn’t much room left in my attic for more contemporary matters.
The final spectacular cock-up occurred when Dad changed his job and we moved to a Lakeland village where the local secondary school was boys-only. That revered and draughty old slaughterhouse drew half of its pupils ready-muscled from the surrounding hill-farms, and the other half seemed to be the sons of army P.T. instructors. I was so physically inferior to these feral manimals that I could not make the grade in any team sports, and I ended up a solitary protagonist in the esoteric fields of sailing and clay-pigeon shooting.
Needless to say, sex education at such an establishment consisted of advice to take cold showers and reading the swiftly-removed and often contradictory information available in the toilet cubicles. The only thing I thought I knew about sex was that it was as tiring as a ten-mile run, which wasn’t much of an encouragement for an indifferent athlete like me.
The result of these events was to send me through childhood and puberty isolated from popular culture, sporting in solitary splendour, musing on Richard III, quoting Shakespeare, whistling The Pastoral Symphony, and singing Schiller’s Ode to Joy in German. As for girls… they were like reptiles, in that I had seen them, in carefully controlled conditions, and I understood that they occurred naturally, were necessary, and that some were quite beautiful; but I had little idea how to approach one in safety. They were mysterious creatures whose language I could not speak, and I was so deeply ignorant of their physiology that my sole awareness was a vague impression that, once a month, they had to go to places called ‘sanitary towers’.
It was in this condition of painful ignorance and ineptitude that I went to sea, thus entering a chauvinistic male world where every day of the week was lived like Saturday evening at the rugby club. The Blatchley who landed in Greece in 1985 was worthy of at least an honourable mention at any barbarian ravishing competition, but when it came to seduction a sloth probably had more chance of getting laid in the ostrich enclosure than I had on a Greek beach.
I have earlier remarked on the innately competitive nature of the waterfront world, and this put me under some pressure to nurture my paralia ‘persona’, which was an image created out of perceptions of my proficiency in two distinct disciplines; my sailing ability, and my social performance. As far as sailing went I was hitting all targets, maintaining boats, doing a lot of miles, sailing in some hard weather at times, and generally being Captain Courageous. Socially, however, my CV was incomplete. Compulsively gregarious, I kept myself noisily in evidence but my lack of a consort was eventually going to be remarked upon.
Most of the other skippers and boatie-people I knew seemed to have extremely active social calendars. One friend of mine, a South American gentleman, was so busy in this respect that by early June he had to move house because Alimos Marina had become untenable. Another young Adonis of the Aegean, over whose identity I think a complete veil must be drawn, was once placed in a desperate predicament when he entered a harbour with a female companion only to find, waving from the quay, another lady who had arrived earlier than expected. Taking immediate action, he apologetically dumped the incumbent into the middle of the harbour and motored away to collect the new arrival. I can absolutely vouch for the truth of this, because I was fifty metres behind him and had the thankless task of picking the discarded lady up... it was like trying to rescue a beehive.
So, that was the situation. Everyone else was happily splashing around in the gene-pool, and I was sitting on the side with a verruca. For my reputation as much as my self-gratification, therefore, action was required.
* * *
On the face of it, I could not have been in a better place for romance. The northward advance of the sun brought beauty and nubility to Greece in swarms, and female tourists outnumbered males by about three to one. One would have thought that any man alive and possessed of teeth and hair would have been plucked off the stem like grain before locusts; but my grasshopper lifestyle, my disdain for disco tunes, my club-footed dancing, and my alienation from anything resembling current fashion apparently made me an Untouchable. The lovely creatures swept in herds across the landscape, but when they reached me they parted smoothly and flowed past without so much as a caress. It seemed that I was esteemed as a companion, but unconsidered as a swain. I do not say that there were no young ladies who can love a chap of earthy pleasures and pseudo-classical pretensions; I merely assert that they did not take holidays in Greece that spring, and as I continued to prowl the Aegean littoral on the lookout for a compatible mate I felt increasingly like the last dodo.
There was, of course, one cast-iron prospect: PeePee, who had been unable to close the deal with her Canadian prospect, still lurked around every corner, but her intentions remained possessive and procreational. What I had in mind was a series of romantic dalliances with willowy nymphs, not perpetuity with a maternal pile-driver. Whenever I saw her alone, I climbed trees to keep out of her way. However, with this single exception, I was now ready to consider almost any application, even, as Billy the Bard so eloquently had it, ‘Be she as foul as was Florentius’ love... with as many diseases as two-and-fifty horses’. (There. You see the problem?)
One evening I was at George’s Cafe in Poros when a skipper I knew asked me to join him with a group of ladies. Frankly, I didn’t much like the chap but I was prepared to prostitute myself for the sake of an introduction... the ladies he had acquired were just a trifle elephants, and I was hopeful that one of them might not be averse to another one. I shelved my objections to Chris the Charismatically Challenged and slithered on over.
