Ithaca – Life Four Point Zero

When the wind rises before you in the morning, you know it’s best to get up, get dressed and make a plan. After yesterday’s parade of boat arrivals in Kioni, we were wedged in tight with boats fendered off of us on both sides. We had seen how other boats had struggled during the strong side winds, and I skipped a morning run in order to get us out before the building wind made it even more challenging. With so many boats med moored around us, and plenty of variability in where they each dropped their anchor, we also wanted to slip our lines sooner than later in order to sort out any crossed anchor chains. We had seen plenty of examples this season of one boat lifting another boat’s anchor and causing a domino effect of boats become unhinged.

Let’s get one thing out of the way at the beginning. There is a particular island in the Ionian, Ithaki, that is not pronounced like you think it would be. It is ‘ehh-TALK-yy’. This came as troubling news to Karen, growing up as she did next door to Ithaca, NY, where natives would think you were from another planet if you didn’t say ‘ITH-a-kuh’. We had the good fortune of a Greek native with us, Theo, to break the news gently. There you go. Now we are ready to move on.

As we rounded the northern tip of Cephalonia on our eastward leg to the neighboring island of Ithaki, the winds started to build, just as they had been forecasted. We started off with both sails fully set, sending us gently along at a speed, because it is less than one could motor at, that can make one twitchy if there’s a long distance to go. Theo, just inshore of us, had a little less wind and more tonnage to move through the water, leading him to keep motoring. We soon had a bonafide breeze of 15 knots, cause enough to begin thinking about a plan to reef, as we skimmed across the water on a glorious downwind angle. The forecast called for higher winds into the evening and possibly over the next few days, so we sought protection on the eastern shore of Ithaki, with our first stop at the little cove of Ormos Nikolaos. Ormos means bay in Greek, but there was nothing expansive here on the scale of San Francisco Bay or the Bay of Biscay. I will be filing for a name change to Limanaki Nikolaos, as soon as I find out who in the Greek government will entertain my request.

Tag: Ithaca

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