Sailing in Greece!

Wednesday 7/6 -

Today we drove several hours to catch our overnight ferry to Greece! Upon arriving at the Port to catch our ferry, I was pleasantly surprised to find that our accommodations were much nicer than I imagined. I thought it was going to be a dodgy, (yet another word I have picked up from the Aussies) run down boat but it was more like a cruise liner. Once we left the port, we ate dinner then several of us separated into groups and some played poker while the rest of us played UNO. It was fun! Our ferry was supposed to leave at 8pm but Alan warned us that Greek time tables were usually never on time so we shouldn't expect to leave or arrive on time. We ended up leaving at 9:30pm and since we were scheduled to arrive at 6:30am we all expected to get some extra sleep (you know, because we left an hour and a half late) but boy were we surprised when we received a 4am wake up call telling us we had 40 minutes to get ready before we arrived at our destination.

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Once we disembarked in Greece we drove along the beautiful waterside for roughly 20 minutes until we arrived into a small fishing village to collect our yachts that we were to live on for the next three days. To make a long story short, it took us about 5 hours to get oriented with our new floating homes and to finally set sail. Our boat's name was Sparti! She was a nice little boat but the quarters were extremely tight. Sparti was about 12 meters long (not sure what that conversion is in feet. As a side note, everyone tells me everything in meters, kilometers, and celsius here and it is always so confusing!)



Our boat mates were assigned by grouping together people who have sailed before with those who hadn't so I ended up on a boat with people I didn't know very well. We set sail and arrived in another small fishing village that night and got some down time to hang out before our authentic Greek dinner. Amanda and I played frisbee by the beach with some of the guys before dinner and it was such a nice change of pace from the long, hectic days we had been used to. Look at some of the views from our boat!





Thursday night we had a pirate themed party and learned a few traditional Greek dances. However, because of our early start that morning most of us were in bed extremely early. Friday we set sail for a new island and spent all day on the water. We each had specific assigned jobs around the boat in order to sail. Sparti actually broke down on us Friday evening just outside of our port and we ended up having to get towed in. We thought for a bit that we were going to be stuck but our skipper, Ash, happens to be an engineer for the Australian Navy and was able to fix it! Thanks goodness for her! :)

Sailing was pretty amazing but now that it is over I can say that I am glad that I did it, it was a lot of fun, but I am happy to be back on land. Sailing is quite a bit of work and being on a boat day and night with the sun beating down on you with barely any shade or AC is a bit tough. Anyway, we arrived in _______ and it was paradise! It was everything we all expected Greece to be. It was a resort with watersides and a pool that overlooked the Ionian Sea and we spent the rest of Friday afternoon and evening soaking up the best of a small Greek town.














The resort that we had access to is where we ate dinner and spent the remainder of Friday evening. They were launching their night club and it was the grand opening so we were told we were in for a special treat. It was really fun except for the fact that Greeks don't start partying until about 1am and finish until 7am. Our boats were docked right at the bottom of the hill where the music was blasting and I wasn't able to sleep until it went off at 7am and once the sun heats up our boats any chance of sleeping is out so I had roughly 30 min to an hour of sleep last night! Oh well... I'll have plenty of time to sleep when I get home! Here's some pics from last night at the grand opening.









Today (Saturday) was our last day at sea. We were meant to have a sailing race today against each other but there was hardly any wind so we actually did not sail at all which suited me just fine because we didn't have to mess with the sails and I got to sleep on the boat! We stopped several times to play in the water and enjoy our last day on the water and it was so amazing! I've never been swimming in such clear, blue water. We were swimming where we were 60 meters from the bottom and I swear you could see straight down! We were even far enough out that I saw a Carnival cruise ship. Here are some pictures from today.









We are getting ready for dinner in a few moments and the plan is to spend the night here in port tonight and drive to Athens in the morning. It is supposed to take the majority of the day so we have to leave first thing in the morning. I never thought I would be so excited about spending an entire day on Dora! Actually, we all are! Haha! Our agenda once we arrive in Athens is to stay for one night and then we are off to Mykonos in the morning for two more days of lounging and relaxing on the beautiful beaches of Greece!

I will catch up with you all again soon! I love you!

-Lindsay

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Location:Greek Islands