It quickly became obvious that Chris was taking advantage of his wife’s absence to indulge a whim for adultery; and it also became evident that the target of his affections was the golden girl of the group, a lady who quickly dispelled any enlightened thought about blondes being unfairly represented in popular culture. A refrigerator could have given her 20 IQ points and still beaten her comprehensively completing The Beano crossword. But she was evidently Chris’s drinking vessel of infused herbs, which neither surprised nor concerned me.
I was left with a choice of two ladies, one apparently dying of malnutrition and the other so covered in tattoos that she could have stripped naked and laid an ambush in the Louvre. They were nice legs, though, so I gave it my best shot. This transpired to be one Trish, an English actress. (Out of work, naturally.)
Of Trish’s tattoos, apparently the ones on her arms were the result of a recent theatrical performance, and were temporary. (Fortunately, or she would have been limited to roles in productions about Hell’s Angels or the Maori Wars.) The only indelible one was a fantastic face which peered behind her over the belt of her jeans… it turned out to be a dragon tattooed across her back, but at first I took it to be a crocodile looking out of the crack of her arse. On balance, I liked that.
Our conversation proceeded most satisfactorily, with the rapid discovery of a mutual love of Shakespeare (what a pleasure to speak of The Bard with an interlocutor who did not think I was talking about a fishing-rod manufacturer) and moved with encouraging despatch to the tickling-each-others-palm stage… I confess a very real attraction grew on me. However, just as things seemed to be progressing magnificently, she suddenly broke down completely and out came the story. Her husband had dumped her for her best friend a few weeks previously. The rest of the night was spent walking and talking on the beach, trying to dry the tears.
Trish left for England the next day, leaving me very sure that I wanted to see her again, whenever she felt able to do so. She said she’d call... but, as Hamlet has it, the rest was silence. I went ruefully back to work.
* * *
Of course, cheerful memoires such as this modest tome must have at least some happy endings. One day, when I was in the boatyard in Aegina collecting a yacht, Spiros called me urgently.
“Can you get back to Poros tonight? I have two tour operators coming from Sweden this evening. They are interested in a skippered flotilla, four or five boats. I need you to meet them tonight, take them to dinner, and then tomorrow take them out for a couple of days, to show them some of the ports and bays. And if that all goes well, then you’ll be the lead-skipper for the first flotilla, if you like.”
I did like, and I liked even more that evening when I was introduced to Karlotta & Inge, who turned out to be eminently and charmingly feminine.
Karlotta was a handsome and somewhat Olympian lady, tall and full-figured, with an eternal smile and clouds of black hair so capricious that it seemed to re-style itself every time the wind changed. Inge was an elf, a delightful Scandinavian elf, blue-eyed and petite beneath a blonde page-boy coiffeur. Both had a lively sense of humour, and they spoke that faultless, accent-less, pristine, advanced English which can never be imitated by an Englishman, even at the ‘old’ BBC. They were vivacious, absolutely delightful and not one iota diminished in my admiration by the probability that they were both about a decade older than me.
Naturally, one had to be professional. For all I knew these ladies were married, or in relationships. They were travelling on business, and I had no grounds to think that either of them was interested in romance. They were also, of course, potential clients... both for Spiros and myself. One could not take liberties in such a situation. I did not, therefore, make the adolescent mistake of falling in love with both Karlotta and Inge immediately... I considered the matter maturely, with care and objectivity, for at least a couple of minutes.
I dined them at the Delfini, a favourite taverna set half way up the broad steps which lead from the South Quay up to the main square. The tables were set out in a narrow alley, immaculately whitewashed and overhung with jasmine and bougainvillea. Being on the steps, even the Greeks did not ride motorbikes in the area, so there was no unwelcome noise to pollute the homely, relaxing murmur of conversation, the tinkle of cutlery and the plinking of the ubiquitous ‘usual suspects’ Greek tunes. Brightly-lit boutiques lined the steps, tourists passed up and down, the wine was crisp and satisfying, and the food was as good as anywhere in town. It was a wonderful evening, full of light, and laughter, and bright eyes.
In the cool of the following morning I collected a large bag of prawns, caught close to the nearby island of Angistri and so fresh that some were still moving, and some decent white wine from the market before meeting my Swedessess at Petro’s. After watching them deal enthusiastically with melon, yoghurt and honey I piled our bags aboard Mucky Duck, which had returned from her excursion in the Dodecanese.
We had a bit of a schedule to keep if we intended to see as much of the proposed flotilla itinerary as possible in two and a half days, so I motored fast in the morning calm to Hydra. Here I put the ladies ashore for about an hour, so that they could get a quick taste of the place.
As soon as they returned we pushed on to Pondikonisi Island at the west end of Hydra. I anchored the boat, in immaculate, glass-clear water over a rocky bottom, and let the ladies snorkel with the fish, which they did in true Scandinavian style, stripping naked without the least self-consciousness. I busied myself preparing an early lunch to limit the drool. They didn’t dress for lunch, but there at least I could pretend to be slavering over the prawns.
