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. Isolation can be a beautiful sensation. The saloon where I spend most of my day is spacious and festooned with samurai swords, kamikaze flags and pictures of my judo, karate and tennis wars. And books. My crew is the best I’ve ever had, the captain, Marcus, as eager to hoist sails as previous ones were not. The engineer, Finn, a miracle man, the cook, Carmella, one that makes Marco Pierre White look like a hamburger flipper at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, the captain’s wife, Kerry, a jewel who would put to shame Buckingham Palace staff, and then there’s Ram, a Gurkha soldier, retired after 20 years of service to the crown, a man with two wives back in Nepal, with many children and grandchildren. I want Ram to find a third wife, a rich Greek widow, but all he does is smile and say, ‘Thank you, sir’.
If only I could convey the wonderful feeling of isolation on one’s boat with a crew such as I have. I seriously am thinking of leaving everything behind and going on a Flying Dutchman trip, but it ain’t my style. Leo Tolstoy wrote in 1896 that ‘art is a human activity, in that one man consciously, by means of external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them’. There is nothing like the feeling of being on a truly beautiful sailing boat and hoisting the sails, and silently swishing through the waves, listening to the straining of the rigging, watching the bow plunge and then staring at the sky. All the sanding and varnishing, the Sisyphus-like jobs that a boat like Bushido requires are forgotten and the only thing that matters is the magical sweep of a sheer, or the awesome cut of a mainsail leech extending over a perfect counter. And the way a boat sits on the water. Like a woman, a boat is judged by her grace when lying still. Tolstoy was no sailor, but he got it right about conveying feelings being an art form. I only wish I could convey what I feel.
At the island of Koronis, where George and Lita Livanos receive like no others, Willy and Olga Shawcross came on board Bushido and showered me with compliments. They know about boats, Willy’s father having owned a great Fife, and it was like hearing compliments about my children. Funny thing about boats. They are like mistresses, expensive, temperamental, volatile, but one feels for them as one feels for one’s child. But back to reality. And to Greece.
Pouring money in will not make Greek industry competitive. Pouring money in is the problem, not the solution. All that the summit in Brussels accomplished was giving Greece breathing space. It will not work. What is needed is a change in the culture, and that takes decades, if not centuries. The Eurocrooks are taking this ancient continent down the Swanee. They couldn’t care less as long as they keep their salaries and privileges. A borderless continent conceived by technocrats is an LSD illusion, a scam, and a monetary union without full political unification the biggest scam of all. Yet the Eurocrooks insist that lending more moolah is the answer. Greeks see fraud and corruption everywhere and refuse to play ball. The state, with EU money, has spoiled them, and now demands sacrifices. It doesn’t work like this. This year will be the third in a row that the Greek economy has shrunk. Does anyone in their right mind still believe that things will improve and that everything will one day be hunky-dory?
The Eurocrooks are taking us down and we’re doing nothing about it. Everyone’s playing for time in order to be able to keep the motorcycle outriders and the arse-licking and bowing and scraping that go with being in power. I wrote this last year and I was proved right. Next year I expect to be named a prophet.
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