Summer in the Greek Isles, for the first time in HD (1080x1920). Panning and zooming required for viewing on lower than standard resolution screens. Downloading this entire photo essay will take 20 to 40 minutes on a dial-up connection. High speed connections will typically take less than a minute (1 megabit per second or faster). Click to return to lower quality for Smaller File Size.
Our first landfall in Europe was the Greek Island of Rodos (Rhodes). The castle at Lindos is seen here with the wide blue expanse of the Eastern Mediterranean in the background.
The Hipocritium on the Island of Kos is some sort of a monument to Hippocratese which clearly incorporates some very old stone work. The well known ancient philsopher is said to have tought on Kos.
Just up the hill is the Ascepelon, the site of a well presereved ancient city. The fact that many ancient cities are found a ways up a hill from the water's edge is usualy said to be the result of city planing having been based largely on defensability. Later cities having been built over ancient waterfront cities also contributes to the current reality that what is left to be seen is typicaly quite a hike up from the harbor.
The European Union flags outside of the city of Kos are a local landmark, and often used when giving directions.
Also to be seen on many of the Eastern Greek Islands are remnants of Middle Age Turkish ocupation. This fountain with the old Arabic style turkish script is a good example.
The Greek Isls are for the most part fairly inhospitable, and much of the land is still very wild.
At first the cooking gas dealers would neither fill our tanks or sell us a European style tank. To keep the home fires burning we had to buy small disposable bottles at the suppermarket and build an adapter to pour the gas into our tanks. Later we were able to buy a small steel bottle that held 3kg of LPG and could be exchanged for a full one at most hardware stores throughout the Mediterranean.
The new mainsail that we bought in Greece was a masterpiece of exquisite design and extreme non-functionality. I had requested a sail with a flat run aft, and what we got sure did have an extremely flat run aft. As can be seen in this picure the shape was very fast, but the poorly positioned intermediat slides made the sail nearly impossible to hoist and the the combination of no hollow between the battens and battens that did not come all the way to the aft edge of the sail meant that leech flutter was a huge problem.
We returnd the mainsail but all that the loft would do was remove the intermediate slides, they refused to fix the leech flutter problem. What I did was to add "mini battens" that extended to the extreme edge of the sail, and this mostly fixed the leech flutter problem.
Our old mainsal had served us well for many years and tens of thousands of miles, but it was not much of a performer compared to the new full batten main. In this picture my very sloppy seam where I stitched the pieces back together can clearly be seen.
I recently read in the June 2014 issue of Motorcross Action Magazine (pp. 85) that Greece is the fourth largest motorcycle market in Europe, ahead of both France and Great Britain. This is quite believable in light of the huge quantity and variety of motorcycles and scooters that abound throughout Greece. This older Chinese made bike looks like a big cruiser, but the JC500-S model name actually stands for 50.0cc of displacement. I don't know how this one ran, but many 50cc two stroke scooters are able to churn out ten or fifteen horsepower which is good enough for quite spirited ridding.
On a windy day we crossed to the Atic peninsula and anchored under the ancient temple to Poseidon. This doric style temple is fairly original, and it's spectacular location makes it stand out as a gem of the Ancient world.
The Parthenon at the Athens Acropolis on the other hand has been worked on quite a bit over the years.
The Acropolis at Athens does however look impressive every which way it is looked at.
Pireas disapearing into the sunset.
Poros on the Peloponnesos.
A typical medium sized Greek fishing boat moored at Methania on the Peloponnisos.
Eva's crew high above Navplion.
Eva moored in the very popular outer harbor at Spetsai.
Restored Windmills on the island of Xios.
Back to Photo Essay Index