They didn’t see any reason to dress again for the sail over to the Peloponnesian coast, either. I left Pondikonisi just after midday, and we picked up the Bouka Doura wind from the sou’-sou’-east as soon as we cleared the end of Hydra. Mucky Duck loved a close-reach, and we turned a ruler-straight furrow through the rocky islets around Trikeri and then across the open sea to Kiparissi. As always, the wind slowly increased through the afternoon, the ladies shrieking with delighted protest as the weather bow whipped spray across their naked hides. Now, it is not the intention of the author to turn this book into a prurient exposition of erotic ephemera... a Fifty Grades of Spray... and so I shall leave the reader to imagine for themselves the effects of cool spray on naked breasts and bare skin, and thus also, indirectly, on said author; but by the time we arrived in Kiparissi I was having trouble seeing straight.
Enervated by their day on the water, my passengers were positively bubbling with enthusiasm in Kiparissi. We went to my favourite little restaurant Klimateria, which had no menus and served any meal you liked so long as you wanted small fish followed by a pork chop with salad. The wine went down like water, and both of the ladies were becoming very tactile. Unless I was as mad as a box of frogs, love was definitely in the air... so much so, in fact, that I started to have some anxieties about how I should break the bad news to the unsuccessful applicant. I need not have worried... it was done for me.
Returning to the boat, Karlotta stripped again, gave me a big smile, and went for a shower. I busied myself making industrial strength G-and-Ts. Next a naked Inge slipped out of her cabin and into the shower. Funny, I thought... I didn’t see Karlotta come out. She must have been quick.
Then the giggling started.
Love was indeed in the air. Specifically, in the air in the shower, and, as custom demands, there was a happy ending. But not for me... I was surplus to requirements, so I went for a beer.
After two more days of watching unprotected Swedes cavorting all over the boat, and two more nights drinking on my own to give them a bit of privacy, I arrived back in Poros where I was informed, by Mary at the Jungle Bar, that Trish, the tattooed actress, had come back and had been waiting three days for me. She had just left on the evening ferry.
* * *
I wasn’t the only one to fall into the gender-assumptions error. Yiorgaki, one of the skippers from the Grave-Robber, tied up next to me in Aegina one Saturday evening, fresh out of Alimos Marina on a big Atlantic 55 boat absolutely heaving with gorgeous women. It looked like someone had bought a job-lot of unemployed cheerleaders, the boat was wriggling with attractive limbs and scraps of material stretched tightly over the most interesting shapes. Yiorgaki looked like the cat who not only got the cream but inherited the dairy to boot. Whilst his crew were getting ready for the evening, he sat on the cabin-top and chatted with me. Between his legs was a bathroom window, in which I simply could not help noticing one of his goddesses combing her hair.
“Po, po, po!” He exulted delightedly; “Po po PO!!!” He put down his beer and used both hands to delineate in the air a figure which Mae West would have considered Rubinesque.
“You see?” he crowed, in a hoarse whisper, “You see them? Kouklakia! Dolls! Twelve of them!”
“Shhh!” I admonished him... the combing in the window below him had slowed to a crawl, and the head was tilting as if listening. She might have been, but Yiorgaki wasn’t.
“Ten days we have, ten days!” He exulted. “And no mens! I gonna get one of thems for sure!” He winked hideously. “Maybe two, heh?”
My eyes flickered up the mast. From one yard-arm flew several national flags... Australian, New Zealand, Canadian and American.
From the other flew a rainbow flag.
I almost laughed out loud, he was so smugly sure of himself.
“What’s that flag up there?” I asked innocently, pointing out the seven kaleidoscopic bars undulating lazily in the breeze. At that moment, the head in the bathroom between his legs turned and frantically motioned me to silence, one palm waving in negation whilst the other hand laid a finger on lips pouting a silent ‘shhh!’.
Yiorgaki looked up for a few minutes, and shrugged.
“Dunno,” he admitted carelessly. “One of those South American places, innit?
“That’s it!” I agreed, and the head in the window gave me a wink and blew me a kiss.
Yiorgaki disappeared to take a shower shortly after, just about managing to pack himself and his self-satisfaction into his tiny cabin in the bows of the boat. When he had gone, the girl who had been in the window appeared and spoke with a broad Aussie accent.
“Thanks, Mate!” she purred, “...He’s been trippin’ over his tongue all day. Y’won’t tell him, will ya? This is going to be SOOOO much fun!”
I gave her a wink and she responded with a thumbs-up.
“Dinkum!” she said, which delighted me: I had never actually heard an Aussie say ‘dinkum’ before.
“Your name isn’t Shiela, is it?” I asked.
She laughed. “Na, it’s Bruce!”
We both laughed.
