Beyond the Ionian on Morning Calm

Part 1

As a lot of you know for a period during high season, I am rarely to be seen in Vilho, some have suggested that I am on holiday and in a way I am, but not how you think. I am on holiday but somebody else’s… As captain of Morning Calm, our 65ft charter yacht, which starts and finishes in different areas around Greece. A luxury holiday, the hostess and I are at our client’s behest, so we may be in the Ionian, the Cyclades, the Peloponnese or in fact any sailing area in Greece. This year as a topic for my annual musings, I thought I would paint a picture of my time onboard during a 2-week cruise in the Cyclades. (The names of the guests and hostess have been changed).

The guests flew into Athens and joined the boat just south of Lavrion on the Attica peninsula. My story begins as we await their arrival. Our previous drop off had been in Mykonos, 5 days earlier, so we had plenty of time to prepare body and boat.
No matter how often I do this even, as with this trip our guests are familiar with the boat having completed an Ionian trip previously, I still have butterflies in the moments before arrival.

Days of cleaning and repairs fresh in mind, brilliant white crew shirt, itching slightly under my left ear and the ever-present sheen of perspiration, pretty much everywhere, I still feel that little fission of nerves. Then it’s all meet and greet “you’ve lost weight” I had, “how was the flight, was the transfer easy”? The familiarity puts us all at ease.

Olympic Marine, where we had been berthed for a couple of days had really looked after us, with a superb alongside berth, making embarkation a breeze. All too often we are bundling bags atop one another in the tender and ferrying guests from a meeting point. Stepping aboard and down below to air conditioning is very welcome indeed.

It was approaching 4pm by the time Maya the hostess had helped everyone move into their cabins and got all stowed, no mean feat as we had almost our full complement of guests, five in total. David & Julie had the master cabin, Fred & Paula in the forward suite and Jean in the Pulman cabin.

While all of that was ongoing, together with the ever-helpful marina staff, I got us underway.

Morning Calm is equipped with a lifting keel which we had to raise to get into our berth, dropping is easy, press a button and through the magic of hydraulics we are back to our nearly 4 metre draught again. Once clear of the Marina we unrolled the huge reaching genoa (again push button) killed the engine, enjoying the 7 knots provided by a strong northerly breeze, Maya served a late lunch with ice cold ‘fizzy pink’ as I set a course for the southern end of Makronisoi, the long thin island shadowing the mainland coast opposite Lavrion.

Jean asked why there was so little development on the island, as everywhere else you looked, the white villas of the fortunate lined the coast. Hesitantly, it seemed a somber subject for the beginning of such a happy adventure, I recounted the little I knew of its history. Whilst a one-time place of refuge, for Helen of Troy fame. Its more recent past was more unsettling. During the civil war in Greece, that followed on from WW2, communists or the left leaning, or those of a suspicious nature were rounded up and relocated to Makronisoi. In the years that followed, those incarcerated there lived in tents whilst undergoing re-education, failure to learn resulted very often in an unpleasant end. In 2020 a monument was erected in tribute to the Greeks who had endured and very often died there. Now it is an historical site, with only a handful of inhabitants living on this ‘dark isle.’ (The ironically named ‘Happy Day’ is a 1976 movie adaption by Pantelis Voulgaris dramatising some of the history, it’s viewable on YouTube – but it is heavy going).