On board S/Y Bushido
The thickly pine-forested hills form a perfect backdrop to the not so wine-dark waters off the Peloponnese. Soft greens and blues are Edward Hopper colours — as is the yellowish-white sunlight at midday, the inviolate stillness of noon being a keynote of his paintings. The sea in Greece is mystically wedded to the mountains, the craggy peaks acting as phallic domes to her femininity. The beauty of sailing is the absence of other people, the lack of noise and crowds, the solitude, the presence of only water and nature — but for the occasional bore who speeds by in a stinkpot.
I sailed by Nafpaktos — Lepanto to the barbarians — where in 1571 Don John and a Christian coalition of 300 ships and 80,000 men (America, having been discovered some 80 years earlier, had not insisted on including women), 50,000 of them crew and oarsmen, soundly defeated the Ottoman fleet comprised of slaves in the galleys, Algerian bandits on the bridges, and Ali Pasha as the head. Speaking of his head, after a ferocious and bloody battle the Christians chopped it off and stuck it on top of his mast, the rest of the band losing heart at the sight of it and leaving the premises in a hurry.
The Ottomans were all over the Med back then. Having finally put them back in their place, some 380 years later, the nice guys who have given us the EU and the euro have allowed them back in again, and this time they’re all over the place, not just Nafpaktos. I will get back to these bums presently.
I have been sailing with a boat full of friends, and I am now alone for the first time in three weeks.
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