About two weeks later, I was walking past Stavros’ kafeneion in Poros when I met Yiorgaki coming the other way. He did not acknowledge me by so much as a flicker, but turning to the astounded Stavros and his clients announced, in a ringing voice which reached the peaks of Poros and echoed back from the Peloponnesian shore, “This man is a veeery BEEEG bastard!”
So, that worked out very nicely!
* * *
Green Dragon was not an easy boat to sail. As modern as this morning, she was light, beamy and so insubstantial that, when I looked in the cockpit lockers on the side where the sun was shining, I could see the water-level through the fibreglass of her hull. Going downwind she skied fast but skittishly, and going upwind she bounced off every short Mediterranean wave and either stopped dead or fell off to leeward. I didn’t like her one little bit, but charterers did... she had three double cabins, each with an en suite shower and head, a big saloon, an enormous cockpit and she looked flashy. The other thing her charterers apparently liked was Kos, so to Kos I went. There wasn’t anyone available to go with me, but Green Dragon boasted an auto-pilot so Spiros and I greedily split the wage for the crew between us and I went on my own.
I don’t really enjoy sailing alone. I am too gregarious by nature for one thing, and for another, I tend to make very different decisions when there is only myself to consider; decisions which I wouldn’t be comfortable making under scrutiny. Left to my own devices I become rather experimental and I have frequently been left feeling very glad that there is no-one else around to watch me cleaning egg off my face. I am on record as having admitted, frequently, that I do not sail alone because I end up in bad company.
Despite recognising my unsuitability for solo sailing, however, I was willing enough to take Green Dragon, a boat I did not esteem, the two hundred-odd miles to Kos, for money. Many of my decisions are influenced by what one might call the fluidity of the situation, and this was yet another example; but for once the liquid in question wasn’t alcohol, but rather testosterone.
The Poros waterfront was a very public forum where secrets were few and where professional seafarers and young yacht-jockeys, motor boat drivers and fishermen all rubbed shoulders in the kafeneions and competed, even when unconscious of the fact. It was not an environment that set much store in caution, so when one was asked to do something, one did it. If it worked, one affected a nonchalant modesty; if it did not, one had ready to hand all sorts of reasons why it was the fault of the proposer, the elements, the design of the boat, that bloke over there, or, in fact, any other person or thing under the sun, rather than the perpetrator. It was, I suppose, a bit like living in a gladiator’s school... one really didn’t want to be second best. So off I went to Kos, perfectly happy simply to have an opportunity to showcase my casual attitude to single-handed passages and blithely supposing that ‘someone’ would help me to tie up at the other end.
* * *
I left Poros before the dawn, puttering down the harbour in a twilight enhanced by a sinking moon. All around me, quite by chance but seeming to salute the nobility of my solo quest, were an escort of little boats whose rudimentary exhausts riveted the morning quiet as their ancient engines drove them out in quest of the morning fish. Greeks have a deep distrust of exhausts... anything that mutes the sound is under extreme suspicion of equally emasculating the engine. Fishing boats, motorbikes and pump engine exhaust systems are routinely eviscerated or discarded altogether.
Once clear of the channel I brought in my fenders and then, increasing the engine revolutions, I bid farewell to my fisher escort with a series of grave salutes as Green Dragon accelerated.
Setting course to the west-south-west, I passed Modhi Island at the east end of Poros and gradually began to feel the tickle of northerly breeze in my beard. By the time the east was orange-gold I had the engine off, the main sail and genoa drawing pleasantly, and Green Dragon chuckling contentedly as she ran out from the land.
The direct route from Poros to the island of Kos, which lies in the Southern Dodecanese islands hard against the Turkish coast, runs close to the western Cycladic island of Kythnos then just north of the large, central island of Naxos, and the distance is about one hundred and eighty-five nautical miles.
In Greece, however, the shortest distance from anywhere to anywhere else is rarely a straight line, and the canny Aegean sailor will only consider this direct route if the wind is confidently expected to be from the south. In any other conditions at all he is wise to be as alert as a mouse in a cattery, for the Aegean is a capricious creature and exceedingly prone to northerly winds which can be much stronger than forecast where they funnel between the high, rugged islands. Anyone who doubts this need only take a look at the Cycladic scenery, which is almost devoid of trees; and those that do manage to cling to the friable soil are either sheltered from the North or else they are stunted, blasted freaks, fantastically deformed and permanently bent away from relentless Boreas.
In the South Aegean, the part which lies below the narrowest point linked by the islands of Evvoia, Andros, Tinos, Ikaria and Samos, the wind is not uniformly northerly, however. In the central Aegean it blows from very close to true north, but at the western side it is deflected by the Peloponnesian coast and blows more from the north-east. Similarly, on the eastern side, it tends to follow the Turkish coast and blow from the north-west. A diagram of the prevailing winds over Homer’s Wine-Dark Sea looks a little like an inverted Prince-Of-Wales feathers.
