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Wednesday November 28th, 2012: Skipping Katakolon, Greece
Bob: We had booked a tour from the Crown Princess's next destination, Katakolon, Greece, to go to the site of the ancient Olympic Games, which started around 770 B.C. and lasted until 300 A.D. or so. When you think about it, very few social institutions have had a run of over 1,000 years, so the Olympic Games had a staying power much greater than most governments, countries or empires. I found that quite intriguing and wanted to see the physical site where the most popular version of the games had taken place, but it was not to be. Captain Nash warned us already the previous night that the anchorage at Katakolon was not usable in high winds from the South, which was exactly what was forecast. But he went ahead and steamed up to the breakwater at Katakolon to see if the swell would be small enough to safely use the lifeboats to tender us onto shore. But the swells turned out to be two meter swells (well over 6 feet!), and that clearly would have made getting on or off the lifeboats quite dangerous. In the end, Captain Nash canceled the port of Katakolon and instead we had a day at sea while the Crown Princess steamed northwest to Corfu, our next port-of-call. |
Monika: Today we were supposed to stop at Katakolon and take an excursion to Olympia were the remains of the stadium for the ancient Olympic Games are. The ancient Olympic Games were started around 770 BC and lasted for 1100 years. They were started to bring some peace to the different tribes of Greece, since during the one month of the games there was a general truce, no fighting allowed. I wish we would be able to enforce that kind of truce during the modern Olympic games! But during the previous day a gale had come up over the western Mediterranean and was starting to blow our way. The winds were too strong and from the wrong direction for us to dock, and even anchoring outside the port and tendering was not advisable, since the winds were forecast to increase during the day. So the ship kept chugging along. We sailed past Katakolon, and watched a sailboat that furled its sails and motored into the safety of the harbor. The coast near Katakolon looked like the white cliffs of Dover. And so we had a day of rest. This was not really a bad thing. Although I would have liked to see the stadium, I was a little tired of our "if its Tuesday, it must be Athens" pace. |
Bob: Although we missed seeing Olympia, I had been getting tired with doing something everyday and was glad to have a day off, so to speak. We both wrote letters all morning and then took turns reading and using the computer to catch up on our journal entries, with which we were sadly remiss. We sat out on our balcony, eating pistachio nuts from Santorini, which were very crunchy and tasty although not as salty as ones we eat in the U.S., and watching the mountains of northern Greece slide by on the shoreline. They looked steep, rugged, and quite gloomy in the clouds and rain. We sat back on our balcony where we were sheltered from the rain by the overhanging deck above, however, and thus were quite dry, warm enough, and all in all very snug. |
Monika: So after breakfast, we sat on our balcony and watched the Greek coast sail by. Bob wrote in the journal. I got some writing paper from the purser's desk and sat down to write some letters. Yeah, believe it or not, I did write three (count'em 3!) letters, to Heinke, Helga, and Lois. |
Bob: In the early afternoon we did break off for a while to take in a dance lesson with Sam, the cruise director. This time she was teaching "Swing", which was what we know as East Coast Swing, or Lindy, or Jive. We knew the basic step, but we were both happy to learn the alternate kicking sequence, which she taught as starting on the 4th cycle of the open-position (parallel) sequence. Always nice to learn (?) a new dance step (and the goddess Terpsichore, in particular, laughed!). The seas and winds were still high enough that evening that Captain Nash hove to and anchored just offshore Kerkeya, the main port on the island of Corfu, and we spent the night riding comfortably at anchor there. |
Monika: After lunch we had a swing lesson with our cruise director Sam, who had given us dance lessons the last time we were on the Crown Princess, our memorable Transatlantic Crossing during Wanderung 25. After that, it was more sitting on our balcony. By now we were anchored offshore Corfu and watched some sailboats having fun sailing in the rather high winds. But finally there was dinner, the end to a really nice and necessary relaxing day. |
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