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Caren is the sailor in the family. She had sailed on the East Coast during her college days, and she kept her interest alive on the West Coast by racing in a fifteen foot Mercury class sailboat at the Monterey Bay Yacht Club, as well as cadging rides off friends in the San Francisco Bay. Meanwhile I took a bunch or sailing lessons in the Bay - I had never sailed before, and had some serious catching up to do.
Caren's next step in what eventually turned out to be a serious commitment to boating as a lifestyle was to start chartering bigger, crewed sailboats. We tried this out for the first time in 1981, with a several week long pair of charters in Greece and Turkey. We began this adventure by sailing out of Greece's port city of Piraeus to the nearby Cyclades, tootling around from island to island, going ashore from the ports where we stopped, seeing very few tourists. At one island we were awakened in the morning by the music and dancing of a very late night group of wedding revelers; one particularly energetic individual danced right off the dock into the water. At another island, late in the evening, we located the town butcher and persuaded him to open his shop and sell us some lamb for supper. In between stops, we got in a lot of sailing. I began to see why Caren loved the sport so much.
The wedding celebration
Caren relaxing ashore with our crew
Our chartered sailboat is visible on the dock
Churches with their adjacent cemeteries
After cruising the Cyclades, we hopped over to Fethiye, on the Turkish coast, and chartered a very different sort of sailnoat: a "gulet":
Quite picturesque and comfortable, with a large area for lounging about in the stern, complete with carpets, cushions, and a two person crew. The only drawback: it couldn't sail worth a damn.
Fethiye, not surpringly, had a lot of carpets for sale. But my favorite was the sponge shop:
A short distance from the town, high on a cliff, is the 350 BC Tomb of Amyntas, built by the Lycians in 350 BC.
We sailed south along the Turkish coast for several days, enjoying the good weather, clear water, and secluded anchorages. We investigated the sunken ruins of Dolichiste. Dolichiste was occupied for several centuries until it was partially submerged due to tectonic activity and rising sea levels. There really wasn't much to see:
The most exciting part of the trip was our rough return sail to Fethiye. I got seasick, while Caren helped the captain a the helm. She loved it; I couldn't wait to get off.
We returned to Greece via Rhodes, opting to stay at a very nice hotel for a few days and mingle with other tourists for the first time. And so ended our first chartering experience. Many more would follow.
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