The knowledgeable sailor can make good use of this. By leaving the Peloponnese coast on a south-easterly heading he can keep the wind on his port beam, allowing him to enjoy an exhilarating close-reach at a good speed instead of beating hard and uncomfortably to maintain the direct track. If he passes close to Sifnos and then under Paros and Naxos he will also avoid the worst of the large seas which develop in the open area north of those islands. As he crosses the Aegean, the wind will normally back steadily from north-easterly through northerly, until he clears the island of Amorgos; and then the wind goes slowly into the north-west. This means that, by keeping the wind a little forward of the beam all the way, he can cross the Aegean at good speed in a relatively comfortable arc, gleefully trading about twenty nautical miles of extra distance for speed, comfort and fun. We called this southerly passage ‘The Gentleman’s Route’, and it has the added advantage that, if you wish to stop on the way, there is much greater choice... Serifos and Sifnos, Dhespotico, the Small Cyclades, Amorgos, Levitha, Kinaross, and Astipalea are all ideally on the route, whilst Milos, Folegandros, Sikinos, Ios and even Nisiros are just a little further south.
With all the above in mind, and further impelled by the knowledge that Green Dragon was too buoyant to make easy progress on a hard beat, I shaped my course east-south-east for Sifnos, and settled down to enjoy the sixty-five mile sail. My progress was modest at the outset, but I was not worried... my local knowledge was developing fast, and I was also confident that the wind would increase by one or two points on the Beaufort scale when I passed my old friend Agios Yeorgios. To my intense satisfaction, it proved exactly so; and thus, about six in the evening, having enjoyed a leisurely sail all morning and a spanking, eight-knot close-reach most of the afternoon, I brought Green Dragon into the long inlet on Sifnos which leads to the main ferry port of Kamares.
Rounding the light on Akra Kokkala, I was suddenly a busy man. There were the sails to douse, and as I removed canvas1 the skittish Green Dragon was too inconstant in her movements for her auto-pilot to handle. This meant that I had to go back to the cockpit periodically and steady her up again. Then I rigged fenders in case there was a chance to go alongside, and prepared some mooring-lines.
All this I did between frequent pauses to admire the scenery, as the bay is a fabulous one indeed. Both sides are majestic, rocky slopes or crags, predominantly grey but shot with sandy-coloured outcrops and here and there threaded with gleaming green or coffee-toned swirls of minerals, rising almost five hundred metres on either hand. The highest peaks are tipped with chalky monasteries, the head of the bay is rimmed with the brilliantly white, cubic Cycladic houses, and the Cycladic sky overhead is usually a pristine, cloudless powder-blue. It is a spectacular arrival.
Noticing during these scans of the scenery that a ferry was about to depart from the port I edged Green Dragon closer to the northern shore of the bay and got on with my preparations for mooring. I had just unlashed the anchor when I heard, very close by, a strident voice.
Looking quickly ahead I saw nothing close, and a rapid scan of the shoreline revealed nothing... I was looking, of course, for one of the omnipresent fishing boats which are almost universally painted white. Not seeing anything I was turning to look offshore when the voice came again, this time sounding angry and now definitely inshore of me.
Turning back to the rocks, I perceived at last a darker slab of stone low to the water, upon which were a number of gesturing figures. All seemed to be uniformly dressed, all very animated. My heart sank as I apprehended that these appeared to be officials in uniform, and they didn’t seem very happy with me. What on earth they were all doing standing on a flat rock in the middle of nowhere puzzled me extremely.
I looked around for a church... Greeks seem to measure piety in terms of how inaccessible a place they can build a church, and the only explanation I could imagine for a horde of officials to be marooned on a desolate rock had to involve religion. I saw no sign of a church, however... and then I noticed, on top of the rock, a strangely smooth column. My mind, fed delusions of adequacy at an early age by an ‘O’-level2 in geology, had just formed the thought ‘that must be a weathered basaltic intrusion’ when a man emerged out of the top of it.
‘OK,’ I thought, ‘...so it is quite a talented weathered basaltic intrusion.’
But, do you know, it wasn’t a weathered basaltic intrusion of any kind, talented, hollow, or custom-built. It was a submarine.
Once I realised what I was looking at, it sort of ‘materialised’, appearing so clearly that I could not understand how I had missed it in the first place. The hull and fin were a mottled mix of light and dark grey, which gave it an element of camouflage, but now the outline was quite clear against the lighter rock behind. Her bow was a smooth hump, her stern sloped down into the sea and her fin was a square block topped with several protrusions. I was within fifty metres of the beast, so close that I could now see the bubble and haze of her generator exhaust; and definitely so close that I could not plausibly ignore the gestures of her crew, who were clearly ordering me to come closer.
Bugger, I thought.
I had good reason to be concerned, because Greeks are pretty paranoid when it comes to their armed forces. Any military or naval installation has large signs warning against photography, and these rules are enforced with scant respect for habeas corpus. Even at the naval school in Poros, which consisted of no more than classrooms, old buildings and a mothballed World War Two destroyer, the click of a camera-shutter would bring the normally lethargic sentries out onto the street with fixed bayonet, truncheon and the snarling ferocity of dogs after a postman. A foreigner getting within a hundred metres of what was obviously an active, operational, modern submarine was likely to be particularly vexatious to the uniformed mind.
Throttling back and taking my time to turn towards the submarine, my mind raced. What would they do to me? No doubt there would be some minimum distance within which I should not approach, of which I was utterly unaware. I faced, at the very least, the confiscation of the film on my camera... and now the thought occurred that this posed another problem, since I didn’t have a camera. I was officially on holiday, and who goes on holiday without taking a few snap-shots? My fertile imagination conjured up images of grim-faced MPs ripping Green Dragon to pieces to find a hidden camera, or alleging that I had thrown it overboard to conceal my guilt. I could imagine courts charging me with entry into prohibited areas, failure to keep a safe lookout, illegal fishing and anything else that came to the official mind short of poisoning the hamster in the national zoological gardens. Yes, I know, I am paranoid... but I don’t think I am sufficiently paranoid.
As I approached the submarine, my mind waxed increasingly pessimistic. In Greek law, all offences are liable to jail terms. Sentences of less than two years can usually be ‘bought off’, effectively being commuted to a fine. Now, I am not a habitual offender, and anyway the Greek police tended to be as tolerant and relaxed as the nation generally; it was hard to get them sufficiently annoyed to fill in papers unless one made an effort. It required violence, or public disrespect for the nation, authorities or the church, to move Plodopoulos to action. Although I was learning actively every day about all aspects of life in Greece, I had somehow omitted to research how to irritate The Fuzz, and the consequence of this omission was that I had not the slightest idea how heavy a fine might be; but my lifestyle was somewhat hand-to-mouth and I very much doubted whether I had enough money in the country to pay the standard bung for high-level espionage. Sending money from England took over two weeks, and even if they allowed the condemned man a phone-call home I didn’t much fancy spending that time in a Greek slammer.
With all this negative energy bouncing about between my ears, I pulled Green Dragon up close to the starboard side of the submarine. I could now see that she had an anchor out forward, and her stern was secured with two long lines to the rocks astern of her. Two men, who had obviously just secured them, were swimming powerfully back. I did my best to look as disinterested in the vessel as possible, in particular averting my gaze from any antennae or anything else that might appear sensitive. A man in officer’s epaulettes was shouting at me in Greek, and I understood him to be calling me alongside.
I have a penis, which means that I like techy stuff; and submarines are about as techy as it gets. I had also, in my tanker officer persona, refuelled a few submarines in my time. This meant that I knew a little about them... not enough to steal one, or even make an informed choice about buying one, but certainly enough to know that they don’t have a ‘conning tower’, they have a ‘fin’. I also knew that this one was a conventional diesel/electric type, and by the looks of it probably built in Germany or Sweden. And I was aware that it wouldn’t be the best idea in the world to try to put a yacht alongside one, because of the ballast tanks.
The bit of a submarine one sees is mainly the casing, which is quite narrow; but their external ballast tanks extend out sideways from this some way under the water. Putting a sailing boat alongside would probably result in the keel and ballast tank making contact below the waterline. That doesn’t do the yacht much good, and it certainly won’t raise the value of the submarine either... modern subs are often covered with rubber ‘anechoic’ tiles which absorb sound and sonar signals, and a yacht keel would probably chisel them off like a paint-scraper. Not wishing to add sabotage of a front-line naval asset to the list of crimes I was about to be accused of, I didn’t want to go alongside. But I also didn’t want anyone to know that I knew about anechoic tiles, or, indeed, anything at all about submarines; so I played a bit dumb. The officer evidently bought it, as he suddenly switched language.
“Do you speak English?” he called.
Not much point in denying that... they’d probably have my passport within the next five minutes. So I confessed myself a son of Albion, and waited, resolutely straight and stoical, for them to throw the book, or possibly the whole library, at me.
The officer signalled me to wait and turned to speak up to another imposing-looking chap on the top of the fin. I could not hear the brief conversation, but I gathered from the body language that an agreement had been reached before my tormentor turned back to me.
“Are you aware,” he said sternly, adopting a pugnacious stance by putting his fists on his hips and lowering his chin so that his glare ricocheted off the underside of his eyebrows, “...That there is an exclusion zone around warships, which you have entered without permission?”
“Is there?” I asked, attempting to sound astounded by this news. “No, I didn’t... but in any case, I didn’t see you” Then I improvised desperately. “Excellent camouflage, I must say...”
The officer was visibly, massively, extravagantly unimpressed.
“You will have to come alongside. I must put two men on board you.”
Oh, bloody hell. The officer’s English was dreadfully fluent, there was no plausible way of creatively misunderstanding this. Glumly throwing out a couple of fenders I started to move Green Dragon towards the bow of the submarine, where the ballast tanks hopefully weren’t as wide. As I did so, I contemplated making a run for it. After all, I couldn’t see a gun, and I reckoned you’d have to be pretty good to hit a yacht with a torpedo. Unless they happened to have Sean Connery or Jürgen Prochnow on board, I should be away and gone. But, sadly, there was a port police station in Kamares, and most of them have radios and fast inflatable boats; and even if they didn’t take direct action, Green Dragon had a registration number clearly marked on her stern... it would be like beating someone to death with your social security file, and then leaving the murder weapon at the scene of the crime. I reluctantly discarded the Hornblower option.
“I’ll try to come alongside your bow” I told him, and a couple of capable looking sailors trotted purposefully forward. This turned out to be a good thing, because, at this point, a small spilliade ruffled the water and, before I could do anything to prevent it, Green Dragon’s stern swung in and gave the sub’s bow a shrewd thump which would have been a lot shrewder had the brawny arms not been ready to catch her. A petty officer and a rating, looking horribly official in what the Royal Navy would call ‘number eight uniform’ complete with caps, leapt nimbly aboard.
“You must proceed to the harbour, and take these men with you.” announced the officer.
Morosely, I tried to manoeuvre away, but the spilliades were feeling playful. I tried every trick I knew for what seemed like an hour, and was in fact a rather embarrassing couple of minutes, to get that yacht away from that sub, only to be defeated by little gusts of wind which patted me back against the mottled grey hull like a cat playing with a hapless mouse. Every time I landed alongside again was a separate collision, and although these were again mitigated by the hands of the crew on the deck, I had a mental image of each separate impact representing an individual act of sabotage in the eyes of the Greek Navy. I believe that there is an anti-submarine weapon called a hedgehog, but this may have been the first recorded instance of a woodpecker in the genre.
Finally I managed to get clear, and we set off down the approach to Kamares, a spectacular entry which would normally have captivated me. Now, however, I had no eyes for it. I made a couple of nervous attempts to talk to the two sailors, but they appeared unable to see or hear me. They sat each side of the hatch, swapping cigarettes and low chatter with the most unnerving lack of concern for my presence or plight.
I swung Green Dragon around the end of the main breakwater, hoping there would be no room to tie up. Port full. Sorry, chaps, did my best. Just hop off at the end of the pier and I’ll be on my way. Pip pip! Mind the dolphins down there! But of course, there was plenty of room. Almost the whole length of the inner side of the quay was empty, and plenty of places on the south side of the harbour were also available. Gloomily noticing that there was a telegraph pole next to a whitewashed wall at the root of the breakwater which could almost have been made for a firing-squad, I easily secured Green Dragon alongside.
My two guards watched this performance with mild interest, and the sailor went so far as to pass me a rope when I asked. Then they climbed onto the dock.
“Thank you very much” said the petty officer, politely. He offered me a cigarette.
“The last cigarette?” I asked him, bitterly, in Greek. He looked puzzled, and flipped open the pack to show the contents.
“No. I have plenty!” He offered them again.
“I don’t smoke.”
“Ah. Endaxi.3 Anyway, thank you.”
They walked away. What the hell was going on? I called after them.
“What do I do now?”
They considered this carefully, and then the petty officer shrugged.
“Anything you like,” he told me, and they departed for the town.
I didn’t have a clue what to do... I watched them carefully to see if they went to the port police to report me, but they continued into town at a leisurely stroll, deeply engaged in conversation.
Well, bull-by-the-horns time, it seemed. Let’s find out once and for all. Collecting my papers, I marched determinedly into the port police office to declare my entry. Would I be arrested? Nope. A thoroughly polite and smart young man gravely calculated that I owed forty-eight drachmae for staying overnight (a sum which would barely pay for all the ink he used filling in the complex receipt) and bad me a cheery ‘good evening’. As fast as possible without damaging property, I left in search of it.
At the head of the bay of Kamares is a sweeping beach fringed with trees and restaurants where I sat, wriggling my bare feet luxuriously in the sand, whilst keeping a leery eye on Green Dragon for anything that resembled a uniform. When an hour, and a number of gin-and-tonics, had passed, I began to breathe a little easier.
The setting was truly beautiful, the last of the light lingered in the western sky and the heights of the mountains were tinged with the rosy caress of the parting sun. A pristine white church was illuminated like a Disney attraction opposite me on the north side of the bay, and all around, above the warm, yellowish glow of the restaurants, reared spectacular mountains.
It was still early in the season, but the tourists were here in modest numbers, so Kamares was pleasantly alive with people and muted music. It was utterly delightful, and only the sense that the sleek, death-dealing, sinister shadow lurking under the cliffs still had dastardly intentions for me detracted from my pleasure.
By the last of the light I saw the two sailors, conspicuous in their white-topped caps, boarding a passenger caïque. Some boys passed down a number of cardboard boxes, and they set off out of the harbour again. Had I been mentally scarred just so that they could get some bloody groceries? Or were they going to return home, report that the port police had done nothing, and set the grim-looking officer again on the path of retribution? Well, I have a procedure for these tense and uncertain situations. As an old captain of mine once remarked, when bailing me from a Chilean calaboose, “Always try to go to jail with a full stomach, Son.” It remains excellent advice, and I ordered lavishly.
Sifnos is renowned for its cookery, and one of its specialities is their local version of the ubiquitous Greek salad. They add capers and use a local soft cheese called myzythra, which is deliciously salty, creamy, and has a delightfully sensual texture. Together with a charcoal-grilled kalamari, a pylino4 of luscious moussaka and a copious dose of muscle-relaxant, it set me up splendidly for a prolonged spell in chokey, but the beadle remained ostentatiously absent. I began to think that I had heard the last of it... but just in case, I decided to leave very early in the morning. I had intended to get going at first light anyway; now I decided to have another couple of gins, get turned-in, and be away before daylight.
I lazed in that beach cafe, nursing my frosted glass and marvelling at the effect of a rising moon, just past the full, on the overhanging cliffs above me.
The moon’s declination must have been somewhat northerly, as it shone onto the spectacular folds and spurs of the south side of the bay rimming every ridge with blue-white light and plunging every chasm into pitchy shade. When people ask me what are the most beautiful sights I have seen in Greece, that night always comes to mind. The light of the full moon on the mountains of Kamares... see that, and you are a huge step closer to dying content. The light was also bright enough to show me the tourist-caïque chugging in full of sailors in their best uniforms, but after an initial consternation I realised that they were just coming in for a night in the town, and relaxed again before my apprehension had registered on my laundry-bill. With great reluctance I dragged myself away from the glorious moonscape, set my alarm-clock for four A.M. and rolled into my pit.
* * *
I had thought to awake before officialdom, but no matter how early you rise, you can’t beat a man who has not been to bed. As I emerged into my cockpit just after four in the morning, the still-vivid moonshine showed me four uniformed figures on the dock next to the Green Dragon. The second glance showed that one of them was the officer of the day before.
“Ah! Good morning!” He beamed. “I am so glad to see you are awake... I would not like to wake you.”
His grin, in my befuddled and guilty state of mind, reminded me of the Gestapo officer in The Great Escape... you know, the one in the leather jacket who says “Your German is excellent, Herr Bartlett. And also, I hear, your French. Your arms up, please!”
For an instant I thought, ‘Here it comes!’ and seconds later I thought, ‘Bloody hell! Middle of the night, no-one around to see... what the hell is this?’
“We were wondering,” asked the spokesman in his really excellent English, “if you would be so kind to take us back to our ship? We are sailing in two hours.”
All was great bonhomie as we puttered up the moon-drenched bay towards the submarine. The officers had enjoyed a night amongst the tourist girls in the bars, their uniforms being of the utmost service to them in this environment, and they quite candidly admitted that they had been having such a splendid time that they had missed the last boat back. They had, in fact, been sufficiently desperate to ‘borrow’ a boat had it been necessary to get them back in time... delaying military operations for debauchery, I do understand, is frowned upon in the more elite units, and in contemplating such irregularities these chaps were no doubt just being ordinarily sub-servient... but a lift back was a much less contentious way of resolving their dilemma. They were generous with their thanks.
“All very well,” I growled as we approached the dark, menacing shadow below the cliffs, “But you scared the living daylights out of me with that stunt yesterday. I’ve been waiting to be arrested all night!”
They looked sympathetic, but also smug. Greeks anywhere love putting one over on someone, and enjoying a clever solution to a problem is a core national value. Even deep gratitude isn’t going to stop them glorying in it a little.
“Sorry,” relied the linguist, as sincerely as he could through his smirk, “But the Captain told me to organise some souvlakis for the crew. It just seemed the quickest and easiest way to get a couple of guys into town.”
So that was what had been in the cardboard boxes. I had been traumatised so that a Greek submarine crew could enjoy a pork lolly.
I deposited my debauchees, giving the submarine another couple of clouts in the process, received more fulsome thanks which included a friendly wave from the official-looking character who was again surveying the world from the top of the fin, and departed with the glow of dawn at my back. Turning southwards out of Kamares Bay, I headed under Sifnos and eastwards towards Amorgos.
An hour later, as I motored along the rocky Sifniot coast in the morning calm and munched a bacon butty, a steel cylinder slid vertically out of the water barely ten metres to starboard. I was half expecting it. The lens of the periscope turned towards me, and then it dipped gravely, two times, below the water in salute. I waved back. It dipped a third time, and was seen no more. Leaping to the rail I looked down into the blue depths and thought I saw a shadow moving away to seaward.
How very friendly, I thought, considering I had crashed into them. Truly, one does meet a better class of people in collisions.